THE IMAGE OF THE FATHER
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which Robin becomes a part. When the laughter momentarily dies
down, the procession resumes its march.
On they went, like fiends that throng in mockery around some dead
potentate, mighty no more, but majestic still in his agony. On they
went, in counterfeited pomp, in senseless uproar, in frenzied merriment,
trampling all on an old man's heart.
Symbolically and to some extent actually the crowd has carried out
the fantasy Robin had on the steps of the church.
To the conscious mind "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" is a
story of an ambitious youth's thwarted search for an influential rela–
tive he wants to find. To the unconscious, it is a story of the youth's
hostile and rebellious feelings for the relative-and for the father–
and his wish to be free of adult domination. To the conscious mind
it is a story of a search which was unsuccessful because of external
difficulties. To the unconscious-like
Hamlet,
with which it has more
than one point in common-it is a story of a young man caught up
in an enterprise for which he has no stomach and debarred from
succeeding in it by internal inhibitions.
From one point of view the unacknowledged forces playing upon
the apparently simple and candid central character of "My Kinsman,
Major Molineux" are deeply abhorrent. Our sympathy for the char–
acter should tell us, however, that there is another side to the matter.
The tendencies which assert themselves in Robin exist in all men.
What he is doing, unwittingly but flamboyantly, is something which
every young man does and must do, however gradually, prudently
and inconspicuously: he is destroying an image of paternal authority
so that, freed from its restraining influence, he can begin life as an
adult.
III
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" is one of a relatively
small but distinguished group of stories which would be incompre–
hensible, in part or in their entirety, on the basis of what we under–
stand consciously. In response to such stories it is evident that uncon–
scious perception plays an indispensable role. Though it is less evident,
I believe that the unconscious plays a role which is scarcely less im–
portant in response to many stories which are intelligible on some
level to the conscious mind. For most, if not all fiction- and certainly
