You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The author's deductions about man's attitude towards oracles and forebodings are based on three experiences: (1) Freud's paper, A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis. (2) A patient's experience as an adolescent: 'I must always remember that girls also have legs'. (3) A pseudological patient who, afraid of illness, rubbed her thermometer in order to pretend a fever and then found out that she ran a temperature higher than her pretending efforts had aimed at.
The first two experiences have a reassuring effect in man's dealing with fate. Freud alleviated his guilt feelings concerning a success that exceeded his father's. He realized his childhood dream—to see the Acropolis—and no revengeful father or God interfered. In the second experience a patient quieted his castration fear which was linked up with the discovery of the lack of a penis in women. In the third experience the pseudological patient does not succeed in reconciling reality with her wishes. When she tried to outsmart fate, it outsmarted her.
These examples in particular and man's attitude towards forebodings and oracles in general, demonstrate how human beings are inclined to deal with fate, 'Ananke', as if it were a parental authority. Instead of realistically anticipating the unavoidable results of acting out instinctual impulses, man tries to bargain with fate in a magical sense. Intentionally misunderstanding the ambiguity of forebodings and oracles, man tries by a defiant literal obedience to shift the responsibility for his acting on to the God, on to fate, as if the inexorable Ananke could be bribed or fooled like an indulgent parent by seeming submission or atoning guilt feelings. The adjusted person finds out that, after all, his guilt feelings are superfluous, because reality follows its own laws and not the moral prescriptions of parents. The person who is estranged from reality finds his fearful forebodings verified. His rebellious instincts have challenged fate and have projecte