Europe's inner demons

The theme of cannibalistic infanticide, for instance, is not confined to these accusations — it is met with also in the myth and folklore of Europe.⁽²⁾ It was known already in ancient Greece. Thus the Titan Cronus (whom the Romans identified with the god Saturn), being warned that he would be deposed by one of his own children, tried to swallow them all. But his wife Rhea saved the youngest, Zeus, who in due course forced his father to disgorge the other children and finally, after a mighty struggle, overthrew him. One of Zeus’s sons, Tantalus, cooked his son Pelops as a meal for the gods — but the gods, displeased, brought Pelops back to life and cast Tantalus into the lower world for punishment. The Germanic folk-tales collected by the Brothers Grimm include a number of variations on the same theme. In the original version of Snow White the wicked queen eats what she believes to be the lungs and liver of the small girl whose death she has ordered — though in reality the lungs and liver are those of a young boar. Snow White, of course, survives, and at her wedding watches the wicked queen dance in red-hot slippers until she is grilled alive. In the story of Hansel and Gretel the two children, sent from home, wander through the forest until they are captured by a repulsive hag who kills and eats children. Hansel is fattened for the purpose, but when the day comes Gretel pushes the hag into her own oven and leaves her to burn to ashes.

⁽³⁾ In a Magyar variant three girls, driven from home, come to the castle of a cannibal giant and giantess. When they are about to be roasted and eaten, the youngest girl pushes the giant into the oven; after which his wife is knocked on the head and the girls take possession of the castle.

Now all these tales are inspired by the same preoccupation. Cronus and Tantalus are fathers intent on destroying their offspring. The wicked queen, the hag, the giant and giantess too are adults who try to destroy children, but in the end are destroyed by them. The common theme is generational conflict, between those who at present hold power and those who are destined to inherit it. And the means by which the adults try to retain power is, precisely, cannibalistic infanticide.

This surely throws a new light on our problem. We have already seen that cannibalistic infanticide belongs both to the traditional stereotype of the heretical sect and to the traditional stereotype of the witch, and that for that very reason it was relatively easy, given the appropriate circumstances, to combine the two notions. We can probe deeper now. It seems plain that both stereotypes draw on one and the same archaic fantasy. Psycho-analysts would maintain that the unconscious roots of this fantasy lie in infancy or early childhood. Psycho-analysts of the Kleinian school would argue, more specifically, that infants in the first two years of life experience cannibalistic impulses which they project on to their parents; and that the source of the fantasy lies there. Other psycho-analysts would advance different interpretations. It has been argued that many parents really do harbour unconscious cannibalistic impulses towards their children, and that the children are subliminally aware of the fact.⁽⁴⁾ It has also been argued that children themselves can harbour unconscious cannibalistic impulses towards a younger sibling — the baby brother or sister whom they see as an interloper or potential rival; and that in later life this intolerable, repressed desire, projected, can breed monstrous fantasies.

⁽⁵⁾ Psycho-analysis, though a most fruitful aid in interpreting the world of fantasy, is anything but an exact science; and such matters are best left to professionals to debate. I shall limit myself to a more general hypothesis, which I regard as eminently plausible. It is, that the theme of cannibalistic infanticide, which has bulked so large in this book, owes part of its appeal to wishes and anxieties experienced in infancy or early childhood, but deeply repressed and, in their original form, wholly unconscious.^*

It is, fortunately, a simpler matter to interpret the theme of the erotic orgy. No great psychological sophistication is required to see that the monotonous, rigidly stereotyped tales of totally, indiscriminately promiscuous orgies do not refer to real happenings but reflect repressed desires or, if one prefers, feared temptations. And if, in pre-Freudian times, the inclusion of incest between mother and son, father and daughter, might have seemed to militate against such an interpretation, it will hardly do so now. When a real or imaginary outgroup is accused of holding orgies of this kind, it is certainly the recipient of unconscious projections.