Readers will be indebted to the author for this clear and concise presentation

of the complex Osiris myth. Schneidermann links the myth to concerns of present-day society but only suggests materialistic, pleasure-bent, self-destructive trends. He could have established a link with romantic literature, particularly Faust, in which the hero is pursued by a relentless death-dealing male figure with an incestuous attachment, and finally a dissolution. Another point almost made evident is the intrauterine symbolism displaced onto death and coffins. Osiris is described as literally enfolded in the mother goddess whose emblem is the coffin. Horus, his son, is depicted as rising bodily out of Osiris, suggesting a birth within a birth. A birth from the intrauterine hero also assists the woman in being perpetually pregnant. The resurrection-rebirth myth is related to initiation rites where the novice emerges, having forgotten the past, with a new name—a step which psychoanalysis has thus far overlooked.