we have now reached a point in our discussion at which birth and womb phantasies we may perhaps profitably pause awhile to consider a group of phantasies, which, on account of their widespread occurrence and curious character, would seem to deserve some very special attention at the hands of the psychologist and anthropologist. the phantasies in question are those which psycho-analysts have found to cluster round the idea of returning to the mother's womb and of resuming there the intra-uterine life enjoyed by the child in the pre-natal stages of its existence,—an idea which is discoverable (usually of course in a symbolic form) in many myths, legends, dreams, reveries and symptomatic actions. it is very frequently associated with the further idea of birth or re-birth, and it is in this form that the phantasy was first described by freud[46]. in consciousness this phantasy of returning manifestations of the desire to return to the womb to the womb may clothe itself as an idea of being in an enclosed, dark, solitary or inaccessible place, safe from outside dangers or disturbances. its influence can probably be traced in the pleasure that many persons find in the retirement to small islands, mountain tops or other places isolated from the rest of the world, in the "cosiness" of small rooms or closets or in the comfort which may be experienced in snuggling under the bed-clothes in the presence of real or imaginary danger[47]. sleep[67] itself, in its power of withdrawing the individual from the outer world and in its unmistakable approximation to the pre-natal condition of body and mind, may, from certain points of view, be regarded as an exemplification of the same tendency[48] as may also possibly hypnosis. in certain forms of insanity the tendency may show itself quite clearly even in waking life, the patient withdrawing himself as far as possible from all environmental influences and sometimes adopting a characteristically foetal posture,—a posture which, it should be noted, is often adopted even by normal persons during sleep. more moderately and within the bounds of sanity, it may show itself in a relative degree of retirement from the world, as in the life followed in christian monasteries or nunneries, or—more clearly—in the still more isolated existence of many buddhist monks and devotees, some of whom will live for years in caves or other dark and secluded spots, almost entirely cut off from human intercourse and from the light and bustle of the outside world. in a more distinctly neurotic form again, its influence may be traced in agoraphobia—the fear of open spaces—or negatively (the reaction against the tendency predominating) in its opposite, claustrophobia—the fear of narrow, confined rooms or places—or in the morbid dread of being buried alive.
in all these manifestations the dominant motive would seem meaning of this desire to consist in a desire to escape from the troubles, labours, anxieties and excitements of the world, to a place where there is rest and peace with no necessity for effort. now there can be no doubt that the intra-uterine life of the child represents by far the nearest approach to such a blissful state of repose that is ever enjoyed by us during any period of our earthly existence. in this pre-natal life the child lives effortlessly, free from danger and with all its needs provided; in striking contrast to post-natal (and more especially adult) life, where in general the stern rule holds that "if any will not work, neither shall he eat", and where the individual constantly finds his strength all too small to do battle with the formidable obstacles that so often stand in the way of the fulfilment of his desires.
[68]
it is, as ferenczi[49] has been at pains to show, only in so difficulty of the process of adaptation to reality far as we free ourselves from the habits, associations and implications of this pre-natal life that we can learn to achieve the fulfilment of our wishes by taking the necessary steps to bring about their accomplishment in the outer world, instead of endeavouring to make the outer world conform to our desires by the shorter and easier method of imagination and delusion. in the earliest stages of our existence we are in a sense indeed omnipotent, inasmuch as provision is made for all our requirements and desires as it were automatically and without the necessity for effort on our own part. in early childhood this state persists in some degree, the child's wants being, to a large extent, fulfilled by others as soon as he indicates their nature. this power of automatically bringing about the satisfaction of our needs is destined to undergo a continually increasing degree of restriction, as childhood changes through adolescence to maturity; a greater individual adaptation to reality being achieved at the cost of greater individual effort and of the loss of the childish confidence in our ability to achieve our ends by the simple process of desiring their achievement. under the stresses and difficulties of life on this developed plane, it is only too easy to sink back to the earlier and simpler state where less effort is demanded, and if we retrace our steps in this direction as far as they will lead us, we return eventually to the primitive condition of our pre-natal life. it is thus, apparently, that a return to this earliest stage of our existence has come to stand as the supreme goal and object of all desire to escape from the turmoil, labour and conflict which developed life inevitably brings in its train.
