To explain how man acquired the power of fire, Freud appeals to which of the following:
(1) The story of Prometheus, the Titan, who stole the fire of the gods and gave it to humankind, hidden in a phallic-shaped hollow rod. For this crime he was punished most vilely: each day a vulture feasted on his liver, which in ancient times was regarded as the seat of all passion and desires.
(2) The organ that Heine describes in these lines: "Was dem Menscen dient zum Seichen / Damit schafft er Seinesgleichen." ["With that which serves a man to piss / He reproduces his own kind."] The child thinks he can do both things at once. But the adult knows that "the two acts are as incompatible as fire and water."
(3) The fact that the penis is sometimes in a fiery state of excitation that justifies calling it a cock in English (or a vogel, or bird, in German). In such a state, urination is impossible
(4) The example of fictional characters such as Gargantua and Pantagruel in Rabelais and Gulliver in Swift [see illustration] who put out fires by pissing on them, dramatizing that such an action is natural and must be renounced by mankind if we are going to achieve civilization and its attendant discontents.
(5) Hercules can achieve his triumph over the hydra-headed water-snake of Lerna only when he uses fire to burn out the snake's one immortal head -- which seems counter to the thrust of our argument until we "reverse the manifest content."
(6) All of the above. -- DL
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