The Psychobiology of the Castration Reaction

(Continued from page 84)

Partial or complete self-castration is not of uncommon occurrence among the mentally disordered, yet I have not been able to find many descriptive accounts in the literature of past years, nor any dealings with the mechanism of an act of such a profound antibiologic significance. It should deserve more attention since it is the only death known to the unconscious and the only death which the ego may survive. However, regarding the act of self-mutilation the communications of Blondel (47), Eckert (48), Ingegnieros (49), Näcke (50), Schmidt-Peterson (51), and Strock (52), are worth inspecting although they do not serve to illuminate the problem of the mechanisms in force nor their relations to suicide and the “castration complex” in general.

At this point it may be well to introduce a suggestive mythological account of self-castration which seems to relate to the mechanisms in force in this particular phase of the edipus complex. The god Eshmun, who was one of the great deities of the Phoenician Pantheon, was probably primarily a deity, a god of Spring vegetation, a nature divinity and a favorite of the populace. Jayne says, “By repute Eshmun was the most beautiful of all gods and a legend runs that when the mother-goddess Astronae fell in love with him while hunting in the forest, Eshmun to escape her emasculated himself.” After his consort Astort, the chief goddess of fertility, transported him to the heavens where he became the moon deity, or god of the northern heavens. Here apparently Eshmun, the beautiful youth, castrates himself to escape the incestuous situation, and thereafter his activities became associated with a more neutral or perhaps feminine type of function, since the moon is usually identified with feminine attributes in mythology. Furthermore, although the meaning of the word Eshmun as it appears in Hebrew and Arabic is some