Abstract
Heneini, Abraham dutifully responds to the voice of his God. “I am here” to do your bidding and kill my son.
Three biblical generations later Joseph similarly declares to his father Heneini—I am here. This time, though, the presence of God is interiorized. There are no external voices of a deity, and Joseph’s generativity is internally derived. He is the first biblical character to have the capacity to mourn. He and his father Jacob are the first father-son pair to weep together. Nathan Szajnberg’s book explores the implications of this evolution from intergenerational violence to meaningful emotional connection between father and son.
The author’s intention is to add a fourth to the three great Western father-son narratives: Laius-Oedipus, Abraham-Isaac, and God-Christ. Each of these pairs is organized around an essential act of violence. In contrast, with Jacob and Joseph, Szajnberg identifies a father-son relationship “infused with the capacity to transmit hopes without jeopardizing the lives of either father or son” (p. 4). Further, he identifies Jacob’s paternal attunement as a key element in Joseph’s ability to organize a secure identity and a dependably benevolent ego ideal. He also cautiously conjectures that Jacob’s capacity to contain affects and inspire others—his mature ego ideal—has contributed to the endurance of the Jewish people over the millennia. In addition, sotto voce, Szajnberg seeks to expand our familiar analytic models of masculine development. More about that later.
Before immersing ourselves in this short text of biblical scholarship, it is necessary to understand how the writer deals with the multiple authors and hundreds of years during which the Bible was compiled—the historicity of the characters. Szajnberg is straightforward about “sidestepping” (p. 3n) those facts, as well as the lack of substantive evidence for the existence—much less access to the inner lives—of these individuals. He states that “whether these characters lived or not, they are alive in the lives and minds of many who listen to or read these tales” (p. 30). Szajnberg engages biblical characters as if they were actual people, and as if they were analysands; and he takes biblical wordings as if they were analytic associations. He recognizes such efforts as “an exercise” (p. 42) that can speak deeply to us despite the liberties taken.
The book’s opening chapters provide a character analysis first of each man. Jacob is recognized as a “trickster,” “a schemer,” and a “deceiver.” His deception of his father, Isaac—and in turn his sons’ deception of Jacob—mark the absence of a “loving internal figure to guide [Jacob] . . . as he keeps striving for someone’s, someone’s blessing” (p. 28). In the face of the apparent death of his favorite son, timeless melancholia was the most substantial affect he was able to muster. Szajnberg sees the alternating identities of “Jacob” (used 42 times) and “Israel” (used 22 times) as reflecting the man’s mercurial self-concept and his failed internal consolidation.
In contrast, Joseph’s “neurotic dilemmas develop and resolve” (p. 34). Through the vicissitudes of his abandonment by his brothers and his descents into punishing pits, he is shown to mature from a precociously self-assured teenager to a thoughtful and generously forgiving man. He comes to be able to recognize the affects of those who dream, to cry in the face of tragedy, and to have the ego capacity to anticipate, delay, and plan for a nation’s future. He can acknowledge ambivalence toward his father, which in turn allows for de-idealization and the development of a mature ego ideal. In synchrony with Joseph’s intrapsychic development, his representation of God evolves from an external “voice” to an inspiration. He never hears God speak to him. The author suggests that this carries a broader message of maturation: of the Jewish/Israelite God image into a “single God representing an externalization of an integrated sense of self” (p. 34). God now is seen to exist and function as an inner voice.
Szajnberg’s central thesis—the differentiation of the Jacob-Joseph relation from all others before it—is elaborated in chapter 3. It is seen as the “keystone to a different arch through which the relationship between father and son can pass: one in which the son can pursue the father’s dreams without destroying the father nor fearing his destruction” (p. 62). Joseph recognizes his father’s unfulfilled dream for a united family and tribe. Jacob’s final words bless Joseph above all others: “A fruitful son by a spring . . . / blessings of the heavens above . . . of the deep that lies below / blessings of the breast and womb.” Joseph was indeed the chosen son. Jacob shows no awareness of the malignant impact of his favoritism on the life trajectories of his other children. Joseph, too, appears oblivious to the burden on his brothers of his special place in his father’s heart. Yet he appears to mature beyond the simple entitlement that one might expect from such circumstances. He appears to draw sustenance and self-regard from his father’s affections. He grows to accomplish what his father could not: Joseph unites his family, through forgiveness and generativity, and forms the basis of a nation.
