It is already more than a century that the tale of Pinocchio has been
charming children and adults alike. This touching tale has already passed the
exams of time. But why do we find it so touching? What is it telling us between
the lines, which penetrates us, without even passing through the threshold of
conscience? A child is born. However, he is not a child but a puppet. And he is
not born by a Mom, like every child, but from a bulk of wood. Where is his
mother? How can a child be born without a mother? When he makes his first
appearance, he is already a big child, at school age and beyond. All the most
important stages of childhood evolution are skipped. Pinocchio has never felt
maternal warmth, he has never been kissed, patted, or coaxed by a mommy, and he
was only a piece of wood in need of maternal love. The first thing that he does
is behaving badly and telling lies. A child who receives the affection that he needs does not tell lies. Lies are
told when reality is unacceptable; they are a fantasized substitute for it. The
unacceptable reality to Pinocchio was that he had no mother. However, is it
true? Is it the true story, or the tale conceals behind a screen a reality,
which has been covered by the veil of repression. As, in Biblical myth, the
screen opens on a Father-god, who bends on the earth to create the first Man out
of it, in the same way the story of Pinocchio begins with a father bending on a
bulk of wood, to create his son. As soon as Pinocchio begins moving and telling
lies, his nose grows. We know from psychoanalytical research that the nose is a
male phallic substitute.1 If Pinocchio's nose grows, it means that he has an erection.
Byzantine emperors, when they wanted to prevent from a relative or a competitor
the possibility of ascending to the throne, they cut his nose, meaning they
castrated him. In this way, they definitely excluded him from being a potential
competitor. What a strange story! A newborn child, who is not a child but a puppet, born
from a bulk of wood by the hand of a carpenter-father, and who immediately has a
lot of erections. And he is not behaving himself. Therefore, he has to be
continuously admonished and punished. Where do we find in real life new born
children, without a mother, made (i. e. born) from a father, already at puberty
age, which have erections and are admonished and punished? Only in one place: in
the camp of the young novices in the midst of the forest. Reik has studied the
puberty rites of the savages, and he says: Perhaps the most important prohibition they have to observe during this
period is that which forbids association with women. The circumcised youths
among the Amaxosa remain in their huts in isolation. If they leave the huts
for a short time, they have to cover their faces in case they should see girls
and women, and in particular, they must not see their own mothers.2 In the story of Pinocchio, the mother is indeed absent. He can only fantasize
her in the image of the Blue Hair Fairy, who appears and disappears into the
fine air, like in a dream. During those rites, mothers and sisters are told by
the men of the tribe that the monster has eaten their sons and brothers. As
Sarah died of grief while Isaac was passing his own puberty rite on the
mountain, so the mother of Pinocchio, who in the tale condenses with that of the
sister, dies of grief for the death of her son-brother. Seized with a sad presentiment he began to run with all the strength he had
left, and in a few minutes he reached the field where the little white house
had once stood. But the little white house was no longer there. He saw instead
a marble stone, on which were engraved these sad words: Here lies I leave you to imagine the puppet's feelings when he had with difficulty
spelt out this epitaph. He fell with his face on the ground and, covering the
tombstone with a thousand kisses, burst into an agony of tears. He cried all
night, and when morning came he was still crying although he had no tears
left, and his sobs and lamentations were so acute and heart-breaking that they
roused the echoes in the surrounding hills. And as he wept he said: "Oh,
little Fairy, why did you die?" (Chap. XXIII).3 The tale of Pinocchio is not the only one that speaks of an initiation saga
where the sister dies, instead, or in condensation with the mother. Also, in
"The Twelve Brothers", by the Grimm Brothers, it is the sister who remains dumb
(= dead) for seven years in order to let her brothers to resuscitate. In "The
Six Swans", it is the sister who intervenes to allow her brothers to be born
again. Once he has mourned the mother-sister, Pinocchio must return to his trials in
the company of his father and brothers. Pinocchio is still mourning the death of
the Blue Hair Fairy and just then a large pigeon flew over his head, and
stopping with distended wings called down to him from a great height: "... do
you happen to know a puppet who is called Pinocchio?" -- "I am Pinocchio!". The
Pigeon at this answer descended rapidly to the ground. Then the puppet asks him
about his father, and the Pigeon: "I left him three days ago on the sea-shore". "What was he doing?"
"He was building a little boat for himself, to cross the ocean"". Just like
another Hero associated to another initiation rite, Noah. Noah himself is indeed
associated with the Pigeon, which he delivered into the sea to discover whether
God, the Father, had already pardoned his children. Pinocchio throws himself
into the waves (XXIII). He throws himself into the waves of the sea, meaning, he
is preparing to die and resurrect, this time from the father instead than from
the mother. The Pigeon itself, as every bird, is the symbol of the genital, and
as such, it appears also in other tales containing mnemonic traces of archaic
puberty rites, as "The Ugly Duck" and "The Seven Crows". Reik describes the admonitions and the threats of the fathers to the young
novices: "If we hear that you go after women and girls we shall cast you into
the fire".4 And Collodi: As soon as the play was over the showman went into the kitchen where a fine
sheep, preparing for his supper, was turning slowly on the spit in front of
the fire. As there was not enough wood to finish roasting and browning it, he
called Harlequin and Punchinello, and said to them: "Bring that puppet here:
you will find him hanging on a nail. It seems to me that he is made of very
dry wood, and I am sure that if he was thrown on the fire he would make a
beautiful blaze for the roast". At first Harlequin and Punchinello hesitated;
but appalled by a severe glance from their master, they obeyed. In a short
time they returned to the kitchen carrying poor Pinocchio, who was wriggling
like an eel taken out of water, and screaming desperately: "Papa! papa! Save
me! I will not die, I will not die!" (X). Harlequin and Punchinello represent, together with Pinocchio, the small group
of novices who in the course of the initiation rite become blood-brothers.