if the idea of life within the mother's womb is in this life before birth and life after death way closely associated with the desire for cessation of toil and striving, it is not surprising that we frequently find it brought into connection with the most striking example of such cessation with which we are acquainted, i. e. the complete stoppage of all vital activities at death. as a matter of fact, the unconscious identification of the state after death with the state before birth would seem to be one of frequent and widespread occurrence, the idea of the mysterious intra-uterine life before birth[69] furnishing, through this identification, one of the causes of belief in a continuance of life after death—life of a kind, however, in which, as in the life before birth, all our desires and needs are fulfilled without the necessity for toilsome and unpleasant effort.
it is not only in our general attitude towards death that the influence of this identification may be traced, but also in many of the details as regards the beliefs and ceremonies connected with the dead. the parallelism here referred to may be seen for instance in the fact that we place our dead in coffins and bury them in graves or vaults in churches (all of which are womb symbols) or under the earth (itself among the most frequent of mother symbols); or that in many places the dead have been placed on small islands[50] caves, mountain tops, or other secluded spots, or deposited (like king arthur) in boats and pushed out to sea. in this last practice we may probably trace the influence of an identification of the process of death with that of birth—the conception that at death we pass away by the same road that we traversed when we entered into life at birth[51]. for not only is the sea a frequent mother symbol, but the idea of water is closely connected with that of birth, occurring as it does in a great number of symbolic representations of the latter[52]. a similar identification is chiefly responsible for the belief that the dead pass across a lake or river on the way to their new home. (cp. lethe, styx and acheron in classical mythology or the river across which christian passes to the celestial city in pilgrim's progress).
the idea of birth or re-birth which we here meet with, plays of itself, as we have already indicated, a part of very birth phantasies great importance in the unconscious mental life of many individuals[53], a part indeed sometimes of even greater significance[70] than that of the idea of returning to the mother's womb, with which it is so frequently associated. in its indirect (displaced) representation in consciousness, this idea of birth or re-birth will find expression as an emergence from any of the places which serve as symbols for the womb—an island, grave, room, church or other building, or again—and very typically—in the process of forcing one's way through a tunnel, narrow passage, staircase or other enclosed space, out into some relatively open locality. more especially, however, is the idea connected in one way or another with a passage through or out of water—a pond, river, canal, lake or the sea. it is thus for instance that it appears in a typical form of myth relating to the birth of some heroic personage (e. g. moses, kama, perseus, romulus, siegfried, lohengrin) in which the birth is symbolically represented by the child's floating on the water in a cradle, boat or basket[54].
birth phantasies of this kind are frequently accompanied birth and fear by the idea of difficulty or danger and by a corresponding emotion of fear. according to freud[55], the connection between fear and the act of birth is a very intimate one; birth with its attendant profound changes of physiological and environmental conditions and its manifold dangers and discomforts, having become, as it were, the prototype of all situations of a threatening or disquieting character or in which life itself appears to be menaced. our word anxiety—like the french angoisse, the german angst, the latin anxius, angere, angustus, the greek [greek: anch?], all of which appear to be connected with the sanskrit anhus or anhas, signifying narrowness or constriction—bears witness to the fundamental association of fear with pressure and shortness of breath, which—the former owing to the passage through the narrow vagina, the latter to the interruption of the foetal circulation—constitute the most menacing and terrifying aspects of the birth process.
if, and in so far as, the phantasy of re-entering the mother's the meaning of the birth phantasy womb represents a desire to escape from the difficulties and trials of life into the condition of peace and protection which the pre-natal period of life afforded, the idea of re-birth would naturally seem to give expression to the tendency to emerge [71]once more into the conflict of life and to emancipate oneself from the protecting influence of the mother. such a meaning is indeed, as jung[56] and others[57] have shown, actually associated with the phantasy in very many cases. in this sense, then, the desire to attain to individual independence and freedom from the parents finds symbolical representation as a repetition of that process whereby we first acquired the status of an independent organism distinct from that of the mother who bore us.
