Response by Lilla Vezsy-Wagner

I greatly appreciate the discussants' interest in both my topic and my paper. The latter was originally 34 pages and illustrated with six instead of three cases.1 Some differences of opinion may have arisen through the abbreviation to its outlines.

For instance, I would not say, as Professor Fingarette assumes, that there is an ultimately unified psychic significance to this (or to any) tale. Psychoanalysts are used to the fact that, since dreams, symbolic actions and fantasies are overdetermined, their interpretations must also vary accordingly and always in consideration of the different levels in whose bedrock they appear. Neither do I believe in a specifically European unconscious as Dr. Markson thinks. Owing to the lack of a more widespread material (not to wolves in general, but specifically to LRRH) outside Europe, I only postulated that “problems pertaining to it seem to be more connected with problems of the European mind's unconscious.” I agree with him and with Dr. Crawford, whom he quotes, that the wolf as a symbol is protean, but I thought, in view of this topic's expanse, that I should limit myself (albeit mentioning en passant, the Roman she-wolf, the “Three Little Pigs,” the ambivalence of the wolf's popularity in folktales, etc.) to the two essential points I wanted to emphasize: (a) the significance of the wolf as a mother figure, likewise, the preoedipal (oral) elements contained in this tale, and (b) the relevance of the sadistic primal scene in the story which, certainly, some little voyeurs would enjoy. I do not think I should have extended my paper to the Fenris and other mythological wolves.

Also, the interpretation of the Orestes story in which Professor Fingarette is interested would not possibly have come within the pale of this paper, whether seen through Aeschylus' eyes or based on the original myth. Here I would remark only that although I do not know of any myth dealing with LRRH, myths and folktales frequently overlap, with folktales of