Indeed, in the next chapter the showman -- Fire-eater (Mangiafuoco) -- sneezes
and pardons Pinocchio, who consequently defends his friend Harlequin from a
similar death by fire (XI). During the rite, a group solidarity is created on
the grounds of the terrifying common experiences. The youngsters initiated
together will be one body for the rest of their lives.5 Reik continues: The most important result of the instruction received in the bush is the
changed attitude of the youths towards the men of the tribe. A young Karesau
islander is told that he must no longer quarrel with men; and if his father
reproves him, he is not to make opposition... In the Luritcha tribe the tatata
(circumcised youth) is told impressively: "You are to be obedient as we are
obedient. You are to conduct yourself as we do. We are very prone to anger;
when a circumcised youth does not obey, then we kill him. If you wish to live,
conduct yourself well, lest you be cast into the fire".6 And Collodi: "Really", said the puppet to himself as he resumed his journey, "how
unfortunate we poor boys are. Everybody scolds us, everybody admonishes us,
everybody gives us good advice. To let them talk, they would all take it into
their heads to be our fathers and our masters -- all: even the Talking --
cricket. See now; because don't choose to listen to that tiresome Cricket, who
knows, according to him, how many misfortunes are to happen to me! I am even
to meet with assassins!" (XIV). Pinocchio, because he would not heed the good counsels of the
Talking-Cricket, falls indeed amongst assassins, who without loss of time they
tied his arms behind him, passed a running noose round his throat, and then hung
him to the branch of a tree called the Big Oak (XV). Puberty rites are performed in savage tribes in all the continents, from the
Americas to Africa and Australia and, although they differ in the details, such
as for the age of the novices and the extension of their duration, they all
contain the same common elements: 1) The youths are kidnapped by the fathers and
taken from their mothers and sisters. 2) They are taken into a place like a
cavern or a huge hut which symbolizes the womb, but which is called the "belly
of the monster" (Balum for the Australians), where they remain for long
periods of time. The adults tell to the women that the monster has devoured the
youngsters. 3) They are circumcised or they are inflicted an equivalent
mutilation, such as the extraction of a tooth. At the same time, they are
threatened by death, admonished, and mistreated. 4) The monster eventually
agrees to give them back to the women, in exchange to a certain amount of pigs
(in the Biblical story a ram was sacrificed to the "Balum", instead of a pig, to
let Isaac go). The novices return to their village, and they pretend to be new
born. They pretend not to remember anything, and they have to learn again even
how to eat and walk. The circumcision, tooth' extraction or another mutilation, in Pinocchio is
represented by the burning of his feet. The puppet is unable to walk and
Geppetto must make his feet again (VII), and in its repetition in the "thousand
large birds called Woodpeckers flew in at the window. They immediately perched
on Pinocchio's nose, and began to peck at it with such zeal that in a few
minutes his enormous and ridiculous nose was reduced to its usual dimensions"
(XVIII). Fire-eater (Mangiafuoco) is the monster Balum, his name
condenses the eating of Balum with the threat of the adults to cast the youths
into the fire. When he sneezes (= he throws up) it is a sign that he is giving
up a child and demanding another: The showman Fire-eater -- for that was his name -- looked, I must say, a
terrible man, especially with his black beard that covered his chest and legs
like an apron. On the whole, however, he had not a bad heart. In proof of
this, when he saw poor Pinocchio brought before him, struggling and screaming,
"I will not die, I will not die!" he was quite moved and felt very sorry for
him. He tried to hold out, but after a little he could stand it no longer and
he sneezed violently. When he heard the sneeze, Harlequin, who up to that
moment had been in the deepest affliction, and bowed down like a weeping
willow, became quite cheerful, and leaning towards Pinocchio he whispered to
him softly: "Good news, brother. The showman has sneezed, and that is a sign
that he pities you, and consequently you are saved. "For you must know that
whilst most men, when they feel compassion for somebody, either weep or at
least pretend to dry their eyes, Fire-eater, on the contrary, whenever he was
really overcome, had the habit of sneezing (XI). However, he immediately demands Harlequin in place of Pinocchio, whom the
former had called "brother": "Take Harlequin, bind him securely, and then throw
him on the fire to burn. I am determined that my mutton shall be well roasted".
The blood kinship among the novices comes in the following lines: "For him there can be no pardon. As I have spared you he must be put on the
fire, for I am determined that my mutton shall be well roasted". "In that
case", cried Pinocchio, proudly, rising and throwing away his cap of bread
crumb, "in that case I know my duty. Come on, gendarmes! Bind me and throw me
amongst the flames. No, it is not just that poor Harlequin, my true friend,
should die for me!" (XI). At that point, all are very moved and the puppets are spared. We should not
be surprised that Pinocchio was continuously admonished, punished and
threatened, and that every time he was contrived only to fall again into new
lies and new erections. The latter were indeed the true reason for the admonitions and the threats.
However there is a valve. Reik explains: "The young people on whom are impressed
the laws of the tribe which they have henceforth to observe, are given the
opportunity to "have their fling" once more. In Australia the boys throw mud at
everyone they meet".7 And Collodi: "At the news of the pardon the puppets all ran to
the stage, and having lighted the lamps and chandeliers as if for a full-dress
performance, they began to leap and to dance merrily. At dawn they were still
dancing" (XI). Reik: Among the Janude in the Cameroons the youths who are to be initiated
destroy everything that falls into their hands; and in Darfur they steal
fowls. The boys, who are often conducted by their teachers, make attacks by
night on the villagers of their tribe and plunder them. The circumcised youths
ravenously attack the paternal kraals, steal cattle, and misuse anyone who
opposes them.8 In the Pinocchio's story, like in dreams, there are a displacement and an
inversion: the polecats are the ones that steal the fowls and the cattle, and it
is Pinocchio the one captured by the farmer: His astonishment was great when, having brought out his lantern from under
his coat, he perceived that instead of a polecat a boy had been taken. "Ah,
little thief!" said the angry peasant, "then it is you who carry off my
chickens?" "No, it is not I; indeed it is not!" cried Pinocchio, sobbing. "I
only came into the field to take two bunches of grapes!" "He who steals grapes
is quite capable of stealing chickens. Leave it to me, I will give you a
lesson that you will not forget in a hurry. "Opening the trap, he seized the
puppet by the collar, and carried him to his house as if he had been a young
lamb... "You shall be my watch-dog. "And taking a great collar covered with
brass knobs, he strapped it tightly round his throat that he might not be able
to draw his head out of it. A heavy chain attached to the collar was fastened
to the wall (XXI). The puberty rites, which in our prehistory were universal and left mnemonic
traces which emerge in tales and myths, were performed as in the tale of
Pinocchio. The fathers, who kidnapped the youths from the mothers, told them
that the monster had demanded them in sacrifice. They were taken into the woods
and staid there for long periods of time. They had to forget their mothers and
sisters. They were taught the law of the clan through tortures and threats, to
compel them to repress their incestuous and rebellious drives, and they were
born again from the fathers, as in the Biblical myth and in the tale, where the
maternal figure is repressed, and it is the Father who creates Man: Jahveh the
potter and Geppetto the carpenter. Pinocchio's nose will stop growing only when, at the end of his puberty rite,
he will successfully repress his incestuous drives. Only then, he will become a
true child, meaning, a young man who overcame the rite. How much Pinocchio had
wanted, during the long months segregated with other youths in the woods, to
become a true child! And beyond all, he missed his mother, and the more he
missed her, the more he did not behave properly, he told lies and his nose "was
growing". He still was a child and he was already compelled to become an adult,
to forget his mother and to obey his carpenter father. All the elements of the
rite are there in the tale. The detachment from the mother, the school books
that Pinocchio sells for his entertainments, meaning the paternal teaching that
he is trying to resist, the threats of death and the tortures, the solidarity
among the terrorized novices, circumcision, the death and re-birth is repeated
because "the unconscious behaves like the ancient languages. Both express the
importance and significance of a process by means of repetition".9 In the tales there are also elements, which belong to the myths of the
peoples, after the rite itself had become obsolete. The traces remained in the
deeds of the Heroes. The confrontation between Pinocchio and the Serpent, the female phallic
monster that the archaic heroes had to overcome and exorcise, like Moses,
Orpheus, Perseus, Apollo of Ovidius, St. George, and Tamino of the Magic
Flute: "Excuse me, Sir Serpent, but would you be so good as to move a little to
one side just enough to allow me to pass?" He might as well have spoken to the
wall. Nobody moved. He began again in the same soft voice: "You must know, Sir
Serpent, that I am on my way home, where my father is waiting for me, and it
is such a long time since I saw him last! ... Will you therefore allow me to
continue my road?" He waited for a sign in answer to this request, but there
was none: in fact, the Serpent, who up to that moment had been sprightly and
full of life, became motionless and almost rigid. He shut his eyes and his
tail ceased smoking. "Can he really be dead?" said Pinocchio, rubbing his
hands with delight; and he determined to jump over him and reach the other
side of the road. But just as he was going to leap the Serpent raised himself
suddenly on end, like a spring set in motion; and the puppet, drawing back in
his terror caught his feet and fell to the ground. And he fell so awkwardly
that his head stuck in the mud and his legs went into the air
(XX). The same Mud of Mother Earth, from which had emerged the big Snake fought by
Apollo, the initiation god (Ovidius, Mtm., I:435-445). The journey
seems to be endless. Pinocchio arrives at the island of the "Industrious Bees"
and he finds the Fairy again (XXIV), as Ulysses had found again the woman in
Circes, Nausica and Calypso reaching their islands, only to lose them again. Great fight between
Pinocchio and his companions one of them is wounded, and Pinocchio is arrested
by the gendarmes (XXVII), as it happens in the heroic deeds of the archaic
heroes. The climax of the story is the re-birth, and the identification with the
fathers-torturers. With Reik's words: We recognize in all these rites the strong tendency to detach the youths
from their mothers, to chain them more firmly to the community of men, and to
seal more closely the union between father and son which has been loosened by
the youth's unconscious striving towards incest10. Pinocchio, having been thrown into the sea, whilst he is swimming away to
save his life he is swallowed by the terrible Dog-Fish (XXXIV), repetition of
Mangiafuoco-Balum: Pinocchio... began to grope his way in the dark through the body of the
Dog-fish, taking a step at a time in the direction of the light that he saw
shining dimly at a great distance. The farther he advanced the brighter became
the light; and he walked and walked until at last he reached it: and when he
reached it... what did he find? I will give you a thousand guesses. He found a
little table spread out, and on it a lighted candle stuck into a green glass
bottle, and seated at the table was a little old man... At this sight
Pinocchio was filled with such great and unexpected joy that he became almost
delirious. He wanted to laugh, he wanted to cry, he wanted to say a thousand
things, and instead he could only stammer out a few confused and broken words.
