Oedipus and Samson the Rejected Hero-Child

In his book Primitive Culture, written over seventy-five years ago, Edward B. Tylor warned against the application of narrow interpretations to the exposure myths of Cyrus and of Romulus and Remus. What mythological investigation needs, urged Tylor, 'is breadth of knowledge and of handling'; for if we 'look properly into the matter, we find these stories are but specimens of a widespread mythic group, itself only a section of that far larger body of traditions in which exposed infants are saved to become national heroes' (1).

In The Myth of the Birth of the Hero(2) Rank applied some of the 'breadth of knowledge' which Freud's researches had made available in the theory and practice of psycho-analysis. Rank sensed the importance of the element of rejection in these myths, noticing that the hero invariably wandered from one country, in which he was not recognized, to another in which he became a hero. He nevertheless expanded upon the notion that these myths were purely magical and cultic in origin and did not have a significant relation to actual events (2). Freud, in turn, influenced by Rank's later researches, likewise attached a purely symbolic meaning to the myths and stressed the element of fantasy. He noted, amongst other things, that exposure was usually, though not always, in a basket or box on a body of water, and concluded that the basket was the womb and the water the water at birth (3).

In 1948, in my paper The Oedipus Myth in History and Psychiatry(4) I examined the cultural aspects of the Oedipus and related myths and called attention to Freud's failure to take into account the details of Oedipus' traumatic exposure and early separation from his mother—an experience which could be expected to leave its mark on the life of an adult let alone that of a child. Lazarsfeld (4), Did Oedipus Have an Oedipus Complex, raised the same question.

My own researches (4) have uncovered some evidence that these exposure myths not only reveal an almost universal atti