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This monograph, written by a Professor of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, is a penetrating study of the evolution and the varied symbolic implications of the myth of St. Nicholas and its development in the course of centuries. It begins with the fourth century, when St. Nicholas was Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor, through Byzantium, Old Russia, the Middle Ages, the friendly Dutch Sinter-Klas and his final incarnation as U. S. Santa Claus. These various transformations are presented and analyzed from a broad psychological and cultural perspective.
The study of the transformations of the myth in the course of the centuries of Christian civilization is the most interesting. De Groot has reservations about psychoanalysis (the author speaks, for instance, of “the scientifically unacceptable dogmatism in psychoanalytic theory and concept formation “). Yet, he himself offers interpretations which are not always sufficiently substantiated and seem arbitrary. However, most of them are original, interesting and well documented.
In his wish to apply both psychoanalytic and Jungian psychology, the author is compelled to give lengthy explanations of the latter. On the other hand, some of his disquisitions, meant to justify psychoanalytic concepts, now seem rather redundant.
However, these minor flaws do not detract from the general value of this study. St. Nicholas emerges as a multi-determined symbol of great richness, which presents us with the synthesis of some basic elements of the human psyche. Of particular interest is the author's view that in his early existence, St. Nicholas represented an attempt at synthesis of Christian ascetic ideals with pagan sensuality and affirmation of life.
In the last chapter, the author presents what one might call an Existentialist view of the significance of his mythic hero for our modern era, as an ideal of integration of the polarity between giving and receiving. The dichotomy between the