At last he succeeded in uttering a cry of joy, and opening his arms he threw
them round the little old man's neck, and began to shout: "Oh, my dear papa! I
have found you at last! I will never leave you more, never more, never more!"
"Then my eyes tell me true?" said the little old rubbing his eyes; "then you
are really my dear Pinocchio?" (XXXV). With the words of Reik, the completion of the rite is crowned by the "union
between father and son which has been loosened by the youth's unconscious
striving towards incest". The representation of Pinocchio "taking a step at a
time in the direction of the light that he saw shining dimly at a great
distance. The farther he advanced the brighter became the light; and he walked
and walked until at last he reached it", and the one of father and son, deep in
belly of the Dog-Fish, with a candle on the table, is parallel to Plato's image
of the cavern (Rep., VII), that I have interpreted as a symbol of
the maternal womb and of birth.11 Then Pinocchio tells to Geppetto all the misfortunes that had happened to him
during his long initiation journey, as if his father had not already known them,
and Geppetto, after having summed up to his son his own misadventures, says: "But I have arrived at the end of my resources: there is nothing left in
the larder, and this candle that you see burning is the last that remains..."
"And after that?" "After that, dear boy, we shall both remain in the dark."
"Then, dear little papa, " said Pinocchio, "there is no time to lose. We must
think of escaping..." "Of escaping? ... and how?" "We must escape through the
mouth of the Dog-fish, throw ourselves into the sea and swim away." "You talk
well: but, dear Pinocchio, I don't know how to swim." "What does that matter?
... I am a good swimmer, and you can get on my shoulders and I will carry you
safely to shore" (XXXV). As Eneas had saved his father Anchises, carrying him on his shoulders, in his
own initiation rite,12 so Pinocchio takes on his shoulders his father, becoming,
through the completion of the rite, his father's father, and together they are
vomited from the belly of the Dog-fish, the Balum of the Australian
tribes. After a long swim (the heroic deed of the archaic hero = the struggle to
be born again), son and father emerge from the waters, meaning, they are born
again together, as a repetition of the peristaltic expulsion from the belly of
the monster, in order to return together to their village, from where the
fathers had previously kidnapped their own sons. The puberty rites, which in the prehistory of mankind were universal, are not
being performed in our society since thousands of years. However, the psychic
tension, which engendered the need, is still there, and it has found its
expression in the tale of Pinocchio. The authenticity, and therefore the beauty
of this tale, comes from the description of unconscious events, concealed behind
the screen of a fantastic story told by the mouth of a child who is telling us
of the drama of the tensions of the latency and pubertal stages of evolution. We
found the reason why the tale of Pinocchio continues touching us. Because it is
the eternal story of the conflict and the reconciliation between fathers and
sons, and as such, it is a true story. We have seen how the archaic puberty rites, performed during our prehistory
for tens of thousands of years, found their way from the repression into the
tale of Pinocchio, through the vehicle of the philogenetic inheritance. We can't
imagine any other way those rites could reach a 19th century writer, who did not
know anything about the puberty rites which are still performed even today by
savage tribes in America, Asia, Africa and Australia, and that had been
investigated and described by Frazer, Atkinson, Robertson Smith and decoded by
Theodor Reik. The tale helps us also in focusing on another aspect of those rites. When the
youths were kidnapped by the fathers, separated from their mothers and sisters,
compelled to live isolated and in small groups, under the constant threat of
castration by their fathers, the situation triggered also a reactivating of the
psychological contents peculiar to the primeval horde, described by Freud. At
this point, we have also the correlation between the Prodigal Son, the youngest
son, who returns home delegated by the rest of the horde to kill the Father13 (like in the primeval horde), and eventually acts out a
reconciliation instead than a murder (like in the puberty rites). Those rites
had, in this way, the purpose of staging again the primary event but, at the
same time, of acting out its undoing through the different outcome:
reconciliation instead of a murder. There is also a correlation between the Prodigal Son, who had devoured his
living (the paternal patrimony = sperm) with harlots (Luke, 15:30),
while in exile (like the exile of the primeval horde) and what Freud said,
quoting Atkinson: "The patriarch had only one enemy whom he should dread... a
youthful band of brothers living together in forced celibacy, or at most in
polyandrous relation with some single female captive".14 Abraham found the association between patrimony and virility
(sperm), telling us of one of his patients who had dreamed that her father had
lost his patrimony and a leg, and that Abraham had interpreted as a wish of
castration directed towards her father.15 In my opinion, patrimony stands for sperm, while leg stands for
penis. It is almost a repetition of the same concept, but not quite. We are used
to associate money (patrimony) with "liquidity", and of a person who has ready
money we say that he has liquidity. "Liquidity" is associated also to urine and
enuresis. However, there is no contradiction, since the association between
liquidity-sperm and urine is confirmed in Abraham's essay dealing with premature
ejaculation, where he states that premature ejaculation and urinating are
psychically equivalent.16 The leg, on the other hand, associates to a hard and rigid object and
therefore is fit to represent the penis itself. Pinocchio loses his legs and
Geppetto make them again. The legs-penis are pars pro toto (a
part for the whole), as children identify with their penis as if it were not a
part of them but their whole body. The legs-penis are burned-castrated, namely
Pinocchio is dead. It is the father-carpenter who makes them again and therefore
he makes again Pinocchio himself. The story tells us of children perception of
owning their life-penis to the Father. That perception of a Father, to whom we
owe our life, is also the nucleus of every monotheistic religion. Penis, life, sperm, and genital potency are therefore the absolute feud of
the father, something that belongs only to him, and that children crave
capturing and possessing. In this context, we have some enlightening Biblical
associations. According to Reik, the Tree of Knowledge (Etz HaD'at) represents God
Himself.17 The primeval sin was therefore an act of cannibalism directed
towards the body of god-Father. However, "Knowledge" in Hebrew is genital, as is
written: "Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain"
(Gn., 4:1), "Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch"
(Gn., 4:17), "Bring them out to us, that we may know them"
(Gn., 19:5), "Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man"
(Gn., 19:8). Therefore, when Man ate the Tree of Knowledge, he ate
the paternal genital, with the aim of introjecting and incorporating the sexual
paternal potency that the brothers of the horde so craved and envied to their
Father. The tale of Pinocchio tells of a "a shrub [a tree] already pushing through
the ground, with its branches quite loaded with money" (XVIII), which would
eventually grow, if only the act of sacrilege had succeeded: "And if instead of
a thousand gold pieces, I was to find on the branches of the tree two thousand?"
