The ritual of dedication or consecration of a structure, be it a house, a church, a city wall or a bridge, is old and widespread. In form it has been altered by religion and civilization, but in unconscious significance it still serves the same purpose, the mastering of anxiety.

Schnier carefully analyzes the ritualistic details of such dedications through the ages, from the custom of burying live or murdered slaves in the foundations, and the spattering of bricks with sacrificial blood, up to the present-day embedding of documents in a corner near the entrance of a new building.

Anxiety arises because the new enterprise means growth toward power and maturity and thus, unconsciously, entrance and possession of the structure means intercourse with the mother. This victory over the father evokes guilt, and fear of retaliation calls for his death. Hence the evidence of his ritualistic murder should be buried near the portals of what symbolizes the maternal womb.