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The elderly Don Quixote, humbled by disappointment in love, with-drew from life and gradually lost his real personality. Giving up the real object was accompanied by repression of all instinctive activities, and the withdrawal of cathexis resulted in narcissism and a return to the infantile past. He could now feel he possessed all the qualities his ego-ideal demanded. Reality testing being thus interfered with, the era of chivalry and even the world of magic became for him the present world.
Sancho Panza represents a split-off part of Don Quixote, forming a bridge to reality. He believes in that part of the delusion which promises to bring him real advantage.
'Don Quixotists' see in Don Quixote a hero striving for the fulfilment of his ideal. This eternal Don Quixotism of the human soul is especially developed in poets, artists and fanatics.
For those adapted to reality, Don Quixote represents a depreciation by caricature of the past, both historical and individual. Don Quixote is a caricature of the father at the time when he forced asceticism on the child, although giving his own impulses free rein. The castration wish is shown symbolically in the haggard appearance of Don Quixote. Sancho Panza represents the castrated father figure at a time when his demands are no longer ideal but of a prosaic, philistine nature; but he represents also a tenderly humorous mockery of the mother, with her concern for nourishment and excretion.