Discussion of Albert J. Lubin's Article, The Influence of the Russian Orthodox Church on Freud's Wolf-Man: A Hypothesis (With an Epilogue Based on Visits with the Wolf-Man)

The essence of Lubin's paper is contained in his brilliant suggestion that the Wolf-Man's dream of the wolves on the tree, in addition to Freud's now classical interpretations, also represents Christ on the cross. The suggestion—a particularly valuable one, for reasons which I will discuss below—is extensively substantiated with material from the case history, from the iconology and ritual of the Russian Orthodox Church, and from the Wolf-Man's own further associations and reminiscences.

Christ-identifications and crucifixion fantasies may be universal in our culture. The Wolf-Man's crucifixion fantasy is a particularly well-documented and instructive instance of this widely distributed phenomenon, and Lubin's study is an invaluable part of this documentation.

I have come to regard crucifixion fantasies (unconscious identification with the crucified Christ) as a culturally determined elaboration of the primal scene schema and have found it manifested in nearly all of my patients, regardless of sex, race, or cultural or religious background. For this reason, I now regard it as an essentially normal phenomenon which contains within it the possibility of various outcomes, normal as well as pathological. Clinically, the relevant associations are often found in the context of such expletives as “Christ!” “God!” “Jesus!” “Gosh!” “Gee!” or “Cripes!” These expletives serve as indices for the presence of primal scene fantasies in the immediate material.

The primal scene schema, as a basis for fantasy, provides a framework for a double identification (which may be either simultaneous or oscillating) with both principals in a sadomasochistically conceived primal scene. In normal development, one root of mature sexual identity evolves out of the ambiguous sexual anatomy of the primal scene. A body-ego (mother-child) ambiguity is superimposed on the sexual (male-female) ambiguity of the primal scene in certain regressive states.

The relation of crucifixion fantasies to primal scene