(XIX). The Biblical Tree of Knowledge (God's genital) emerges in the tale
through the fantasy-wish of Pinocchio, after which, as in the Biblical myth, he
repents in the utmost desperation. Like the Prodigal Son, also Pinocchio "devours his living", his father's
pieces of gold, namely, his father's potency which belongs only to him. The child, who experiences the first ejaculations, feels guilty because he
perceives his first potency as an act of defiance towards his father, and hence
fore his new-old terrors of castration. In the son's fantasy, the father will
not leave this act of hybris unpunished. It is not casual that Ulysses, after
having deflowered the city of Troy, through the penetration of her walls by the
horse he had planed himself, an obvious symbol of the penis, and the ejection
from it of the Greeks heroes, symbol of the ejaculation of sperm, he was cursed
by Poseidon, the god defender of Troy virginity (Cfr., in Gn.,
49:3-4, the curse of Jacob to Reuben, his son, after he had sexual intercourse
with his father's concubine). However, losing his father's gold coins, condenses also an act of undoing of
his own arrogance, under the weight of the sense of guilt and the terror of
paternal retaliation. Every conflictual behavior, in which drives and
counter-drives alternate, is the result of opposing internal forces pulling each
one in a different direction, and hence the condensation. Therefore, burying the
gold coins which belong to the father, in the same very action in which he gets
rid of them in order to dispose of his sense of guilt (the gold coins are the
product of the sinful appropriation), he also acts out his death wishes towards
his father. After all, only the dead are buried into the ground. The outcome is
a condensation between different drives and the sense of guilt: doing and
undoing in the same acting out, as in neurotic symptoms. Pinocchio, like the Prodigal Son, loses (the Gospel says "devours") his
father's pieces of gold, and under the influence of the advice of two odd
friends: the Cat and the Fox. Let us see how it happens: Whilst they were thus talking, Pinocchio observed that the Cat was lame of
her right leg, for in fact she had lost her paw with all its claws. He
therefore asked her: "What have you done with your paw?". The Cat tried to
answer but became confused. Therefore, the Fox said immediately: "My friend is
too modest, and that is why she doesn't speak. I will answer for her. I must
tell you that an hour ago we met an old wolf on the road, almost fainting from
want of food, who asked alms of us. Not having so much as a fishbone to give
him, what did my friend, who has really the heart of a Caesar, do? She bit off
one of her fore paws, and threw it to that poor beast that he might appease
his hunger." And the Fox, in relating this, cried a tear. Pinocchio was also
touched, and approaching the Cat he whispered into her ear: "If all cats
resembled you, how fortunate the mice would be!" (XVIII). The paw represents the penis. "The front right leg" is a repetition of the
phallic concept, as the Christ who sits Dextera Patris (at the
right of the father), as Jones writes to Freud on the 18 December 1909: "...
also in Egyptian phallic worship that the right penis was the Father, the right
testicle Horus (Christ) and the left Isis (Maria)".18 The same concept of right = potency, virility, is expressed in
the Bible: "The right hand of the Lord is exalted; the right hand of the Lord
does valiantly" (Psalms, 118:16), namely, the right hand of the
Lord is his penis. Mutius Scevola, the Roman hero, self-castrated putting on
fire his right hand, not because, as the legend rationalizes, it had failed in
its task of killing the king of the Etrusks, but because it had risen, namely,
he had an erection against Porsenna who, as every king, symbolizes the Father.
It is the phallic act of defiance, which deserved the punishment. The failure
and the self castration were the consequence of the hybris-erection. Therefore, according to the Fox's lie, the Cat had given up his paw (he
self-castrated) and had given it to the old wolf, which, like in the tales of
Red Riding Hood, The Seven Kids, and The Three Little Pigs, represents the imago
of the Father. Making of it a masochist act of filial consideration towards the father, the
Cat solves, through an inversion, his drive of castrating his father biting him
and the subsequent dread of retaliation. Through that device, the Cat keeps his
own narcissism: "It is not he who retaliated and bate my leg, it is I who gave
it to him". Collodi had told us how the real events had taken place, and what the primary
scene had been: Then the shorter assassin drew out an ugly knife and tried to force it
between his lips like a lever or chisel. But Pinocchio, as quick as lightning,
caught his hand with his teeth, and with one bite bit it clean off and spat it
out. Imagine his astonishment when instead of a hand he perceived that he had
spat a cat's paw on the ground (XIV). However, there is another more significant level to the story, which links to
the Prodigal Son, who had devoured the paternal patrimony with harlots,
and to the one of the primal horde, "a youthful band of brothers living together
in forced celibacy, or at most in polyandrous relation with some single female
captive", as quoted from Atkinson. Freud and Abraham told us what is the
interpretation children make when they discover that females do not possess a
penis like their own: they are convinced that the female genital is a wound,
inflicted on her by the male during sexual intercourse. Heterosexual intercourse
is interpreted as a violent act through which the female loses her penis, she is
castrated, and that is the precondition for her femininity.19 In this context, therefore, the Cat lost his penis as a
consequence of a rape after which he becomes a female. If we circumvent the
inversion in the tale, according to which it had been the Cat who had "given"
his penis to the father-wolf, we return to the primal scene fantasized by the
child in which the female becomes such as a consequence of castration inflicted
on her by the father. There are men who can be potent only with prostitutes or
mutilated women, because in this way the inhibition to approach the female,
which engenders in the scaring fantasy of the phallic woman, in a "castrated
female" is removed. Having been castrated she has no more the fantasized penis,
which had functioned, until then, as an apotropaic mean against the male genital
drive. The Cat, who "gives" to the poor old wolf his penis in an act of
self-castration, becomes, in the process, a female, and its wound becomes a
vagina through which heterosexual intercourse may be consummated. The Egyptian goddess Basti, the cat-headed goddess worshipped at Bubasti, is
identified by Herodotos with Artemis (Hist., II/59), the virgin
goddess who in Asia Minor was considered Great Mother, and as such was
represented covered with many breasts (polymastos). Like Atena,
the other virgin goddess and Mother and who held in her hand a spare as an
apotropaic mean against genital penetration, Artemis held a bow and arrows for
the same purpose. The virginity of the goddess should not induce us into error:
she was Great Mother. The concept of virginity of the mother is only the other
pole of the one as harlot. The other pole of the same concept, and not
antithetic to it, as the child conceives the double image of the mother as
virgin and as harlot in the same condensation. See Mary, the Virgin, and Mary
Magdalene, the harlot, the same imago split into two images,
apparently antithetic, but completing each other. See also the Israelite horde
putting the siege on Jericho, behind whose walls there she is Rachab, the Harlot
(Jos., 2), and the Achaean horde encircling the walls of Troy,
behind which there she is, Helen the Queen. The same figure split into two
different imagines, one idealized and the other despised. There is also another tale, by the same Collodi, where the Cat is represented
as a feminine imago, "The Cat with the Boots", in which every
illustration represents to us a cat with two big mustaches, displacement of the
feminine pubic hair into the face, as had already happened with Medusa and her
pubic hair (the snakes) displaced into the head. Indeed children do use drawing
beard or mustaches on feminine images. The cat is wearing big boots, a vaginal
symbol, as every big shoe in which the leg penetrates. The image of the cat with
big mustache and boots brings us to the pornographic scenes in which the girl
often wears boots, while she is wearing very little beyond them, as symbol of
female castration. With the words of Baudrillard dealing with the
stripteaseuse: She wears gloves which cut her arms, stocks green red or black [or boots]
which cut her at the height of the thigh... the body that the woman encircles
with a sophisticated manipulation, an intense narcissistic discipline, without
any weakness, makes of her and of her sacred body a living penis, which
represents the real castration of the woman. Being castrated means being
covered with phallic substitutes.20 The association woman = castration emerges from Baudrillard's words too. The
Cat was not only lame but also blind, repetition of castration (see Oedipus who
blinds himself), and the Fox was lame as the Cat: But he had not gone far when he met on the road a Fox lame of one foot, and
a Cat blind of both eyes, which were going along helping each other like good
companions in misfortune. The Fox, who was lame, walked leaning on the Cat,
and the Cat, who was blind, was guided by the Fox.... "Look at me!" said the
Fox. "Through my foolish passion for study I have lost a leg." "Look at me!"
said the Cat. "Through my foolish passion for study I have lost the sight of
both my eyes" (XII). Let us see what Abraham says of one-eyed, short-sighted, and lame women: One of the patient's most pleasurable phantasies was the idea of taking
away her glasses from a short-sighted girl, or, better still, a one eyed girl,
or depriving a young woman of her artificial leg, thereby making her helpless.
