nails
Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘nail’ operates across several distinct registers that converge on questions of fixation, fate, and incarnation. The most sustained treatment appears in Onians, who documents the nail’s archaic role as an instrument of binding and destiny: Roman ritual required the annual driving of a nail into the Capitol to ‘fix’ fate, and Latin authors understood love itself as a nail driven into the animus. This fatalistic-magical register connects the nail to defixio—binding spells, devotio, and the irreversible inscription of outcomes onto persons or places. Von Franz, in her commentary on the Puer Aeternus, reads the nail through the lens of crucifixion symbolism: a dream-image of an enormous nail piercing a naked figure signals the dangerous inflation of an individual who has identified with sacred suffering, as well as the necessary mortification that separates ego from numinous content. Bleuler’s clinical material offers a chilling parallel, documenting how a schizophrenic patient named Nageli reasoned himself into messianic identity through a word-sound association with nails and the Cross. Snell’s linguistic analysis adds a further dimension, noting that ‘the head of a nail’ constitutes a genuine nominal metaphor in Greek, one organized around resemblance rather than function. Together these perspectives reveal the nail as a symbol at the intersection of fate, fixation, the suffering body, and the concretizing power of language.
each year the praetor maximus must drive a nail (clavum pangat) on the Capitol (ibid. 5) as was done at Volsinii (ibid. 7) in the temple of Nortia, goddess of fate.
Onians demonstrates that the ritual driving of a nail was an archaic Roman mechanism for fixing or sealing fate, linking the nail directly to the goddess of destiny and the irreversibility of decreed outcomes.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
In Plautus the alternative image appears; love is a nail driven into the animus
Onians traces a Latin metaphorical tradition in which the nail figures the compulsive, binding quality of passion, driving itself into the psychic substance (animus) of the afflicted person.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988thesis
a monument was shown her the figure of a naked man with an enormous nail going through his shoulder and coming out at the hip, and a voice said, ‘Lazarus was dead, and Lazarus
Von Franz interprets a clinical dream-image of a giant nail transfixing a naked figure as symbolizing the necessary mortification that separates an inflated ego from its identification with numinous or visionary content.
, Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood, 1970thesis
nails in the flesh? They nailed the black cloak on him, and that causes the suffering. Answer: It’s like being nailed to the cross, isn’t it? Yes, it is an allusion to the crucifixion of Christ, but with a variation, for it is the wrong kind of identification.
Von Franz distinguishes between authentic sacrificial suffering and the puer’s erroneous identification with crucifixion imagery, reading the nail as the instrument of a pathological inflation rather than genuine transformation.
, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, 1970thesis
A religious paranoid is named Nageli. Christ was nailed to the Cross. Therefore, Nageli is Christ; he has also been nailed. But nails are also
Bleuler presents the nail as the pivot of a schizophrenic syllogism in which phonetic association with the patient’s surname, crucifixion symbolism, and literal identification collapse into delusional messianic identity.
, Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias, 1911supporting
binding was almost coextensive with fixation or fastening, and, when better methods were devised, the term would naturally be extended to cover them, e.g. δεσμός of a rivet or Jungian in metal work and the similar use of the verb for nailing, pinning
Onians traces the conceptual genealogy of the nail within the broader archaic category of binding, showing how nailing inherited the ritual and psychic weight previously borne by cord and knot.
, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting
He let them nail Him to the cross that He might nail to the curse of the cross and abolish all the curses to which the world is condemned.
John of Damascus deploys the nail as a theological instrument of paradox: the act of nailing Christ to the cross simultaneously activates and annuls the curse, making the nail a vehicle of soteriological reversal.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
The head of a nail, to be sure, does not have the same function as a real head, but it looks like one; it is round, its position is at the top, and so forth. The metaphor, then, refers either to a function or to a resemblance.
Snell uses ‘the head of a nail’ as a specimen case for analyzing the structure of nominal metaphor in Greek, distinguishing resemblance-based from function-based transfers of meaning.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953supporting
ὄνυξ, νυχος, ὁ … when the model reaches the nail stage, because the sculptor puts the finishing touches to the model with his nail
Renehan documents a Greek idiomatic cluster built around the nail (fingernail) as the instrument of ultimate refinement and precision in sculpting, giving the nail connotations of final exactitude.
, Greek lexicographical notes A critical supplement to theaside
ἧλος may be derived from *ϝάλνος, *ϝάλσος, vel sim. and could be equated with Lat. vallus ‘pole, stake of a palisade’
Beekes reconstructs the Proto-Greek etymology of ἧλος (nail, stud), connecting it to Latin vallus and establishing the nail’s linguistic kinship with boundary markers and fixed stakes.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside
Perhaps identical with ὄνυξ ‘nail’ because of its white glaze, like that of a fingernail; alternatively, is it just a foreign word reshaped by folk etymology?
Beekes raises the possibility that the Greek word for onyx derives by visual analogy from the word for fingernail, illustrating how the nail’s surface appearance generated a secondary semantic field.
, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside