Note 791 — Chapter VIII · THE SACRIFICE

Once he called the “stars his brothers.” Here I must call to mind the remarks in the first part of this work, especially that mystic identification with the stars: εγω ειμι συμπλανος ὑμιν αστερ (I am a star who wanders together with you). The separation and differentiation from the mother, the “individuation” creates that transition of the subjective into the objective, that foundation of consciousness. Before this, man was one with the mother. That is to say, with the world as a whole. At that period man did not know the sun as brother. This occurred for the first time, when after the resulting separation and placing of the object, the libido, regressing to the infantile, perceived in that first state its possibilities and the suspicion of his relationship to the stars forced itself upon him. This occurrence appears not infrequently in the introversion psychoses. A young peasant, an ordinary laboring man, developed an introversion psychosis (Dementia Praecox). His first feelings of illness were shown by a special connection which he felt with the sun and the stars. The stars became full of meaning to him, and the sun suggested ideas to him. This apparently entirely new perception of nature is met with very often in this disease. Another patient began to understand the language of birds, which brought him messages from his beloved (mother). Compare Siegfried.