in other cases however the symbolism is of a rather more spiritual regeneration remote kind, the idea symbolised being that of moral or spiritual regeneration[58]. the reality of this significance of the re-birth phantasy cannot well be doubted, being vouched for as it is not only by the results of psycho-analytic enquiry but also by the stereotyped phraseology of many religious formulae and by the nature of many of the ceremonies connected with moral or religious conversion. thus the rite of baptism, as is pretty generally recognised, consists, in one of its principal aspects, in a symbolic representation of the act of birth, and the same is true of many of the initiation ceremonies performed at puberty in all parts of the world[59].
the association—so often found in this connection—of re-birth with a previous return to, and brief sojourn in, the mother's womb, may be due perhaps to some extent to the needs of logical consistency for, as nicodemus said, a man cannot literally "be born again" unless he has previously "entered the second time into his mother's womb"; but probably it has itself a further and deeper significance. as the result of his researches upon this point, jung[60] considers that the association in question expresses the necessity of gathering fresh sources of psychic energy from the deepest strata of our mental life in the unconscious, if the moral or spiritual conversion is to be successful. starting from the consideration of[72] the products of the collective mind as exemplified in cult and physical regeneration legend rather than from the phantasies of the individual, other investigators, such as sir j. g. frazer[61], have come to the conclusion that it is primarily a physical rather than a moral regeneration that is symbolised by the ideas of re-birth. thus the histories of such divine personages as attis, adonis or osiris, whose death and subsequent return to life are plainly analogous to the phantasy of the return to the mother's womb (burial in the earth) and re-birth from it, have been interpreted as expressions of the desire for rejuvenation on the part of the individual or the race, or again as representations (probably magical in intention) of the periodical decay and revival of vegetation or of the periodical changes of the seasons upon which these depend. this view would seem to be supported by the fact that such a significance (often however associated with that of moral regeneration in jung's sense) is inherent in many of the mysteries and superstitions of all ages, as in the ideas of the philosopher's stone or the elixir of life, and in the symbolic practices, legends and traditions characteristic of secret societies and of mysticism generally[62].
all these interpretations are probably correct, so far as the literal interpretation of the womb and birth phantasies they go and as regards certain cases. certainly the desire for the preservation or recovery of youth, the attainment of immortality, the ensuring of a good harvest or even the felt need of spiritual regeneration are sufficiently strong and recurrent motives of the human mind to justify their frequent appearance in symbolic form. nevertheless, from what we know of the conditions governing the most deeply rooted and widespread human phantasies and from the general laws which underlie the use of symbolism[63], it would seem likely that in a considerable number of cases the meaning of the ideas of re-entering the womb and of re-birth is not exhausted by these interpretations. the frequency and relative uniformity of these womb and birth phantasies make it probable that, in one of their aspects at least, they are no mere symbols but represent things actually desired on their own account. the actual return to the womb does, as we have seen, represent the extreme expression[73] of the tendency to escape from the troubles of the outer world to a condition in which there is complete immunity from effort, responsibility, difficulty and danger. further, psychoanalytic sexual significance of the phantasies investigation of the womb and birth phantasies as they occur in individuals seems to show that they often have a sexual or quasi-sexual significance, being the expression of sexual tendencies and arousing sexual feeling[64]. through the extreme intimacy which a child establishes with its mother by the processes of gestation and birth, it may find in imagination by means of these processes a not unsuitable method of gratifying the sexual inclinations which it feels towards its mother; and the phantasies of entering or emerging from the womb or of being carried in it may thus come to take on a directly sexual character, in the same way as any other of the numerous activities or processes associated with erotic feeling. it is probable too that in men and boys, the process of passing to or from the womb through the vagina is treated, on the principle of totum pro parte, as a substitute for the more directly sexual act appropriate to later life—the individual having enjoyed, on the occasion of his birth, the privilege of being in that place, whence his incestuous desires impel him to return. in this sense then, the womb and birth phantasies express the incestuous tendencies in a milder and less objectionable form[65].
