The spectrum of various types of mothering ranges from rejection of the infant to the destructive extreme of mothers who cling to the infant, aware only of their own needs, and who see the infant as an object of hatred. Short of this extreme, and different from it, is the mother who is likened by the author to the mother of Oedipus. This type of mother maintains a symbiotic relationship but in a loving, creative way even though it originates in her own affect hunger founded on real loss. The author applies this formula of the Jocasta mother to the biographical data available on Shakespeare, Marlowe, Goethe, Heine, Balzac, Proust, Dostoevsky, Sartre, and Freud. He lists the features common to the personality of a genius, reminiscent of but not nearly as brilliant as the listing of the qualities of the hero by Otto Rank.