Nowhere better than here could be pointed out the similarity of this fairy-tale motive with the case history of the hysterical young woman whose case was related as an example from pathology of transposition symbolism.[1]
In the occurrence of this hysteria the father became a prominent personality as a sexual rival.
The young woman almost regularly saw herself pursued in her dreams by her naked father. Her wish-dream corresponded in principle to the Drudge-of-all-Work motive. Instead of the original sweetheart there appeared indeed later in the dream also the substitution through the physician, a frequent occurrence in the process of cure emphasized by Freud (transference on the physician).
The father first appeared as sexual persecutor and rival in the dream and in the hysterical structure at the moment when he stopped the relation of his daughter to her true sweetheart. With that was also given the occasion for the hysterical symptoms, in the case in question (through the box on the ear), especially also to the transposition of the hysterical symptoms upward and to completing the wish-structure.[2]
"The Father Persecutes His Own Daughter" (Rittershaus, XXXI, p. 133).—A prince killed his parents and his sister in order to secure the kingdom for himself. Some years later he married a beautiful princess and after one year she bore him a daughter named Ingibjörg. When she was grown her mother as she lay upon her death-bed called her child to her and said to her that after her death her wicked father would wish to possess her and to prevent her escape would tie her with a rope. She should now endeavor to tie her bitch to the rope while she, through flight, saved herself. She should then bind herself with a girdle and then she would never suffer from hunger.
The prophecies of the mother came true. Ingibjörg succeeded, in the darkness of the night, in escaping to the sea where the captain of a merchant-man took her on board his ship. She came to a strange kingdom and found shelter in a small peasant's cottage.
- ↑ Also here this alternative rôle the father (besides the singing teacher). Therefore he appears first as persecutor where he becomes the outspoken, hostile rival of the young man.
- ↑ Compare Freud, "Bruchstück einer Hysterieanalyse."