His associations made it more and more evident that these ideas concerned
displaced castration phantasies. Particularly important in this connection was
the dream described above about a girl he knew by sight that could only see
with one eye. His idea in the dream was that her missing eye had been knocked
out by her father. From here his associations led to his own fear of losing an
eye. This anxiety arose from two sources, namely, the idea of punishment for
forbidden looking, and the displacement of castration anxiety from the
genitals to the eye. This displacement is quite analogous to the one mentioned
above from the female genitals to the eye. Both ideas clearly bear the
significance of a talion. I have the satisfaction of knowing that my
conclusions in this respect agree with Freud's views, and also with those of
other analysts.21 The Cat and the Fox, as we have seen, are the repetition of the castrated
woman, and at the same time, they are two astute crooks cheating Pinocchio. In
this scene emerges the mistrust towards the woman, felt by the child when he
discovers that she has not a penis like his own. Before reaching the to him
unavoidable conclusion that she has been castrated by the father, he suspects
that she indeed has a penis, but she conceals it somewhere in her body. With
Abraham's words: "the idea that the female has concealed within her a very large penis into which the smaller organ of the man must penetrate".22 There are also other associations which drive us to the conclusion that the
Cat and the Fox of the tale of Pinocchio represent the mnemonic trace of the
single females that "a youthful band of brothers living together in forced
celibacy", mentioned by Atkinson speaking of the primeval horde, had to share
among themselves, the same harlots which emerge also in the parable of the
Prodigal Son. Of the snake is written: "Now the serpent was more subtle than any other wild
creature that the Lord God had made" (Gn., 3:1). The same cunning
of the Fox. In my work I have reached the conclusion that the serpent is not, as stated
by Abraham and Reik, the symbol of the penis, but it is the symbol of the
phallic aspect of the woman, namely, her clitoris.23 One of the reasons which drove me to this conclusion is that
through all my research in myths, tales and legends I have never found a serpent
in direct association with males, gods or heroes, but only with women. Gods and
Heroes, when they deal with serpents, they only touch them through a rod
(Moses-Aescalepius), which is indeed the male phallic symbol. Therefore we have the association: Fox = cunning = serpent = clitoris. Furthermore, animals with a soft fur associate with the pubic hair of the
female genital. It is not casual that women wear furs of foxes, beavers and
minks, as a hint to the unconscious image of their own pubic hair. Where are the harlots of the puberty rites of savages? Reik says: Another characteristic of the puberty rites, which has hitherto been
obscure, is now clear, namely, the sexual licence that takes place in many
tribes after the period of the rites. It seems to run counter to the avoidance
of women that in many tribes the puberty celebrations are accompanied by wild
orgies. For instance, in the Amaxosa tribe it is customary for the circumcised
youths to commit unrestrained excesses with girls. The final celebration of
the circumcision among the Zulu Basutos and other people is also characterized
by sexual excesses... The Kikuyu of West Africa believe that the first coitus
which the newly circumcised youths perform leads to their death or that of
their partner. They endeavor to avoid this gloomy fate by the following
procedure. After the puberty rites have been carried out, fifteen or twenty
men collect together, seize some old women in a lonely spot, misuse them
sexually, and then kill them. The death of these women frees the youths from
all danger.24 Doesn't it remind us of good bourgeois fathers who take their pubertal sons
to have their first experience with a prostitute, and to initiate them to "men's
ways"? The renewed solidarity between fathers and sons is also the matrix of
misogyny. As Reik says: "impulses of hate based on ambivalence of feelings must
have manifested themselves against the woman on whose account the dreadful and
fruitless deed was carried out [the patricide]".25 The degradation of the woman to harlot had been, therefore, a
consequence of the sense of guilt towards the father. We have seen how all the main elements of the existential condition of the
primal horde reappear in the puberty rites of savages, in the story of the
Prodigal Son and in the tale of Pinocchio through the vehicle of the
philogenetic coercion to repeat, no matter how much it seems to us to have taken
distance from those pivotal archaic mental contents. Christianity, the result of the crisis of the ancient world which had
overcome in due time the archaic puberty rites, in the process of regression
triggered by the crisis itself, did a reactivating of the archaic puberty rites,
with an innovation. The rite, instead of being inflicted on the all congregation
of the youths, was delegated to their Vicar. Vicar of the sons to the Father,
and not Vicar of the Father, like the Hero of Greek mythology who was sent in
mission to the realm of the gods. Accepting the Vicar as their delegate, the
rest of mankind was now exempted from passing the rite themselves in
carne, thanks to the Christ, who has passed it on their behalf. Indeed St. Paul exempted the believers from circumcision, the crudest symbol
of the castration threats so underlined in those rites. Faith came in place of
the rite, which it is the belief that the Vicar resurrected, namely that He
successfully completed the puberty initiation rite in which the resurrection by
the Father and from the Father is the climax of the all process. The one, who
believes that the Christ resurrected and identifies with Him, is considered as
he himself had passed the rite, and he is accepted into the Kingdom of Heaven,
transfiguration of adult's society. We find in the Gospels all the elements that we found in the puberty rites
described by Reik and in the tale of Pinocchio. Jesus, who came in the name of
the Father, says: "Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going
with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge
to the guard, and you be put in prison" (Matt., 5:25). The
gendarmes arrest Pinocchio, he is brought to court, and he is put into prison
(XIX). The novices were kidnapped by the fathers and put into the camp in the
midst of the forest. The Gospel says: "You have heard that it was said "You shall not commit
adultery." But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has
already committed adultery with her in his heart'" (Matt., 5:27).
And the savages described by Reik: "If we hear that that you go after women and
girls we shall cast you into the fire".26 The castration threats in the Gospel: "If your right eye causes you to sin,
pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members
than that your whole body be thrown into hell" (Matt., 5:29).
Pinocchio's legs burn out, and the "Woodpeckers perch on Pinocchio's nose, and
peck at it until it was reduced to its usual dimensions" (XVIII). The brotherhood preached by the Gospel is parallel to the solidarity among
initiated together, like among Pinocchio, Harlequin and Punchinello. The story of the boat and the tempest on the Lake of Galilee
(Matt. 8, 23-27) is parallel to Pinocchio, who desperately tries to
reach his daddy struggling among the waves. The two blinds, which go after Jesus and propose to Him to perform miracles
(Matt., 9:27) are parallel to the Cat and the Fox who propose to
Pinocchio to bury his father's gold pieces in the Field of Miracles, on the
assumption that a miracle will make them grow. The multiplication of fishes and
loaves of bread is a repetition of other miracles and it is parallel to the
assumed multiplication of Pinocchio's pieces of gold. It is not casual if we smile listening to the tale of Pinocchio, the Cat, the
Fox, the Field of Miracles and the multiplication of the pieces of gold, because
we unconsciously know that we have already heard that story. Now we can wink in
disbelief, while the Evangelic saga imposed blind belief. Reik says that the
adults, who tell stories of Balum and miracles to the women and children,
laugh among themselves, because they know that they are telling lies. Those are
the ways in a place named "Trap for blockheads" (Acchiappacitrulli). The stories on Jesus, as the Gospels describe them, are a repetition of the
adventures of Pinocchio and his companions, the young novices in the depth of
the wood. The teaching in the Temple, where the Rabbis are no others than the
pedant Talking-cricket, against whom Jesus rebels, his capture in the Gatsemani
garden, the prison and the trial are a repetition of the same adventures
occurred to the puppet. For sure, the Gospels came before the tale of Pinocchio, and therefore we
should say that the tale is a repetition of the narrative of the former. It is
indeed so. However, we must remember that in dealing with unconscious contents
there is no logic consequence of events. Psychical contents are
a-temporal (timeless). We don't think that Collodi had in mind the
Gospel when he wrote his tale. We think that both, the Gospel and the tale, suck
their energies from the common psychical pre-historic event (the primal horde
and the puberty rites), and therefore they are both dependent on it in the same
way, namely, on the original trauma, while they are independent of each other.
