There are many fairy tales in which the disparate aspects of one personality are projected onto different figures, such as one of the stories of Thousand and One Nights, “Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Porter.”29 Often called simply “Sindbad the Sailor” and occasionally “Sindbad’s Marvelous Travels,” this story shows how little those who deprive a tale of its true title understand what is essential to the story. The altered names stress the story’s fantastic content, to the detriment of its psychological meaning. The true title suggests immediately that the story is about the opposite aspects of one and the same person: that which pushes him to escape into a faraway world of adventure and fantasy, and the other part which keeps him bound to common practicality—his id and his ego, the manifestation of the reality principle and the pleasure principle.
As the story starts, Sindbad, a poor porter, is resting in front of a beautiful home. Contemplating his situation, he says: “The owner of this place abideth in all joyance of life and delighteth himself with pleasant scents and delicious meats and exquisite wines … whilst others suffer the extreme of travail … as I do.” He thus juxtaposes an existence based on pleasurable satisfactions with one based on necessity. To make sure we understand that these remarks pertain to two aspects of one and the same person, Sindbad remarks about himself and the as yet unknown owner of the palace: “Thine origin is mine and my provenance is thine.”
After we have been made to understand that these two are the same person in different forms, the porter is invited into the palace, where on seven consecutive days its owner tells of his seven fabulous voyages. In these travels he meets with outrageous perils, from which he is miraculously rescued to return home with great fortunes. During these accounts, to further emphasize the identity of the poor porter and the fabulously rich voyager, the latter says, “Know, O Porter, that thy name is even as mine” and “thou art become my brother.” The force which drives him to seek such adventures the voyager calls “the old bad man within me” and “the carnal man … [whose] heart is naturally prone to evil”—apt images of a person who gives in to the proddings of his id.
Why does this fairy tale consist of seven parts, and why do the two protagonists separate each day only to reunite on the next? Seven is the number of days in a week; in fairy tales the number seven often stands for every day of the week and is also a symbol of each day of our life. Thus it seems the story tells that as long as we live there are two different aspects to our existence, as the two Sindbads are both the same and different, one having a hard life in reality, the other having a life of fantastic adventures. Another way to interpret this is to view these opposite existences as the day and night views of life—as waking and dreaming, as reality and fantasy, or as the conscious and the unconscious realms of our being. Seen this way, the story tells mainly how different life is when viewed from the two different perspectives of the ego and the id.
The story begins by telling how Sindbad the Porter, who was “carrying a heavy load, became exceedingly weary, the heat and the weight alike oppressing him.” Saddened by the hardships of his existence, he speculates on what a rich man’s life may be like. Sindbad the Seaman’s stories may be viewed as fantasies in which the poor porter engages to escape his burdensome life. The ego, exhausted by its tasks, then permits itself to be overwhelmed by the id. The id, in contrast to the reality-oriented ego, is the seat of our wildest wishes, wishes that can lead to satisfaction or to extreme danger. This is given body in the seven stories of Sindbad the Seaman’s voyages. Carried away by what he recognizes as “the bad man within me,” Sindbad the Seaman desires fantastic adventures, and encounters horrible dangers which are akin to nightmares: giants who roast human beings on spits before eating them; evil creatures that ride Sindbad as if he were a horse; serpents which threaten to swallow him alive; huge birds that carry him through the sky. Eventually the wish-fulfilling fantasies win out over the anxious ones, as he is rescued and returns home with great riches to a life of leisure and satisfaction. But each day the requirements of reality must also be met. The id having held sway for a time, the ego reasserts itself and Sindbad the Porter returns to his everyday life of hard labor.
The fairy tale helps us to understand ourselves better, as in the story the two sides of our ambivalences are isolated and projected each onto a different figure. We can visualize these ambivalences much better when the instinctual id pressures are projected onto the intrepid, immensely rich voyager who survives when all others are destroyed, and brings home unheard-of treasure to boot, while the opposite, reality-oriented ego tendencies are embodied in the hard-working, poor porter. What Sindbad the Porter (representing our ego) has too little of—imagination, ability to see beyond the immediate surroundings—Sindbad the Seaman has too much of—since he says that he cannot be satisfied with a normal life “of ease and comfort and repose.”
When the fairy story indicates that these two very different persons are actually “brothers under the skin,” it guides the child toward the preconscious realization that these two figures are really two parts of one and the same person; that the id is as much an integral part of our personality as the ego. One of the great merits of this tale is that Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Porter are equally appealing figures; neither of the two sides of our nature is denied its attractiveness, importance, validity.
Unless to some measure a separation of our complex inner tendencies has been accomplished in our mind, we have no comprehension of the sources of our confusion about ourselves, about how we are torn between opposite feelings, and our need to integrate these. Such integration requires the realization that there are discordant aspects to our personality, and what these are. “Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Porter” suggests both the isolation of the discordant aspects of our psyche, and that these belong with each other and must be integrated—the two Sindbads part company each day, but come together again after each separation.
When viewed in isolation, a relative weakness of this fairy tale is that at its end it fails to express symbolically the need for the integration of the disparate aspects of our personality which have been projected onto the two Sindbads. If this were a fairy tale of the Western world, it would end with the two living happily together ever after. As it is, the listener feels somewhat let down by the story’s end, as he wonders why these two brothers continue to separate and come together anew each day. It would seem on the surface to make much better sense if they settled down to live together permanently in complete harmony, an ending which would symbolically express the hero’s successful achievement of psychic integration.
But if that were the story’s end, there would be little reason to continue with the telling of fairy tales the next night. “Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Porter” is part of The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.* According to the arrangement of the Thousand and One Nights, Sindbad the Seaman’s seven voyages were actually told over thirty nights.
*The collection of fairy tales which became known as Thousand and One Nights or, in Burton’s translation, as The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, is of Indian and Persian origin and can be traced as early as the tenth century. The number 1001 is not to be taken literally. On the contrary, “thousand” in Arabic means “innumerable,” so 1001 signifies an infinite number. Later compilers and translators took this number literally and arrived at a collection which contained this number of stories by subdividing and adding fairy tales.30