There are doctor animals and ordinary animals
If you study the whole setup of such primitive situations you will see that they are just as likely as we to make the same mistake, i.e., to interpret something as psychological when it is physical and vice versa.
There are doctor animals and ordinary animals, and they are uncertain as to which is which.
This uncertainty as to what should survive seems to be a general human condition.
There exists a very deep-seated possibility of error and uncertainty as to the level on which certain impulses have to be lived and classified.
It may happen that a primitive hunter shoots a bear and is afterwards horrified to discover that he has shot an ancestral ghost.
He did not experience quickly enough the psychic implications.
I think this must have to do with the fact that we do not consciously grasp our threshold instinctive reactions; we always tend to keep within ourselves threshold reactions such as a little doubt, or a little impulse not to do something.
If the impulses are not very strong we are inclined to put them aside in a one-sided way and by this we have hurt an animal or a spirit within us.
We always tend to keep within ourselves threshold reactions such as a little doubt, or a little impulse not to do something.
If the impulses are not very strong we are inclined to put them aside in a one-sided way and by this we have hurt an animal or a spirit within us. — Marie-Louise von Franz, The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales, Page 58