There is no historical subsequence of events but there is the same psychical
response to the stimulus which triggered the regression. Drives
and emotions are timeless. The question should be what the I and the XIX
centuries had in common to trigger the same response. It is a very important
wondering, and we shall leave it to another essay. Back to our endeavor. As long as Jesus is among his disciples, there is an
apparent inversion, because He identifies with the precepts of the Father and He
appears as the Vicar of the latter. Pinocchio, too, sustains through the all
tale that he wants to obey to his father and to act out his will. However, the
veil of the condensation falls with the Capture, the Process, and the Cross.
Here His true nature as a Son-god, in contrast to the Father, and not in
symbiosis with Him, becomes evident. The same Capture, Trial and Prison that
Jesus had threatened his brothers, as Vicar of the Father, are now experienced
by himself, as Vicar of the sons. The Trial of Pinocchio is a repetition of the
Trial of Jesus: The judge listened with great benignity; took a lively interest in the
story; was much touched and moved; and when the puppet had nothing further to
say he stretched out his hand and rang a bell. At this summon two mastiffs
immediately appeared dressed as gendarmes. The judge then, pointing to
Pinocchio, said to them: "That poor devil has been robbed of four gold pieces;
take him up, and put him immediately into prison." (XIX). And the Gospel tells us: "Pilate said to him, 'What is truth?' After he had
said that, he went out to the Jews again, and told them, 'I find no crime in
him' (John, 18:38)... Then Pilate took Jesus and scourged him"
(John, 19:1). Instead of setting free Jesus, Pilate sets free
Barabba, the robber. In the same way Pinocchio is set free only when he declares
himself a criminal: "'I beg your pardon', replied Pinocchio, 'I am also a
criminal'. 'In that case you are perfectly right', said the jailor; and taking
off his hat and bowing to him respectfully he opened the prison doors and let
him escape" (XIX). The 15th chapter of Pinocchio is the exact parallel of the 19th chapter of
John. The Trial of Jesus and the trial of Pinocchio have in common the central
event, which in both stories had been repressed, which emerges, nevertheless,
through the verdict. Apparently, both are condemned because they are
innocent. However, is it really so? The sin of which no one speaks is that of which Jesus was guilty as Vicar of
the horde of the brothers: patricide and incest. The first Man had captured the
paternal potency eating of the Tree of Knowledge, which, as we have seen,
represents the genital of the god. Now the Christ, as delegate of the horde,
must atone for the sin, the same sin of Pinocchio, who had captured the gold
coins of Geppetto and had buried them, as a symbol of his death-wishes towards
his father. Jesus and Pinocchio had not listened to the Rabbis -- Talking-Cricket, and
now the assassins arrive (XIV): now, "drawing out two long horrid knives as
sharp as razors, clash... they attempted to stab him twice..." (XV). Exactly
like the wound in the rib inflicted on Jesus by the Roman Centurion: "one of the
soldiers pierced his side with a spear" (John, 19:34). For Pinocchio: "'I see what we must do,' said one of them. 'He must be hung!
let us hang him' 'Let us hang him!' repeated the other" (XV). For Jesus: "When
the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, 'Crucify him,
crucify him!'" (John, 19:6). And then they hung him to the branch of a tree called the Big Oak (XV). The
Big Oak, as the Tree of Life is the Cross. Indeed, in Christian theology, the
Cross is compared to the Tree of Life, and there are images in Catholic art
where the Cross is represented with offshoots and leaves. Jesus is crucified to
the Tree of Life because he had profaned the Tree of Knowledge, the genital of
the Father. The Law of the Talion demands its part. As there were two companions
to the puberty rite of Pinocchio, Harlequin, and Punchinello, so there were two
companions to Jesus on the Golgota: three crosses, like three puppets. Collodi: "The puppet, seeing death staring him in the face, was taken with
such a violent fit of trembling that the joints of his wooden legs began to
creak" (XV). And the Gospel: "The Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be
broken" (John, 19:31). Collodi: "... and the sovereigns hidden under his tongue to clink." (XV). The
Gospel: "... so they put a sponge full of vinegar on hyssop and held it to his
mouth" (John, 19:29). Pinocchio: "They then sat down on the grass and waited for his last struggle.
But at the end of three hours the puppet's eyes were still open, his mouth
closed, and he was kicking more than ever" (XV). Just like the Roman soldiers,
at the foot of the Cross, had been waiting for Jesus to give up his spirit.
Pinocchio: In the meantime, a tempestuous northerly wind began to blow and roar
angrily, and it beat the poor puppet as he hung from side to side, making him
swing violently like the clatter of a bell ringing for a wedding. And the
swinging gives him atrocious spasms, and the running noose, becoming still
tighter round his throat, took away his breath. Little by little, his eyes
began to grow dim, but although he felt that death was near he still continued
to hope that some charitable person would come to his assistance before it was
too late. But when, after waiting and waiting, he found that no one came,
absolutely no one, then he remembered his poor father, and thinking he was
dying... he stammered out: "Oh, papa! papa! if only you were here!" His breath
failed him and he could say no more. He shut his eyes, opened his mouth,
stretched his legs, gave a long shudder, and hung stiff and insensible
(XV). And the Gospel: Now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the
ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice: "Eli, Eli
lama sabach-tha-ni?" that is "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"...
