It is humans who can make a great way that can make them great. Doubtless from the earliest times in which groups established social customs, or mores, and enforced them, members of such groups who were tempted to violate these mores could almost feel the disapproval of their fellows and hear in their own minds protesting outcry, perhaps some primitive equivalent of “No!” or “Do not!” In the early eighteenth century such inner voices or feelings were described as edicts of one’s moral sense or of one’s conscience. The psychic impulses of the Victorian era possessed a higher degree of ambivalence than is found at present among most modern human beings. With the decline of this ambivalence the taboo, as the compromises system of the ambivalent conflict slowly disappeared. Neurotics who are compelled to reproduce this conflict, together with the taboo resulting from it, may be said to have brought with them an atavistic remnant in the form of an archaic constitution the compensation which in the interest of cultural demands entails the most prodigious psychic effects on their part. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7

And let us not forget that beginning at the sage of system formation there are two origins for every act judged by the consciousness, namely the systematic, and the real but unconscious origin. At this point, we may recall the confusing information about the double meaning of the word taboo, namely, holy and unclean among the influences which myth everywhere ascribes to demons the evil ones preponderate, so that according to the religious of races evil demon are evidently older than good demons. Now it is quite possible that the whole conception of demons was derived from the extremely important relation to the dead. In the further course of human development, the ambivalence inherent in this relation then manifested itself by allowing two altogether contrary psychic formations to issue from the same root, namely, the fear of demons and of ghosts, and the reverence for ancestors. In the psychoanalysis of neurotic persons who suffer, or have suffered, in their childhood from the fear of ghost, it is often not difficult to expose these ghosts as the parents. Nothing testifies so much to the influence of mourning on the origin of belief in demons as the fact that demons were always taken to be the spirits of persons no long dead. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7

Mourning has a very distinct psychic task to perform, namely, to detach the memories and expectations of the survivors from the dead. When this work is accomplished the grief, and wit it remorse and reproach, lessens, and therefore also the fear of the demon. However, the very spirits which at first were feared as demons now serve a friendlier purpose; they are revered as ancestors and appealed to for him in times of distress. In a small office, Giandomenico Spinola sat in front of a computer screen looking at the latest phot documentations from the Vatican Museums dig. The sarcophagi were stunning, but even more unusual were the photos of a hillside area dotted with tubuli, the liberations cylinders leading down to unexcavated graves. These graves dated back to 30 AD, and the more work proceeded, in fact, the stronger the argument grew for leaving this portion of the cemetery unexcavated. Archaeology is itself a form of destruction and Mr. Spinola realized nothing like this had every survived anywhere else in the World. He winced when he imagined the bulldozers cleaning it out.  #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7

On hundreds of occasions in his career, Mr. Spinola could have walked off with precious antique objects from the cultural and civilizations of the spat, but that, of course was unthinkable for a professional. Only once has he succumbed to the temptation. While working alone at a site on Rome’s Caelian Hill, next to an ancient Roman cistern, he found an exquisite gold ring with a sapphire. He reported the find to his superiors and said he would deliver it early the next week; in the meantime, he let his girlfriend where it for four days. Late one night, armed with flashlights, he and three other students lifted a manhole cover in the middle of a residential street and reached the ancient domus through the city’s drainage system. They marveled at the frescoes, took photographs and reemerged from the manhole to find themselves surrounded by dozens of machine gun-wielding police. Mr. Spinola and his friends were let go with a warning, but kept their photos. If there was a lesson learned, it was that archaeology sometimes means taking risks. In the picture the sarcophagus of Publius Cesilius Victorinus, the young Roman night, and shrines to their gods and goddesses. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7

Moreover, the coffin lid had an inscription that began D.M. for “Dis Manibus,” that standard dedication phrase to the gods of the underworld. That clearly indicated a pagan tomb, like the others in the same burial chamber, which, after all, had a floor mosaic of an intoxicated Dionysius. And yet, what is? What is the woman did represent a Christian, and what if the bird in the tree behind her represented the soul? And what is the scrolls held by the male figure opposite, seemingly a philosopher, were not symbols of ancient learning but of Scripture? What is the leaping dolphins on the sarcophagus lid evolved not the pagan voyage of the dead but the soul’s emergence from the mortal life? The projection of unconscious hostility upon demons in the taboo of the dead is only a single example from a whole series of processes to which we must grant the greatest influence in the formation of primitive psychic life. The mechanism of projection is used to settle an emotional conflict; people project their own evil impulses upon demons and that is what has become part of the World system (“Weltanschauung”). #RyanPhillippw 5 of 7

The fourth-century Constantinian basilica had held scores of tombs of bishops, cardinals, popes, and saints, and inevitably some of their bones were scattered or misplace. Five centuries later that is what people remember. Pope John Paul was shown pictures of the recent discover: a sculpted baby’s head, a family tomb with mythological stucco designs, an epigraph written by a widow to her dead husband. Then, the most interesting find, the figure of a praying woman. It was the tomb of a young man, he was told, and it appeared to be Christian. It is possible that this young man was an early Christian, and that this tomb’s ambiguous iconography reflected a transitional stage in Rome—a time when pagan symbols were being repurposed to reflect Christian doctrine. This kind of account of these restraining influences became explicit with the development of faculty psychology, which involved the view that there are different faculties of the human mind responsible for different capacities or abilities which the mind seems to exhibit. Reason was thought of as the rational faculty, emotion as a passional one, and volition as a faculty that enables us to reach decisions and make choices. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7

The moral faculty was thought by some to operate through feelings. For instance, a feeling of repugnance would tend to be aroused by the thought of doing anything immoral—anything in violation of the mores—and a feeling of approval by the thought of acting virtuously. Conscience is the inner perception of objections to definite wish impulses that exist in us; but the emphasis is put upon the fact that his rejection does not have to depend on anything else, that it is sure of itself. This becomes even plainer in the case of a guilty conscience, where we become aware of the inner condemnation of such acts which realized some of our definite wish impulses. People held popes responsible for what was built and what was destroyed under their pontificates. Even today, for example, Pope Julius II is remembered at the Vatican as the pontiff who demolished the original Saint Peter’s Basilica. When he authorized the construction of the new church, Julius allowed his architects to simply tear down the old one. There were metal walkways arching over hillside tombs, excavated crypts and uneven mosaic floors. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7