What, though, of the son who does not choose “to pursue the father’s dreams”? What of the son who seeks his own dreams? Is the author’s emphasis away from intergenerational aggression dependent on father and son ostensibly sharing a dream? Would autonomous life dreams reactivate the rough-and-tumble of separateness and the jousting of rivalry?
For these questions we need to hear the author’s whispered considerations on masculine development. He turns to the work of Peter Blos Sr. and others to separate his conclusions from traditional, aggression-focused developmental models and mythologies. Without mentioning Blos’s concept of a dyadic paternal phase specifically, Szajnberg applies Blos’s thinking to Joseph’s development in relation to Jacob. Blos describes the dyadic paternal phase thus: The little boy seeks by active and persistent solicitation the father’s approval, recognition, and confirmation, thus establishing a libidinal bond of a profound and lasting kind. We have good cause to reason that these signals of approval and affirmation, transmitted by the father’s general bearing and responsive presence (not necessarily verbalized), are received by the son during the early years of life and instill in him a modicum of self-possession and self-assertion—distilled, as it were, out of mutual sameness or shared maleness—which renders the wider world not only manageable and conquerable but infinitely alluring, even though there remains a lasting tinge of threatening and bewildering awesomeness about it [Blos 1985, p. 11].
For me, Szajnberg’s accentuation of the similarity he sees between Jacob’s and Joseph’s life goals does not diminish the importance he places on the formative contribution of their libidinal tie. Szajnberg views Joseph’s gracious character as deriving “in part from the sense of being cared for, treasured at least by his father” (p. 110); or, as Blos characterizes it, “the ego ideal is the heir to the so-called negative Oedipus complex” (1985, p. 150). Joseph’s mature ego ideal would prove vital even in the face of discordant life dreams. After all, when manifest life plans are distinct between the generations, they are often linked through a common spirit, which is laden with identification. This early paternal buddy system buffers the son against a sense of abandonment that might otherwise accompany gender differentiation from the mother. Looking forward, it enables a masculine mutuality that serves as a supportive undergirding for subsequent rivalry.
Szajnberg takes additional poetic license, beyond that of assuming the unconscious life of these characters, in suggesting that Joseph’s particular maturity served as a template enabling Judaism’s resilience over the millennia. “This kind of father-son relationship,” he speculates, “can endure across generations” (p. 110). Specifically, he conjectures that “the endurance of community identity . . . comes in part from what we have learned about the Jacob and Joseph relationship and also from Joseph’s accretion of an Ego Ideal psychic structure” (p. 102).
For me, the history of the Jewish people—of any people—has far too many internal and external variables to be meaningfully represented through one literary figure or relationship, regardless of the special characteristics attributed to that individual or relationship. Poetic license gives room for the emblem that is Joseph. However, Judaism’s essence, its own well-nuanced ego ideal, is to challenge the sensual gratification of idolatry—the worship of a personified God. Instead, Judaism seeks to engage the opportunities made available through considering the abstract and ineffable.
Szajnberg sets out to teach us about the essential contribution of Jacob’s love in facilitating Joseph’s maturation. The personal representations within these myths speak loudly to him. In his acknowledgments, he invites the reader into his own life, mentioning by name two male analysts who “were dedicated to freeing up my inner life so that I could create and enjoy life.”
As Joseph is seen as furthering Jacob’s dream, Szajnberg adds, “I hope that my work here confirms how much they’ve contributed.” This loving testimonial reminds us of an essence of rich analytic work. That millennia-old texts speak that same truth should come as no surprise to us. After all, now many generations later in our analysands’ journeys, we too have the privilege to offer our own expression of Heneini.