Ernest Jones

Ernest Jones (to the right) with Sigmund Freud, 1938.

His theories about mythology and religion examined by Stefan Stenudd

The Welsh psychoanalyst Ernest Jones (1879-1958) befriended Freud in 1908 and they remained on friendly terms even through some controversies. Jones was also the one recommending Freud to form the so-called Secret Society of those committed to his doctrine, and deeply involved in the behind-the-scenes activities of Freud's core followers competing to prove their loyalty to him.^[1]

Archetypes of Mythology

by Stefan Stenudd
This book examines Jungian theories on myth and religion, from Carl G. Jung to Jordan B. Peterson. Click the image to see the book at Amazon (paid link).

Psychoanalysis of Mythology

by Stefan Stenudd
This book examines Freudian theories on myth and religion, from Sigmund Freud to Erich Fromm. Click the image to see the book at Amazon (paid link).

Apart from The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud in three volumes, published between 1953 and 1957, Jones's writing on psychoanalysis was neither as voluminous nor as significant as that of some of his colleagues. But he did write some essays about psychoanalytical perspectives on certain themes in folklore, mythology, and superstition.

Also, he analyzed Hamlet as an expression of the Oedipus complex. His initial text on this subject was from 1910, with expanded revisions in 1911 and 1949.

Spilling Salt

In his 1912 essay "The Symbolic Significance of Salt in Folklore and Superstition," Ernest Jones made a psychoanalytical examination of the old superstition that it brings bad luck to spill salt. In spite of the seemingly marginal subject, his text spans almost a hundred pages, where he goes through a great number of beliefs, folklore fragments, and rituals surrounding the real or imagined potency of salt and its significance in human culture.

He concludes from all of this that "the idea of salt has derived much of its significance from its being unconsciously associated with that of semen."^[2]

Oddly, he is not very clear on how that would lead to the superstition about spilling salt, but it is implied that it could have to do with premature ejaculation: "It acts, in other words, by disturbing the harmony of two people previously engaged in amicable intercourse."^[3] Therefore:

The idea of salt in folk-lore and superstition characteristically represents the male, active, fertilising principle.^[4]

As Jones states in his text, there is no mystery to the symbolic significance of salt. The precious substance has the ability to conserve food, and the strange property of those rock-hard crystals to dissolve quickly in water, among other things. But an unconscious connection of it to semen is far-fetched. Already their different states of matter, one being solid and the other liquid, speak against it. Still, Jones states that the symbols we pick should be the most obvious ones:

There appears to be a general tendency of the human mind to symbolise objects and interests of paramount and universal significance in forms that are psychologically the most suitable and available.^[5]

What is obvious to him is obviously not so to everyone else. Although also doubtful, Jones's claim that alcohol is another unconscious symbol for semen^[6] makes more sense. At least, it is liquid and its effect on the psyche is much more intricate than that of salt.

Ancient beliefs have linked semen to the other bodily fluids, though they were always understood to have different functions.

The superstition regarding spilling salt finds a much easier explanation in the fact that in the past it was precious and in many parts of the world difficult to come by. Having it was fortunate and losing it unfortunate. Mystery solved.

Jones also touches on the custom of reversing the bad luck by throwing salt over one's shoulder as a counter-charm, but he admits to not exploring that aspect fully:

The explanation of why the salt has to be thrown backwards, and why precisely over the left shoulder, would open up themes too extensive for us to enter on here; it is one of the many respects in which the analysis offered in this essay remains incomplete.^[7]

Well, isn't the backwards throw for a psychoanalyst the obvious measure to invoke a reversion? Otherwise, it would just be spilling more salt. The left shoulder can be explained by the fact that most people are right-handed and therefore they more conveniently throw the salt to the left.

There is another thing with superstitions, which tends to be ignored by the psychoanalysts. By time, many superstitious activities become customs, even when people have since long stopped believing in them. Instead of being thought of as charms or counter-charms, they have simply become little rituals done for no other reason than that they conform to the ways of old. There is comfort in that, and much can be said about our need to link to the habits of our predecessors. It is a significant part of our cultural behavior and our reason for it. But it is irrelevant to treat it as superstition.

This is shown in our relation to salt. In modern society it is easily accessible in quantity, consequently old symbolic and magical values formerly assigned to it fade away. Some of the customs regarding salt remain, though depraved of their urgency and importance. They are nowadays mere amusements.

That in turn raises the question if superstitions were ever firm convictions, or just shared figments of imagination, elements of "what if" more than beliefs.

