Cultural Zoo

Animals in the Human Mind and its Sublimation

Salman Akhtar, Vamik D. Volkan, Salman Akhtar, Vamik D. Volkan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367324025
• eBook ISBN: 9780429912450
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book traces the historical and cross-cultural aspects of the psychic bond between man and animals, and elucidates the role of animals in the normal development of the human mind. It discusses the phenomenology and dynamics of the appearance of animals in human dreams.

Part I

Animals and the Human Mind

CHAPTER 1

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on the Bond Between Man and Animals

DANIEL M. A. FREEMAN, M.D.

From the earliest dawning of neonatal awareness, our experience of ourselves emerges through our affective interaction with other beings. Many aspects of our needs for intimacy, attachment, and social interaction are shared by humans and social beings of other species. This has contributed to the bonds which have developed between us, as animals have become not only domesticated and tamed but also personal pets and significant emotional objects. Real and imaginary animals join humans in the fantasy and interactional worlds that shape our emotional development. Cuddly stuffed animals function as transitional objects, recreating an illusion of our mother’s presence when she is absent. Pets trust and depend on us, give us love and acceptance, and serve as our companions. Their images appear in children’s stories, nursery rhymes, cartoons, toys, costumes, and fantasies. Animal imagery is ubiquitous in our similes, metaphors and aphorisms, folklore and mythology. Pets offer comfort to those who are lonely. As we mature, we think of pets as friends and children. They may fill an empty nest for older people who continue to enjoy having someone to nurture.

People in different societies relate with animals in often quite dissimilar ways. The diversity of natural species and the richness of human imagery have contributed to contrasting perspectives, in different cultural worlds and different eras. In addition to real relationships with animals as living sensate beings and exploitative relationships in which we harness and consume them for our benefit, we symbolically project supernatural fantasies onto animals derived from our inner world of subjective meanings. Dissimilar cultural worldviews, developmental experiences, and environmental survival imperatives often result in quite different relationships between animal and human beings.

CONTRASTING PERSPECTIVES

Is a wolf “The Big Bad Wolf” that wanted to devour Little Red Riding Hood or the empathic nurturing maternal wolf who suckled and cared for Romulus and Remus? Is a coyote a sly pest and “varmint,” or, as many Native American Indians believe, a spunky (albeit bumbling and imperfect) improviser and creator with an indomitable spirit who strives to achieve and ultimately succeeds, becoming a cultural hero (Freeman, 1981)?

Wolves were the first animals to be befriended and domesticated by our ancestors. Dogs, whom we in our culture regard as our best friends, are descendants of big bad wolves of an earlier era. Groups of wolves and people often hunted the same game and were often in contact with one another when wolves scavenged from human encampments. Wolves use collaborative strategies in hunting that are similar to those used by humans. They are social animals that become attached to and share with one another. Although the alpha wolves that become leaders of wolf packs are more assertive and aggressive, other wolves are followers. Some wolves became somewhat less wary and more acclimated to people. When adopted by humans at a very young age as gregarious cuddly puppies, they followed and became loyally attached to us, were able to relate and communicate with us, and were sensitive and responsive to our feelings. People started to realize that we have much in common. We became friends. They care if we cry, and they come to us for reassurance when they are frightened by thunder.

Are puppy dogs in fact delightful roly-poly balls of fun and joy that will grow up with us to be our friends and comfort us when we are lonely, or are they delectable pieces of meat to be sliced up, sold at a butcher shop, and savored for supper, as is common in many societies? To those of us who cherish and love our pets, they are “real people” in our lives. Eating them seems unthinkable and cannibalistic. We love Snoopy! But, then again, we are also able to contradict ourselves—to call someone a dog or a bitch is hardly endearing or complimentary. Although the dog was deified and worshipped as a god in ancient Egypt, he can sometimes be treated as an “underdog.”

Some of the cultures that eat dogs have a very high regard for rats. In Asia, rats epitomize intelligence and industriousness and are seen as harbingers of wealth and of good fortune (Baten, 1989). The rat is honored in the oriental zodiac.¹ Many of these same cultures experience snakes, serpents, and dragons not as monstrous devouring beasts nor as satanic seducers of temptation and transgression, but rather as positive embodiments of male spirituality (Saunders, 1995) and/or as warm, gentle, and loving maternal caretakers (Freeman, 1994, 1997a). They perceive, in the shedding of the snake’s skin, that these creatures are representatives of resurrection, rejuvenation, and life’s renewal (Baten, 1989). While Saint George stepped in to protect and rescue us by slaying the dragon, in our medical caduceus two interwined serpents represent the Greek god of healing.

