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PAGE 105
EXPLANATION OF HAMLET'S MYSTERY
unwittingly, by slaying the father. The persecution mainly
takes the form of attempts to destroy the hero's life just after
his birth, by orders that he is to be drowned, exposed to cold
and starvation, or otherwise done away with. A good instance
of this simple form is the Oedipus legend, in which the under-
lying motive is betrayed by the hero subsequently marrying
his mother; the same occurs in many Christian variants
of this legend, for example, in the Judas Iscariot and St.
Gregory one. The intimate relation of the hero to the mother
is also shewn in certain types of the legend (for example, the
Ferdun, Perseus and Telephos ones) by the fact that the
mother and son are together exposed to the same dangers. In
some types the hostility towards the father is the predominating
theme, in others the afection for the mother, but as a rule both
of these are more or less plainly to be traced.
The elaboration of the more complex variants of the myth
is brought about chiefly by three factors, namely: an increasing
degree of distortion engendered by greater psychological "re-
pression," complication of the main theme by other allied ones,
and expansion of the story by repetition due to the creator's
decorative fancy. In giving a description of these three processes
it is difficult sharply to separate them, but they will all be illus-
trated in the following examples.
The first disturbing factor, that of more pronounced "re-
pression," manifests itself by the same mechanisms that Freud
has described in connection with normal dreams,1 psycho-
neurotic symptoms, etc. The most interesting of these mechan-
isms in myth formation is that of "decomposition" (Auseinan-
derlegung), which is the opposite to the "condensation"
(Verdichtung) mechanism so characteristic of normal dreams.
Whereas in the latter process attributes of several individuals
are fused in the creation of one figure, much as in the produc-
tion of a composite photograph, in the former process various
attributes of a given person are disunited and several individ-
uals are invented, each endowed with one group of the original
attributes. In this way one person, of complex character, gets
replaced by several, each of whom possess a different aspect
of the character that in a simpler form of the myth was com-
bined in one being; usually the different individuals closely
resemble one another in other respects, for instance in age.
A good example of this process is seen by the figure of
the tyrannical father becoming split into two, a father and a
tyrant. The resolution of the original figure is most often in-
complete, so that the two resulting ones stand in a close relation
to each other, being indeed as a rule members of the same
1See Abraham: Traum und Mythus, 1908.
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