A Dove in the Ear

In 1914, two years after the previous essay, Ernest Jones published a text with similar theme and approach: The Madonna's Conception through the Ear. This time he examined psychoanalytical aspects of the peculiarities of the Annunciation, especially — as stated by some medieval church fathers and shown in some medieval art — the Madonna's impregnation through the ear.

He quotes what he mistakenly believes to be written by Augustine: "Deus per angelum loquebatur et Virgo per aurem impraegnebatur" ("God spoke through the angel and the Virgin was impregnated by ear").^[8] Among the art works mentioned are Annunciation paintings by Filippo Lippi, Benozzo Gozzoli, and Simone Martini. The painting by Martini is discussed in detail and reproduced on the frontispiece of the 1923 book.

Jones's choice of mythological subjects is quite particular. In this case, it gives the impression that there is also a sense of humor involved. He examines the depicting of how Mary got impregnated with Jesus through the ear, by the agents of the archangel Gabriel and a dove. The latter was, of course, the classical representation of the Holy Spirit. So, the conception was done by God's breath. Jones, though, has a take on it that deviates radically from the Christian view.

Coming to his own conclusions, he has the same method as with the previous essay — a lengthy list of examples from mythology, superstitions, and art history selected to support his case. The quantity of examples has little weight, since it is evident cherry picking all through. From the multitude of myths and artistic objects, he only chooses those in support of his theory and does not investigate even one that lacks this support or contradicts it. As evidence it is of no value.

Also, he insists on the Freudian idea that unconscious impressions and beliefs are formed in early childhood and therefore based on its misconceptions of sexuality and bodily functions. That, too, is in dire need of confirmation. He has none other than that it has been stated by Freud and his disciples in writing, and supposedly supported by experiences from therapy work.

His conclusions, from this dubious research, are spectacular to the point of absurd. He claims that the wind of God's breath really refers to the breaking of wind humans do from their anal orifice, the white dove is a phallus, and Maria's ear is a symbol of her anus. The reason for all of this is that these things represent ignorant childish beliefs about human reproduction, stuck in the unconscious all through adulthood. In other words, it is based on the ABC of Freudian doctrine. He states:

It is a law of psychogenesis, founded now on extensive experience, that an idea can become psychically important in adult life only through becoming associated with, and reinforcing, an earlier chain of ideas reaching back into childhood, and that much, or even most, of its psychical (as apart from intrinsic) significance is derived from these.^[9]

That claim demands a number of elaborate arguments and the negligence of explanations closer at hand. About the ear representing the anus instead of the vagina, Jones explains that the child knows nothing of the existence of the vagina,^[10] which is yet another indication of Freudian doctrine focusing on the perspectives of the male gender. The Freudian importance given to the anus is also shown when he continues with this rather drastic statement:

Such habits as nose and ear-picking, for instance, invariably prove on analysis to be derivatives of, and substitutes for, anal masturbation.

About the creative wind, Jones points out that the breath from the mouth lacks both the sound and the odor of its lower counterpart, which is what triggers infants. Thus, "the acts of breathing and speaking are both treated in the Unconscious as equivalents of the act of passing intestinal flatus."^[11]

But while the latter is occasional and of minor importance, the upper breath is both constant and so vital that it is impossible to persevere for more than a few minutes without it. Jones admits to breath as a symbol of life and the presence or absence of it is the simplest and most primitive test of death.^[12] Indeed, it is the foremost expression of being alive and staying alive. Even a child can get that. Furthermore, any child is able to produce a much louder sound from its mouth than from its anus, already in its infancy.

The white dove as a symbol of the Holy Spirit is equally evident without any reference to sexual organs. It flies through the air, its color is that of purity, like the clouds in heaven that carry no threats, and it is regarded as a messenger since the time of Noah.

As for the tradition of conception through the ear, it was necessary to be another bodily orifice than the usual one, since Mary was in Christian dogma firmly stated to be a virgin also after this act. Moreover, Mary is informed of her pregnancy by the words of Gabriel, just as God had performed the whole world creation by words. She is impregnated by hearing God's command.

It is clearly indicated by the Simone Martini Annunciation painting used as a frontispiece to Jones's book. There, the words from Gabriel's mouth are written on a line right at Mary's ear.

There is a general objection to be made against the Freudian claim of childish misconceptions taking form in the unconscious, which is also Jones's claim. He shows in his text reasons for these misconceptions that are, however faulty, results of logical assumptions. Children make conclusions from observations, which must be a conscious process also by psychoanalytical standards. Children are aware of them and would therefore be continuously aware of facts learned later, correcting their previous errors.