Eve’s much criticized serpent in the Garden of Eden was actually a constructive beneficent creature who “opened” our “eyes” and made us “wise” (Genesis 3:5–7). The serpent offered a gift that we prize very dearly, realistic insight and understanding, our hunger to receive nurturance from the Tree of Knowledge, and our reverence for learning. The serpent symbolically portrays our first teacher, the parent who introduced us to realistic thought, the progenitor of independent curiosity, and the quest for cognitive understanding and science. It may of course be painful for children to become aware that we have to work in the real world, that we “eat by the sweat of (our) brow,” and that childbearing is painful as well as joyful (Genesis 3:16, 19). It may also be unpleasant to have to assume responsibility for distinguishing right from wrong (Genesis 2:17, 3:5), and to realize a need to set limits upon one’s impulses and wishes. Nevertheless, these departures from the illusory childhood world of Eden bring us into the reality world of “seeing is believing” and are crucial developmental steps in our progress, through insight, toward adult wisdom and understanding. We have blamed the messenger who brought us good and bad news. We ought perhaps instead to thank the serpent who may be said to be the teacher who encouraged and helped us in this transition.

It may seem difficult for us to understand how, in Japan, lions could be considered gentle and loving and equated with deer (Freeman, 1994, 1997a). On the other hand, cultures which view bears as being dangerous, terrifying, and magically ominous would find it difficult to understand how we could consider bears to be adorable and cuddly. We love our teddy bears, Winnie-the-Pooh who portrays our childhood wishes and strivings, Smoky the Bear who is the protective guardian of our safety and our environment, and Goldilocks’s three bears who constitute a responsible traditional domestic family.

When we ask how anyone could eat a dog we have to bear in mind that Hindus might be justified in regarding us as barbaric and cannibalistic for slaughtering and eating cows, who in their belief are actual reincarnations of real people, not merely mammals. Alaskan Inuit (Eskimos) feel that every time they eat a seal or a walrus, they are eating a piece of their supreme mother goddess Sedna’s body, a finger joint that she has self-sacrificially chopped off in order to feed them. They feel overwhelmingly indebted to her. They try to soothe her pain and thank both her and the souls of the seals and walruses, hoping that her finger joints will regenerate and that she will again send them animals to be eaten (Freeman, Foulkes and Freeman, 1978).

The ways in which animals are perceived, the roles they play in our cognitive and emotional lives, and the ways we relate to them often reflect our selective focusing on one or more of their specific characteristics. A striking characteristic may lead to an animal becoming the repository for similar projected positive idealizations or similar negative fantasies in the eyes of many otherwise different societies. For example, a lion’s regal bearing and the soaring aerial power of an eagle make them appear to be awesome and imperial, so that they have become symbols of power in many cultures. The eerie sounds, staring eyes, and nocturnal habits of owls make them appear to be frightening and ghostlike for many people. On the other hand, in many instances different cultures may perceive the same animal from contrasting perspectives. Sometimes the contrasting fantasies projected onto an animal resemble the hypothesis of the fabled blind men in the story of The Blind Men and the Elephant²—each focusing upon a different aspect or part of the whole as people grope without comprehensive understanding. Equestrian hunters of wild buffalo, pastoral herders of domesticated cattle, farmers using oxen to pull plows or carts, bull fighters, and Hindus view bovine mammals from different perspectives. In Biblical times an innocent lamb or goat, tenderly cared for by the shepherd who raised it, could suddenly become conceptually transmuted into a “sacrificial lamb” slain to appease the gods, or a “scapegoat” onto whom men externalized responsibility for their sins and evil.

In different cultures, the dividing lines or boundaries between animals and humans and between the animate and the inanimate may be distinct, blurred, or changeable. Even when the categories are clearly differentiated, animals may later be secondarily imagined to be human, or to be transformations or reincarnations of humans or of ancestral spirits. Humans, in turn, may become “possessed” by animal spirits or by animal forces (“becoming” the animal, or feeling themselves to be suffused with the animal’s positive or negative “power”); or they may become possessed or inspired by a supernatural half-animal and half-human angel or devil. In animalistic fantasies, inanimate entities or phenomena and forces of nature may be conceived of as being sensate, animate, and alive. Rocks, mountains, waterfalls, lightning, and celestial bodies may be conceived as being conscious and possessing supernatural power. Inanimate substances may be sculpted into the shapes of animals or humans to become idols, puppets, or toys and imaginatively endowed with animal, human, or supernatural qualities.

