"Sigmund Freud stresses in his writings the passages and difficulties of the first half of the human cycle of life--those of our infancy and adolescence, when our sun is mounting toward its zenith. C.G. Jung, on the other hand, has emphasized the crises of the second portion--when, in order to advance, the shining sphere must submit to descend and disappear, at last, into the night-womb of the grave. The normal symbols of our desires and fears become converted, in this afternoon of the biography, into their opposites; for it is then no longer life but death that is the challenge. What is difficult to leave, then, is not the womb but the phallus--unless, indeed, the life-weariness has already seized the heart, when it will be death that calls with the promise of bliss that formerly was the lure of love. Full circle, from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb, we come: an ambiguous, enigmatical incursion into a world of solid matter that is soon to melt from us, like the substance of a dream."
-from The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
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