Note 191 — Chapter IV · THE SONG OF THE MOTH
Beatrice M. Hinkle translation
The projection into the “cosmic” is the primitive privilege of the libido, for it enters into our perception naturally through all the avenues of the senses, apparently from without, and in the form of pain and pleasure connected with the objects. This we attribute to the object without further thought, and we are inclined, in spite of our philosophic considerations, to seek the causes in the object, which often has very little concern with it. (Compare this with the Freudian conception of Transference, especially Firenczi’s remarks in his paper, “Introjektion und Übertragung,” Jahrbuch, Vol. I, p. 422.) Beautiful examples of direct libido projection are found in erotic songs:
“Down on the strand, down on the shore,
A maiden washed the kerchief of her lover;
And a soft west wind came blowing over the shore,
Lifted her skirt a little with its breeze
And let a little of her ankles be seen,
And the seashore became as bright as all the world.”
(Neo-Grecian Folksong from Sanders: “Das Volksleben der Neugriechen,” 1844, p. 81, cit. Zeitschrift des Vereines für Volkskunde, Jahrgang XII, 1902, p. 166.)
“In the farm of Gymir I saw
A lovely maiden coming toward me;
From the brilliance of her arm glowed
The sky and all the everlasting sea.”
(From the Edda, tr. (into Ger.) by H. Gering, p. 53; Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, Jahrgang XII, 1902, p. 167.)
Here, too, belong all the miraculous stories of cosmic events, phenomena occurring at the birth and death of heroes. (The Star of Bethlehem; earthquakes, the rending asunder of the temple hangings, etc., at the death of Christ.) The omnipotence of God is the manifest omnipotence of the libido, the only actual doer of wonders which we know. The symptom described by Freud, as the “omnipotence of thought” in Compulsion Neuroses arises from the “sexualizing” of the intellect. The historical parallel for this is the magical omnipotence of the mystic, attained by introversion. The “omnipotence of thought” corresponds to the identification with God of the paranoic, arrived at similarly through introversion.