Striving for unity
Unlike man’s, animal existence is characterized with “the primary unity with nature.” We are “torn away” from it. The main reason of our separation is “reason and imagination” which we both possess. Man is perfectly aware of his “aloneness and separateness,” “of his powerlessness and ignorance,” “of the accidentalness of his death.” Thus, “an insane person” is the one “who has completely failed to establish any kind of union,” for “the necessity to unite” is an “imperative needs on the fulfillment on which man’s sanity depends.” This imagery is supposed to evoke a feeling of loneliness. Old ties with the nature are lost, thus we have to establish new ones with our fellows which is also not an easy task.
Looking for protection
Just as birth means “to leave the enveloping protection of the womb,” growing up means “to leave the protective orbit of the mother.” Though the adult has “the means to stand on his own feet,” “the perplexity of life” makes some of us want to give up on that independence. In psychopathology we can easily find the examples of an obsession with a desire to “return to the mother’s womb.” In this case, a patient “feels and acts like foetus in the mother’s womb,” incapable of assuming even “the most elementary functions” of a small child. This imagery evokes a feeling of insecurity.
Forms of love
The main difference between fatherly and motherly love is that the latter is “like an act of grace.” If it is there, it is “a blessing” – if it is not there “it cannot be created.” Here lies an explanation why individuals who have not overcome “the fixation to mother” often try to “procure motherly love” in a neurotic, “magical way” by making themselves “helpless, sick” or by “regressing emotionally to the stage of an infant.” The reasoning behind it is the following: “if I make myself into a helpless child, mother is bound to appear.” This imagery illustrates man’s desire to be loved and taken care of.
