The First-Born Son—Rivalry, Entitlement, Loss, and Reparation: Illustrations from Biblical Legends and Freud's Biography

The attention of the psychoanalytic investigator is focused on the particular experience of the first-born son through an exploration of the Biblical Law of Double Inheritance and the various tales of the first-born sons of the Bible. The interaction of the following influences on the first-born son's development are explored: (1) the father's unique hostility toward his first son whom he experiences as the 'primal son'—the incarnation of the ultimate and rightful extinction of his authority and the first male threat to the affections of his wife; (2) the mother's adoring attitude toward her first son, an attitude which promotes his success and imbues him with a sense of special destiny; (3) the birth of siblings, who displace the first son from his initial exclusive relationship with his mother and compete for his birthright, leading to difficulties in resolving the pre-oedipal ambivalence toward the mother and a greater onus to transform his fratricidal impulses and become his 'brother's keeper', and (4) his intermediary status between the generations resulting in a dual generational identification. A particular first-born son family constellation—first-born of the mother but not of the father—is discussed, and is illustrated through the biography of Sigmund Freud.