Money Wisdom #345

"The incomprehensibility of the Athanasian Creed [ the equality of the three persons of the Trinity ] corresponds to our unconsciousness of the magic in personality. 'Where primitives have magic, we have the unconscious magic which is personality'. 'What we fail to recognize is that all symptoms, defense mechanisms, in fact, personality itself, are a form of magic... Primitives have magic in a conscious form, whereas with us it can function only (except in certain forms of neurosis or psychosis) if it is unconscious.' Except in certain forms of neurosis and psychosis: the insane are closer to the truth.

Roheim, Magic and Schizophrenia, 84; Gates of the Dream, 132.

Norman O Brown Love's Body (1966) p.108