“Pregnancy Envy” in Rainer Maria Rilke

In his book “The Forgotten Language” (1) Erich Fromm challenges, among others, Freud's assumption that “penis envy” is a regularly recognizable phenomenon in the constitution of the woman's psyche. In this repudiation of one intrinsically important notion among the original psychoanalytical concepts, Fromm does not stand alone (2); but whereas elsewhere the objection to Freud's principle of the identity of psychic experiences with the infant boy as well as with the young girl stems mostly either from emotional doubts — the most serious allegation being that Freud's mind was incapable of understanding the soul of woman — or from that psychologically weak last ditch of reasoning which cloaks as common sense, Fromm puts forward some tangible evidence upon which to base his assumption. According to him, there exists in contrast to Freud's opinion of a “penis envy” in the female, originally rather “pregnancy envy” in the male. He refers to the Babylonian Myth of Creation which tells us of a victorious rebellion of male Gods under Marduk against the great mother Tiamat who ruled the universe (3). This ancient legend serves as an illustration of the emergence of patriarchy from matriarchal forms of social organisation and of religious orientation, as has been expounded by Bachofen, in his studies of Greek Mythology (4). But while Bachofen assumed that the last fight between the maternal goddesses and the victorious paternal gods was represented in the Oresteia of Aischylos, more recent studies of the problem tend to show that the last impact of the matriarchal principle upon the history of Western civilisation was