2 results for stemmed:pygmi
He abhorred liquor because he was aware of the tales saying that liquor was the Indians’ downfall. He tried to be “civilized,” to counteract the Indian image, and he repressed his feelings. He was an outsider and a small, short, tubercular-looking man. He felt himself a pygmy, because of size and because as an Indian he was put down. He never related to his French background.
The ape episode served to connect him in trust with his own deepest instincts, and he saw that those were loving. The ape could not have appeared however until after the blond man forcibly threw out that negative image. He dashed it against the wall. The pygmy Indian with the bent legs emerged, signifying Ruburt’s grandfather identification. That identification is simply one of the reasons behind his concern with spontaneity and order, as I hope I have explained earlier this evening.
It was not necessarily a negative identification. That negative quality emerged only when he felt the need for greater protection, when he threatened to become uncivilized—going against his society in unforeseen ways. When he became important at all in world terms, he could no longer be a pygmy, and therefore lost a part of that identification that he felt had protected him against his mother and the feared spontaneity or instincts. So he would become shorter.