When cultures undergo changes, their symbolic use of animal images can change significantly within a relatively brief period of time. For example, when Godzilla (originally called Gojira) was born in 1954 in postwar Japan, he “smashed through … Tokyo as the inexorable consequence of man’s disordering the boundaries of Life and Death, meting out remorseless punishment for that transgression” (Jacobson, 1998). From the beginning, he had a “weakness for children” and would heed their call for help; with the evolution of Japanese society in ensuing decades, he matured by 1972 to become “Japan’s defender against smog monsters and worse” and he became “downright lovable” (Jacobson, 1998). In our society, Bambi (Disney, 1942) struggled in midcentury to master the basic realities of life in a topsy-turvy world, and Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck pluckily and resiliently persevered in trying to master the odds and conquer external adversity. In recent years they have been replaced by more introspective animated cartoon figures who struggle instead with inner hopes and fears, searching for self-esteem and for personal identity (Kakutani, 1998).

The discrepancies in the ways we relate to the animal world involve more than cultural diversity and a nonuniversality of symbolic imagery. Even within the boundaries of our own culture, we relate to animals in contrasting ways. In some cases we perceive them as children or companions having human feelings, or rely upon them as protective guardians, guides, and caretakers. In other instances, we exploit them opportunistically as though they were machines devoid of feelings or as though their bodies were reservoirs of commodities or sources of raw materials for our consumption. They are symbolically taken into our dreams and personal fantasies, and may be culturally elevated to divine stature as gods or demons in our shared symbolism, mythology, and religious cosmology.

In order to elucidate our own perspectives, it can often be helpful to compare them with contrasting viewpoints of other societies. Fundamental trends in people’s conceptions of and relationships with animals are established in childhood in each culture. In order to explore the bases of culturally diverse perspectives, we will follow some of the steps taken by infants and young children as they seek to sort out and classify their experiences with real and imaginary animate creatures. We will consider how an infant’s attention focuses upon animate percepts in the neonatal period, how he discovers others as beings and invests them with meaning and with feelings, and how, in the course of learning about external reality, he starts to distinguish beings that are human from those that are animal. Similar fundamental biological mechanisms underlie cognitive and emotional functioning in all infants, and a similar sequence of early developmental issues can be observed in children in all cultures. However, there is variety from culture to culture in child-rearing experiences during particular developmental stages; cultural conceptual categories; shared fantasies, and cultural preferences for the use of particular adaptive mechanisms; the external environmental and social realities to which one must adapt; rates of progression along various developmental lines; and the organization of intrapsychic functions at different stages.³ The resultant effects on intrapsychic development lead to recognizably different personality and societal patterns, and different ways of relating to humans of one’s own group, humans perceived to be alien, and to animals.

An important factor in shaping our relationships with all beings is the degree to which we develop a comfortable sense of trust and safe interdependence in childhood, as opposed to an alert, anxious need to scrutinize and be on guard for imaginary or real potential dangers. From within experiences of safety while being held in protective arms, the baby starts to learn about external percepts. How does a child come to conclusions about and establish a classification delineating what is “animate” as opposed to “inanimate,” and then separate what is “human” from what is “animal”? How does an infant distinguish those that are beneficent from those that are harmful? Does the child move from primarily depending upon and evoking responses from others toward an enjoyment of personal autonomy, control, and mastery? As he matures, does he develop an enjoyment of sharing and of mutual giving and receiving? In what ways are primary process creative fantasy and illusion and/or secondary process linear thinking adaptive and positively reinforced within the context of his cultural environment? Does a child become aware of and sensitive to the feelings of others and empathically concerned about the effects of his actions upon them? The ways in which children develop in relation to each of these factors will affect their relationships with humans and animals.

ORIENTATION TO THE ANIMATE

When a newborn infant opens his eyes for the first time he is fascinated by an intriguing menagerie of animate shapes and images which have not yet acquired meaning. Intense, moving, and changing stimuli catch the infant’s attention and evoke scrutiny.⁴ During periods of relaxed, alert, outwardly directed attentiveness, the baby is magnetically drawn toward percepts which appear to be alive and to possess riveting qualities of sound, touch, smell, and movement.

At first, before an infant has begun to group percepts into meaningful patterns and before he can recognize things or people, everything appears to be a quasi-animate part of one boundless bubbling surround. The infant has not yet distinguished stable, predictable inanimate things from those things that may suddenly startle and attract attention by acting, moving, changing, and creating visual, audible or tactile sensations.

As the baby starts to collect sensory impressions, his mother usually serves a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I Animals and the Human Mind
• Part II Animals and the Culture at Large
• Part III Epilogue
• Index