And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit
(Matt., 27: 45-49). At this point, in the tale of Pinocchio, the woman finally makes her
apperance: Whilst poor Pinocchio, suspended to a branch of the Big Oak, was apparently
more dead than alive, the beautiful Child with blue hair came again to the
window then she saw the unhappy puppet hanging by his throat, and dancing up
and down in the gusts of the north wind, she was moved by compassion. Striking
her hands together she made three little claps (XVI). And the Gospel: "There were also many women there, looking on from afar"
(Matt., 27:55). As in the tale, the women take over. Like in the
puberty rites of the savages, the "dead" sons are given back to their mothers
and sisters after the Balum had thrown them up, and they resurrect to new
life, purified from their parricidal and incestuous fantasies. The number three,
a sacred number, and according to Freud, itself the symbol of the genital,27 emerges in the Gospel through the tree crosses standing up on
the Golgota. In the tale of Pinocchio it emerges again in the "three little
claps", after it had already made its appearance in the number of the three
puppets. Jesus had come in the name of the Father and had been spreading his
knowledge, namely, his sexual potency, as we have seen that eating from the Tree
of Knowledge means eating the father's genital. Christ is also called "the
second Adam". Because of the hybris of substituting the Father
and capturing his potency, he is condemned to pass the rite in
carne. The crown of thorn, the scourging, the Cross, the breaking of the
knees and the wound to the rib (Eve was created from a rib) synonymous of
castration, the Tomb and the Resurrection, leave no doubts that a son he was,
and not a father. The identification with the Son, Vicar of the all congregation of sons, who
is born again from the Father and in condensation with him, is Baptism, in which
the new born is taken from the biological mother to be born again from the
co-substantiality Father-Son. Therefore, the threat that the one who is not
baptized, namely, who refuses to identify with new birth of the Son from the
Father, will burn in the fire of Hell, is parallel to the threat of Eat-fire
(Mangiafuoco) to throw Pinocchio into the fire and to the threat on the youths
of the tribe of Luritcha, mentioned by Reik. The rite, which in our prehistory had been the instrument meant to social
salvation, with the crisis of the Western ancient world, was projected into the
kingdom of heaven. The social estrangement into which the ancient world had
found itself, after the ambandonment of the social cohesion peculiar to archaic
societies, was translated into a device to reconstruct at a cosmic level, in the
World of Heaven, the same cohesion and brotherhood that for the savages was part
of the kinship of the clan, like the one which existed among Pinocchio,
Harlequin and Punchinello. No wonder that this solution was refused by the Jews. Those had never stopped
to celebrate the cohesion of the clan in all their rites, which are the rites of
the Father and his intransigent law. Therefore, they needed not to project a
craved kinship into Heaven. The ram-god, the Totem of the clan and its primal
father, is mourned in every Atonement Day, and the sound of his voice (the
Shofar) still is heard in every synagogue in the most important
festivities. Reik has exposited the similarity between Jewish rites and the
totemic and puberty rites in Shofar28 and in Pagan Rites in Judaism.29 For the Jews salvation belonged to this world, through
circumcision, the celebration of the Passover rite, and the atonement of the
primal murder through the Kippur's fast. In order to be allowed to pray,
the Jews must be at least a group of ten men (beyond the age of the puberty
rite) the Minian, namely, the Number. As a symbol of the minimal number
of youths who had to be put together in order to be able to perform the
rite. The device of a Vicar, who will take on himself the pain and the guilt in the
name of the all congregation, was rejected. They refused the solution of a Son
who will represent them, ascend to heaven, and in this way implicitly dethroning
the Father. Christ implicitly dethroned the Father because it is He who became
the main instance in the kingdom of heaven. It is he who became the Last Judge.
The Father-figure was relegated behind the scenes. In this way, the Jews brought
on themselves the rage and the hatred of all the other sons of mankind, the
ecumenical Greek-Roman world that had been only recently re-initiated, because
those interpreted the Jews' stance as if in the eternal and cosmic conflict
between fathers and sons, they had taken the part of the fathers. Jew-Judas
became synonymous. The Jew became the son who had betrayed his brothers. Through the device of delegation of the pain and the guilt, the sons had been
able to skip the crudeness of the rite and the responsibility of their murderous
and incestuous drives. We can understand, now, why in the Old Testament miracles
are always bestowed upon the collectivity, and never on the single, as it
happens instead in the New Testament. Jewish salvation is always consummated
through the group and through identification with it. The archaic puberty rite,
even if sublimated, continues to conserve its authenticity and it was never
transfigured into an abstraction which, as such, dilutes its effectiveness.
Nietzsche had an intuition that faith is only a device whose purpose is skipping
the rite, namely the concrete rules of life: Closely examined, it appears that, despite all his "faith", he has been
ruled only by his instincts -- and what instincts! In all ages -- for example,
in the case of Luther -- "faith" has been no more than a cloak, a pretense, a
curtain behind which the instincts have played their game -- a shrewd
blindness to the domination of certain of the instincts. I have already called
"faith" the especially Christian form of shrewdness -- people always talk of
their "faith" and act according to their instincts... In the world of ideas of
the Christian there is nothing that so much as touches reality: on the
contrary, one recognizes an instinctive hatred of reality as the motive power,
the only motive powering the bottom of Christianity (The
Anti-Christ, 39). As we have previously sustained, Christianity had been a regression of the
Apollonian Greek-Roman culture to the archaic mental modus of his
own archaic past, and had therefore triggered the reactivation of the same needs
that in that archaic past had found their acting out in the puberty rites.
However, once reactivated, those mental contents searched for a distillation
from the crudeness of the rites, although keeping their nucleus. In hundreds of
years the entire cultural context had changed, and the puberty rites of
initiation could not be acted out in their original form. In this way, all the Salvation ideology of Christianity took form. The rite
and its pain, instead of being inflicted on the all congregation, which in the
meantime had become an ecumenical world, and was no more a clan, was inflicted on the delegate of
that, now wordy, community. The identification with the Vicar was now considered
enough to be saved, namely, to be accepted as initiated. The Crucifixion and the Resurrection received the significance of the archaic
puberty rite, and became the symbol of the collective initiation of the all
mankind, which was ready to accept it. The initiation rite, which in the distant
past of Western civilization had been the mean of salvation of the youths from
their own parricidal an incestuous drives and their acceptance into the
congregation of adults, became the instrument of the projection of social
acceptance from the concrete level of this world into the abstract level of the
kingdom of heaven, and transfigured into salvation of the soul. According to the Gospels, Jesus had not come to abolish the Law. Paul, the
real founder of Christianity, abolished all the 613 precepts of the Law
declaring them outdated, and he abolished circumcision, the crudest symbol of
the castration threatened during the puberty rites. The Crucifixion inflicted on
the Vicar of all the sons of the world had indeed outdated it. The puberty rite
was projected into heaven, and there the Final Judgment will be consummated,
with its punishments and remuneration. The believers, namely, the ones who
accept to be represented by the Savior, are also redeemed by his sacrifice, and
therefore they are exempted from a further puberty rite = pains of Hell, which
are the symbol of the tortures that the novice must endure in order to overcome
the rite and be socially accepted. That is the reason why faith in Christ became pivotal in Christianity for the
sake of being saved from the pains of Hell. For Judaism, on the other hand, like
in all primitive religions, faith has no meaning to the purpose of salvation,
because identification occurs through the rites, and those are indeed necessary
to the acceptance into the group. Faith is not part of the original apparatus of
Judaism. Circumcision and identification with the collective rite are the sign
that the former has been successfully consummated, and the "novice" becomes part
of the congragation. Spinoza, the more clamorous case of excommunication in Jewish history, was
expelled from the congregation because he estranged himself from the common
rites, had declared them invalid, and rejected the authority of community's
representatives. No one was interested whether he had faith or not. However,
faith is essential to Christianity. The faith that the rite has been inflicted
on the Vicar is the key to salvation. The fire of Hell is not threatened to the
ones who have sinned, because sin, meaning, the presence of aggressive and
incestuous drives. is discounted a priori, as for the youths in
the camp of the novices, to the point that sin becomes a precondition for
salvation. Christianity loves sinners. Almost all the Saints became such thanks
to an act of faith, occurred after a sin. The Christian must feel as a sinner, like the novices described by Reik and
like Pinocchio who must repent as a precondition for becoming a real child. Christians self-exempt from the pubertal rite and by right of faith are
accepted to the kingdom of heaven. However the latter becomes "the one of
children", sterilized from the tortures of the rite, thanks to the Son of God,
the delegate, who had suffered them on their behalf. In this context the verse
becomes clear: "And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better
for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown
into hell" (Mark, 9:47). The concept is that you must lose an eye
in order to be accepted into Heaven. As we have seen in Oedipus, the eye is the
symbol of the genital. In this way, the mnemonic trace of the archaic puberty
rites emerges from the repression: the threat of castration. Paul had exempted the believers from the actual circumcision, but the Gospel
proposes instead the loss of an eye: the unconscious sense is the same.
