Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

January 12, 1971. GOD THE FATHER AND HIS SONS. Howard H. Schlossman, M.D.

Dr. Schlossman examined a recurrent theme in Genesis of competing brothers where the younger emerges triumphant. Frequent references to Jehovah as the opener of the womb point to a special relationship between the child-bearing woman and the phallic God, a residue of an earlier matriarchy. As the fate of the first-born son was frequently sacrifice, he did not share in his father's inheritance. References to sexual union with a god and to child sacrifice were later obscured but survived in the saga of the victorious younger son. In folklore, Isaac is sacrificed and subsequently resurrected, paralleling the story of Christ. In the Biblical version, the lamb is substituted for Isaac and Jehovah rejects the child sacrifice practiced by his predecessor, El.

Excerpts from the analyses of two 'triumphant' younger sons were presented. The first patient's guilt led to the dibbuk myth: he fantasied his older, stillborn brother's spirit seeking to take possession of his body. The second patient fantasied that his older brother was sacrificed to God by being sent to the Yeshivah; he feared that he too would be sacrificed.

In the evolution of social organizations, Schlossman sees the Hunter Gatherers (primal horde) as the earliest level. Castration and death were deterrents to incest. In the later agricultural matriarchy, the mother-goddess shared power and religious mysteries with her son after the father-god had been murdered. The son's Oedipal triumph led to guilt; in the totemic incorporation of the father, we find archaic superego formation. Population growth led to social conflict and the evolution of a warrior class. The Oedipal mother and father attained equal stature, and in the homosexually charged relationships of war, the ego ideal developed. The final triumph of the new patriarchal religion involved a rewriting of the old myths to obscure the power of women and the rite of child s