Further exploration of the circumcision rite is made. Some original ideas are suggested to explain the overdetermined unconscious significance of this Jewish rite: the father's defense against his own castration anxieties evoked by the birth of his son; the 'symbolic representative of the feared grandfather' in the form of the godfather; the carrying out of the partial castration by a father-figure by sacrificing the prepuce in order to protect the phallus, thereby providing ritualistic recognition and legality for future adult masculinity and paternity. The sucking of a drop of blood from the penis at the end of the ritual is seen as a passive homosexual act also defending against castration; i.e., 'the retaining of the organ on condition that it not be used heterosexually …'. Further comment is devoted to the isolation of 'sadistic affect' in the ritual which is ultimately expressed in the service: 'if this act is performed timidly … it is null and void'.