Ernest Jones

A psychoanalyst who worked closely with Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones is most well known for his book On the Nightmare, from which the following excerpt is taken. In the book Jones argues that the monsters and fantasies that populate our superstitions, myths, and folklore originate in the unconscious mind. Humans create these monsters as a way to help explain, or place responsibility for, repressed desires and fears created by extreme emotions of love or hate, with hate being the emotion most closely symbolized by the werewolf. Acting on these desires or fears would mean admitting that a dark, or less socially acceptable, side of human nature exists. For human beings, the werewolf might be the most feared and perhaps the most highly symbolic of these nightmare monsters as it represents...