Nietzsche had perceived the sense implied by the proposition: "It is not exactly
the eye that is meant" (The Anti-Christ, 45). In heaven, the
novices will be accepted thanks to the faith that the rite had been already
inflicted on the Christ. However a malaise was there, which was not overcome:
the sensation that, without enduring in person the hardship, they will never
become adults. The shortcut proposed by Christianity was not completely
convincing, and the Unheimliche finds its way to the surface in
the verse: "The kingdom of heaven belongs to children", namely without the rite
in carne, the novice would remain eternal children. The ideal of
Christianity becomes, in this way, a mankind of children. The bright intuition
of Nietzsche captured the substance of the problem: What the "glad tidings" tell us is simply that there are no more
contradictions; the kingdom of heaven belongs to children; the faith that is
voiced here is no more an embattled faith -- it is at hand, it has been from
the beginning, it is a sort of recrudescent childishness of the spirit. The
physiologists, at all events, are familiar with such a delayed and incomplete
puberty in the living organism, the result of degeneration (The
Anti-Christ, 32). Nietzsche reminds us to what Zangrilli has said, in "The Prodigal Son", on a
society, which is not able to overcome the Pleasure Principle in favor of the
Reality Principle: While under the influence of the Pleasure Principle the human being
considers only the acting out of endeavors which bring him instant
gratification and a general lowering of tensions, under the influence of the
Reality Principle man acquires the foundations of civilization: instinct
satisfaction is granted through indirect ways and it is delayed accordingly to
the requirements of the external world.30 Judaism, under the heavy weight of too a demanding Super-Ego and, therefore,
of an intransigent interpretation of instinct renunciation and the Reality
Principle, setting itself apart from a reasonable balance between Reality and
Pleasure, due to the heavy burden of the sense of guilt inherent to their Father
Religion, during the centuries became vulnerable to the coercive repetition of
rite and to obsessive neurosis, while the Christian West, taking shelter in the
delegation to the Vicar of their own drives, and aspiring to remain a mankind of
children, thus denying the Reality Principle in favor of the Pleasure Principle,
became vulnerable to paranoia and hallucinations. How may be defined the Kingdom of the Child if not a hallucination? As we have learned from the puberty rites of savages and from the tale of
Pinocchio, children can become themselves adults, fathers, and kings only
through a long and demanding process of identification with their fathers.
Pinocchio concludes his initiation saga taking on his shoulders the old father,
identifying with him, and becoming himself father of his own father. The
Prodigal Son, on the other hand, returns home only in order to remain the child
of his father, an eternal infant, exempt from the Reality Principle and his
responsibilities, thanks to the labor of his elder brother, and to whom is
promised the kingdom of heaven, because he was not able to live in this
world. Therefore, we are so convinced and fascinated by the tale of Pinocchio, and
we remain skeptical to the truth of the Prodigal Son. Copyright © 2002 Iakov
Levi Iakov Levi. «Pinocchio. The Puberty Rite of a Puppet».
Dialegesthai. Rivista telematica di filosofia [in linea], anno 4
(2002) [consultato il 26 luglio 2002], disponibile su World Wide Web:
<http://mondodomani.org/>, [85 KB], ISSN 1128-5478. 1. Karl Abraham, "The Female Castration Complex" (1920), in
Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, edited by Ernest Jones, translated
by Douglas Bryan and Alix Strachey, Hogart Press, London 1927, p. 351. 2. Theodor Reik, "The Puberty Rites of Savages", in
Ritual, Farrar & Strauss, New York 1946, chap. VII, p. 128. 3. For the English quotations of the tale I used the
translation from the Italian by M. A. Murray, 1883, in <http://www.intac.com/~rfrone/Lit/1106/1106-01.htm>
[entered April 2002]. 11. Iakov Levi, "Sapere e conoscenza. Dai riti iniziatici
alla filosofia platonica", in Dialegesthai. Rivista telematica di
filosofia | ISSN 1128-5478, <http://mondodomani.org/dialegesthai/il01.htm>
[Entered 29 aprile 2002]. 12. For the initiation sagas of Greek heroes and Biblical
Patriarchs see: Iakov Levi, Giacobbe, Giuseppe, Achille, Ulisse. Una
coazione a ripetere, in <http://www.geocities.com/psychohistory2001/GiacobbeGiuseppe.html>
[entered 2 May 2002]. 13. For the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son, as the
mnemomic trace of the youngest son of the horde who, according to Freud, had
been the delegate of the brothers to kill the tyrannical father, see: Iakov
Levi, "Il figliol prodigo", in "Forum", in Scienza e psicoanalisi, rivista
multimediale di psicoanalisi e scienze applicate, <http://www.psicoanalisi.it/forum/wwwboard.html>,
[Entered 28 April 2002]. 14. Sigmund Freud, "Totem and Taboo", in The Standar
Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Translated
from the German under the General Editorship of James Strachey, The Hogart
Press, London 1962, vol. XIII p. 142. 15. K. Abraham, op. cit., p. 356. 16. Cfr. K. Abraham, "Ejaculatio Praecox" (1917), in op.
cit., pp. 34-44. 17. T. Reik, Myth and Guilt, Braziller, New
York 1957, chap. IX. 18. in The Complete Correspondence of Sigmund Freud
and Ernest Jones 1908-1939, Edited by R. Andrew Paskauskas, The Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts and London 1993, p.
35. 19. K. Abraham, "The Female Castration Complex" (1920), in
op. cit., pp. 178-9. 20. Jean Baudrillard, Lo scambio simbolico e la
morte, Feltrinelli, Milano 1992, pp. 121 e 123. Translation from Italian
is mine. 21. K. Abraham, "Transformations of Scoptophilia" (1913),
in op. cit., p. 179. 22. K. Abraham, "An Infantile Sexual Theory Not Hitherto Noted" (1925), in op.cit., p.336. 23. Iakov Levi, Eva -- Verginità e castrazione nel
mito greco e nell'Oriente semitico, in <http://www.geocities.com/psychohistory2001/EvaPartePrima.html>. 24. T. Reik, op. cit., pp. 130-1. 27. S. Freud, "Symbolism in Dreams", in Introductory
Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1917), Lecture 10. 29. Farrar and Strauss, New York 1964. 30. Quirino Zangrilli, "Il figliol prodigo", in
Scienza e psicoanalisi. Rivista multimediale di scienza e
psicoanalisi, <http://www.psicoanalisi.it/psicoanalisi/osservatorio/articoli/osserva11.htm>,
[entered April 2002] [the translation from Italian is mine].
Copyright © Dialegesthai 2002 (ISSN 1128-5478) | [email protected] | Direzione e
redazione
The Das Unheimliche of images
Fairy, Mother and Sister
The Identification with the Totem
The Cat = The Goddess Bast
The Assassins or...the same knife which "almost" sacrificed Isaac.
The Burden of Guilt
The Pigeon of Pinocchio = The Pigeon of Noah = The Reconciliation with the Father
Nose Against Nose
Links:
Hamlet. The Puberty Rite of a Danish Prince and His Companions
Jesus and Mary Magdalene
Rembrandt and the Prodigal Son. On Elder and Youngest Brothers
Pinocchio and the Cult of the Trees
Isolamento e qualche gatto
Cinderella and "The Puss with the Boots"
Maestri and Disciples
Soccer Games and Caravaggio
Little Red Riding Hood
Mikis Theodorakis, Anti - Semitism, and Castration Anxiety
Why Islamic Terror Now
Psychohistory
Pinocchio. The Puberty Rite of a Puppet
2. The Puberty Rites and
the Freudian Horde
3. The Harlots
4.
From the Archaic
Puberty Rites to Christianity
5. Let the children come
to me... for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven (Matt., 19:14)
1. The Tale of Pinocchio and the Puberty rites of Savages
the child with the
blue hair who
died from
sorrow
because she was abandoned
by her little
brother
Pinocchio
2. The Puberty Rites and the Freudian Horde
3. The Harlots
4. From the Archaic Puberty Rites to Christianity
5. Let the children come to me... for to such belongs the
kingdom of heaven (Matt., 19:14)
Note