[74]
in girls (or in boys, in so far as they possess homosexual inclinations) the return to the mother may be used as a means of attaining sexual intimacy with the father, indirectly through fusion, or identification, with the mother[66].
the directly sexual feeling thus attaching to these phantasies sexual curiosity is in many cases powerfully reinforced by the curiosity which is experienced by children in relation to the processes of conception, gestation and birth. most children would seem to possess at an early age a very lively interest in all matters directly or indirectly connected with the reproductive function. the question "where do babies come from?" is one of the most absorbing of all the problems of our early years; one which, in its more sublimated forms, may lay the foundation of that restless desire to know the causes and origins of things, which is the driving force of much that is best in science and philosophy; and one for which, in infancy and childhood, a solution is sought in many of the childish theories of reproduction which have recently attracted the attention of psycho-analysts[67].
curiosity of this kind is also found to underlie much of children's questions that desire for knowledge which manifests itself in the incessant asking of questions so characteristic of children at a certain age. where this is the case, the actual questions asked are[75] often only substitutes for the real problem which so insistently demands solution—the problem of the origin of men—and are shown to be of little importance in themselves by the listless and uninterested way in which the child frequently receives the answers that are given him, making them, as he does only too often, the starting point for fresh questions, the answers to which prove in their turn to be equally unsatisfying. in all such questioning the true nature of the real problem is for the most part kept below the threshold of consciousness, through the operation of repressive influences, originating perhaps to some extent in the natural course of development of the child's own mind, but probably to a greater degree due to the attitude of his adult environment, which, directly or by implication, has taught the child to regard such questions as taboo. this notion the forbidden question in myth and legend of the question which is forbidden but which nevertheless imperiously demands an answer is one that is of frequent occurrence in myth and legend, the forbidden question often disclosing itself as one which has reference to the birthplace, parentage or birth of the hero (as for instance in the lohengrin legend) or the origin and nature of man in general (as in the case of ?dipus)[68].
under these circumstances, it may well seem to the child that his curiosity concerning the process by which he and other children came into the world could be most satisfactorily gratified by the experience in his own person of those events concerning which information is required. the motive thus aroused will then in many cases add very considerably to the fascination which the ideas of gestation and birth may already possess in virtue of their purely sexual significance. the desire thus satisfied may again in some cases be still further reinforced by the notion that the position of the child within the womb is a favourable one for finding out many things about the life of the mother and her relations to the father which may be otherwise difficult to discover; as in the not infrequent phantasy of observing the sexual act between the parents from this point of vantage.
[76]
summarising our discussion as to the significance of the summary womb and birth phantasies, we have seen that they may have any or all of the following meanings:—
as to the return to the womb:—
(1) an expression of the tendency to withdraw from the labours and difficulties of life to the place where the greatest possible freedom from such troubles may be found; in which the emphasis may be laid upon:—
(a) the desire for the effortless gratification of all needs and wishes,
(b) the desire for protection from the dangers of the outer world,
(c) the equation of life after death with life before birth, the former being invested with all the supposed advantages of the latter.
(2) a sexual significance, as representing:—
(a) the closest possible intimacy with the mother,
(b) a means of attaining sexual intimacy with the father through fusion with the mother,
(c) a means of satisfying sexual curiosity.
as to re-birth:—
(1) a more or less symbolic significance; in which the emphasis may be laid upon:—
(a) the desire for a more vigorous and independent mode of life, involving greater freedom from the protecting and guarding influence of the parents and especially of the mother,
(b) the desire for physical rejuvenation (of the individual, of the race, or of the means of subsistence),
(c) the desire for moral or religious improvement or conversion.
(2) a more literal significance, in which the emphasis may be laid upon:—
(a) a directly sexual pleasure in the contemplation of the act, the process of birth being treated as a substitute for sexual intercourse,
(b) the possibility of satisfying sexual curiosity[69].