That contradicts the idea of a petrified unconscious influence unbeknownst to the growing child even into adulthood.

On a sidenote, in this text from 1914 Jones makes use of the term archetype, which is five years before Jung would do the same in his writing. It is just once, when describing incest as "the great archetype" of sin.^[13]

Effeminate God

Ernest Jones returned to the subject of Mary's conception by the ear in a lecture given at a psychoanalytical congress in 1922: A Psycho-Analytic Study of the Holy Ghost. He repeats his claims about the nature of God's creative breath and Mary's ear, but then he goes on with additional interpretations of the Holy Ghost and its implications, none less radical than his previous views.

Jones states that Christianity has replaced an original trinity of the father, the mother, and the son with one that excludes the mother to insert the Holy Ghost, which emanates from the father. To no surprise, he finds the reason for it in the Oedipus complex:

The replacement of the Mother-Goddess by the Holy Ghost is a manifestation of the desirability of renouncing incestuous and parricidal wishes and replacing them by a stronger attachment to the Father.^[14]

By excluding the mother from the trinity, the father inherits to some extent the motherly qualities, as indicated in Christianity by the submissive love devoted to their god and the love the god has for them. Even the dove by which Mary gets impregnated is "one of the most effeminate of all the phallic emblems."

A milder deity replaces the stern and fearsome father of the Old Testament. Furthermore, "the opportunity is given of winning the Father's love by the adoption of a feminine attitude towards him."^[15]

This leads to something of a homosexual cult, "the extensive part played by sublimated homosexuality throughout the Christian religion,"^[16] as seen by the importance of brotherly love, monks denying their male traits in what Jones describes as a symbolic self-castration, as well as in the celibacy of Catholic priests and the fanciful attire with which they dress themselves.

But the worship of the mother was partly reinstated, since "the human need for a Mother to worship was too strong." Mariolatry emerged, leading to the papal decree that she herself was also conceived immaculately. Still, this reinstatement of the mother did not change the homosexual attitude in religion. Instead, "all the self-castrating tendencies are more evident where Mariolatry is highly developed."^[17]

Protestantism, on the other hand, seeks to regain the male characteristics, by allowing priests to marry, cleaning their attire as well as the churches from exaggerated decorations, and so on. They succeed in this by resisting the Catholic tendency of Mariolatry. Jones ends his lecture:

One might perhaps say that the Protestant solution of the Oedipus complex is the replacement of the Mother by the Woman, while the Catholic one consists in the change of the masculine to the feminine attitude.

Where to begin? Looking at the Annunciation, there is nothing "effeminate" about a male god impregnating a woman, nor is it anything new in the world of mythology. The extraordinary measures by which this is accomplished with Mary can be explained by the need to keep her a virgin all through, as discussed above. So, it would be at least as plausible that the exclusion of the mother from the trinity makes the god and the religion renounce femininity instead of embracing it.

As for Jones's theories about homosexuality, they might be excused by the prejudice of the time in which his text was written, were it not for their prominence also in the texts of other Freudians, including those of their mentor. The doctrine of psychoanalysis was not only persistently prejudiced against women, but also in its treatment of homosexuality — to the point where it would not be completely irrelevant to apply the modern term homophobia.^[18]

Notes

See Grosskurth, The Secret Ring, 1991. ↑
Ernest Jones, "The Symbolic Significance of Salt in Folklore and Superstition" (originally published in Imago 1912), Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis, London 1923, p. 135. ↑
Ibid., p. 196. ↑
Ibid., p. 199. ↑
Ibid., p. 201. ↑
Ibid., p. 139. ↑
Ibid., p. 198. ↑
Ernest Jones, "The Madonna's Conception through the Ear: A Contribution to the Relation between Aesthetics and Religion" (originally published in Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse 1914), Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis, London 1923, p. 264. The quote is from Sermones de Tempore, falsely attributed to Augustine. ↑
Ibid., p. 272. ↑
Ibid., p. 342. ↑
Ibid., p. 289. ↑
Ibid., p. 270. ↑
Ibid., p. 302. ↑
Ernest Jones, "A Psycho-Analytic Study of the Holy Ghost" (1922), Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis, London 1923, p. 425. ↑
Ibid., pp. 422f. ↑
Ibid., p. 425. ↑
Ibid., pp. 429f. ↑
The term homophobia was introduced by the American psychologist George Weinberg in the 1960's. ↑

Freudians on Myth and Religion

This text is an excerpt from my book Psychoanalysis of Mythology: Freudian Theories on Myth and Religion Examined from 2022. The excerpt was published on this website in February, 2026.

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