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I Want to begin with four clinical examples of the psychodynamic problem I have in mind. Like all clinical examples, they are part fiction, part fact.
My first example is of a young man in his late twenties, to whom it would not have occurred to go into analysis. He was a surpassingly beautiful servant in the house of a bisexual captain of the Egyptian Guard. This master had acquired this Jewish youth initially ‘for a lewd purpose’, but, discovering that his comely servant was serious about his Judaism, managed to sublimate his attraction to the young man. He treated him as a son and gave him a favoured position in his home. The captain's wife could not so easily contain her physical longing. She persistently entreated the servant for sex, which he always refused her, explaining that he could not betray a master who had treated him kindly. Exasperated, the woman finally played a trick: she seized the unsuspecting servant by his shirt as if to draw him near. When, as she expected, he tore himself forcibly from her grasp, she had a bit of his clothing in hand with which to prove to her husband that the young man had made a pass at her. A tribunal was called, and though no one really believed the captain's wife, the young man was sent to prison on the grounds that he had called his mistress' honour into question.
For the biblical Joseph, who was the unfortunate servant, this imprisonment turned out to be decisive. His skill at interpreting other prisoners' dreams became known to the Pharaoh, who had had a ‘big’ dream which none of his usual consultants could interpret. Joseph's refusal of Potiphar's wife led to his rise under a far more powerful master, the Pharaoh.
My second example, from the analysis of a contemporary man, is an amplification of the Joseph story. This man, also in his late twenties, found himself making rapid advances in his chosen career. He felt supported in his advancement over his fellows at work by the seemingly endless encouragement of his fatherl