[Sidenote: The mother-son relationship and its repression]
[Sidenote: The struggle round the mother element in Christianity]
Nevertheless, it would appear that the mother-goddess is, at a certain stage of culture at any rate, liable to meet with opposition from which the corresponding father-god is usually exempt. This opposition would seem to be due to the admixture of incestuous passion which is brought over into religion from the original attachment of the child (and especially of course the son) to his earthly mother. The relations between mother and son fairly often find expression in religious stories, as in the cases of Cybele and Attis, Ishtar and Tammuz, Mary and Christ and (in the displaced form of brother and sister love) Isis and Osiris. As a rule however the mother-son relationship is not permanent but is disturbed and broken by evil plottings and brutal actions on the part of some third person (usually a father or a brother substitute), as a result of which the young son-god often meets with his death. The relations of Attis and of Christ to their mothers are of special interest in this connection, inasmuch as they plainly indicate the existence of an inner inhibition on the son's part as well as a separation brought about by interference from without. Attis according at least to some versions of his story, unmans himself on discovering the incestuous nature of his affection (as Œdipus himself had done, in a symbolic form, by putting out his eyes). In Christ the repression of the mother-regarding tendencies seems to have led to an attitude of aloofness towards his mother, and through her towards all women (_cp._ his words "Woman, what have I to do with thee?," John 2, 4)--an attitude that has profoundly affected his followers throughout the ages: for in the history of the Christian religion there is evidence--even apart from its notorious aversion from and distrust of women in general--of the existence of a constant struggle centering round the idea of the divine mother. In the early days of the Church there are accounts and rumours of sects which endeavoured to establish the worship of Mary alongside that of the Father and the Son, and there is evidence to show that the notion of the Holy Ghost corresponds in one of its aspects to that of a female deity who completes the natural trinity of Father, Mother and Son[181]. In the Roman Church Mary, as the mother of Christ, has received a widespread and often profound (though to some extent of course unofficial) adoration, being regarded perhaps especially as the helper in time of trouble, to whom men and women may go for comfort, protection, guidance or forgiveness in just the same way as they did to their earthly mother in their childhood: an adoration which has tended to call forth a feeling of disgust and horror in the Protestant Church, in which the more primite Christian tradition of the repression of the mother-regarding feelings has in this respect been kept alive[182].