Neyraut-Sutterman approaches the study of epilepsy through her work with an analytic patient whose central unconscious fantasy was an incestuous return to his mother's womb. This seemed to corroborate Ferenczi's view of the unconscious meaning of epileptic seizures. The author reviews recent neurological and psychoanalytic work on epilepsy, but is interested also in mythological material surrounding epilepsy. She relies heavily on a recent work by G. Dumenzil, Myth and Epic, whose interpretation of the Hercules myth suggests a kinship with other folk heroes whose "functional sins" involved transgressions against deity, against the role of warrior, and against sexual taboos. Neyraut-Sutterman attempts a psychoanalytic interpretation of this ancient myth of epilepsy. She takes note of the continuing controversies surrounding theories of epilepsy and suggests that each scientific system of thought has a need to revise and fix the place of epilepsy in that system. Epilepsy is therefore something like the umbilicus of various enigmas, especially the mind-body problem.