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 Motive of the Choosing of the Casket. Sigm. Freud.
Nakedness in Saga and Poem. Otto Rank.
Development of the Motive in Schnitzler. Hanns Sachs.
The “Omnipotence of Thought” in Arthur Schnitzler. Theodor Reik.
The Unconscious and Dreams in Hebbel. J. Sadger.
The Motive of the Choosing of the Casket.— Freud contributes a study on the deeper motive which underlies the fateful choosing of the casket in The Merchant of Venice. The symbolism of dreams justifies the interpretation of the caskets as symbols of the woman herself. Comparison with the tragedy of King Lear as well as with the story of Paris as umpire between the three goddesses as given in a modern version, of that of Cinderella and of Psyche as related by Apuleius reveals the motive as a choice between three sisters, of whom the youngest is the desirable in beauty, virtue or what not, while, however, associated with death, which is symbolized through dumbness, silence, invisibility, of which nature even the leaden casket partakes. Folk tales and dreams testify to the employment of such a symbolism. Death, Freud shows, is identical with the goddess of death who in mythology came to be regarded as the group of sisters, the Fates. In the oldest Greek mythology Moira was the one personification of inexorable fate. Near her however were the Horae who from goddesses of the heavenly waters gradually came to preside over the seasons, three in number, and to represent the unchangeable laws of time and nature, while Moira was among this number the goddess in whose hands lay the fate of mankind by a transference of the nature myth to mankind. Phantasy activity seeking to deny and escape this inexorable power of death and destruction