The Messianic Hero

PERSONS UNDERGOING an acute schizophrenic episode express ideas not only of supreme rule of some sort, but notably also an urgent belief in their messianic calling. They find themselves in their delusional ideation set up as chief of their party or their nation or as the head of their religion, and as the inflation grows it extends to the grandiose notion of being emperor of the world or king of the universe. Yet the equally powerful companion notion—of changing the culture, and of saving the world—introduces a special note that needs further consideration.

It is easy enough to pass these psychotic notions off with the obvious comment that when these people feel weak and insignificant they have wishful fantasies of being top dog in the universe, or that when they have felt abused in the course of an unhappy and isolated existence, they feel the urge to re-establish justice and love in the world. All this is, no doubt, perfectly appropriate as an interpretation, as far as it goes, but it leaves out of account any consideration of the nature of the cultural forms of messianic ideation. It is a notable fact of history, that the messianic theme of world reform and salvation arose at a certain typical juncture in various parts of the world, out of the ideology of the sacral kingship, apparently as part of its natural evolution.

It behoves us, then, not to dismiss the theme of the messianic hero too lightly as wishful fantasy, but to look more deeply into its historical antecedents. The predominance of these ideas of ruling and of reforming the world was quite different from what I had expected to find when I was first embarking on these studies of the schizophrenic process. I had vaguely anticipated encountering some heroic motifs along the lines of Jung's formulations in his Symbols of transformation, his first great masterpiece on comparative symbolism, in which his emphasis was upon the regression of the libido and the consequen