RETURN OF THE ANCESTOR. By Richard Hughes.

CHAPTER ONE: GENETICS OF MARRIAGE CHOICE

( PAGES 17 - 40)
The first pages you will find when you press the picture of Szondi. We used these for presentation of a Szondi biography. Your editor-

I. Concept of Genotropism
Out of his personal and professional experiences Szondi attempted to answer the question of marriage choice. Why does one marry this
person and no one else? From a common sense perspective we normally understand marriage as resulting from chance or from sharing
common interests. Szondi, however, discovered some significant patterns of marriage choice, which he formulated in his seminal English
language essay entitled “Contributions to ‘Fate Analysis” (1937).
With reference to the phobic young wife, her husband, and mother-in-law, as described in the introduction, Szondi asks:
Could the tragedy of these three people be perhaps approached from a genealogical aspect? Or...is it not the same ancestor - the
genealogist would say, the same recessive gene - who, reappearing, causes the common fate of mother, son and daughter-in-law? Isn’t it
possible that they are “gene-related,” their common gene being that of the neurotic ancestor (1937, 6)?
Midway in the essay Szondi proposes an ancestor theory of object choice. Marriage partners, although appearing to be different, are
actually attracted to each other by virtue of a unique “identity.” Though not visible, this identity exists in the latent recessive genes, which
“direct instinctively and unconsciously our choice in love and perhaps also our choice in other biological acts....”(1937, 26)
Szondi develops this insight on the basis of the classical genetics of Gregor Mendel, explaining that within a “heterozygotic gene couple”
the relations between the dominant and the recessive components are dynamic. The two genes of a heterozygous individual are “as was
originally meant by Mendel, antagonists, adversaries, and the relation of the forces of the fighting parties decide upon the phenotypical
picture in which both
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antagonistic genes strive to come to effect” (1937, 39). Genes are linked to ancestors. In the genetic struggle the “recessive ancestor” is
defeated by the “dominant ancestor.” Though not penetrating the phenotype, the latent recessive genes retain an influence. They direct
unconsciously our choice in love, friendship, vocation, illness, and mode of death.
In a lecture in Geneva, two years later, Szondi announced that he has studied more than a thousand marriages and that he has found the
answer to the problem, namely, why people who are normal and healthy, marry and produce feeble-minded, epileptic, or schizophrenic
children. He then presents a three-fold theory of object choice: (1) The object choice is that of a gene-determined, biological drive process.
(2) The reciprocal attraction is conditioned through the same or related mode of latent recessive genes. ´
(3) This hitherto unknown biological reality of the latent recessive genes is called genotropism (Szondi 1939, 45).
Szondi suggests that there are three kinds of genotropism. One is called libido-genotropism or, more simply, libidotropism. It means that
latent recessive genes guide one’s sexual energy toward a love or marriage partner. The formula is Aa x Aa. Several examples are provided
in the lecture, and, of these, case #2 is one:
Both marriage partners (family tree: #6,7) are healthy and psychologically normal. Of their two children one (#10) is feeble- minded, the
other healthy (#9). The question for the analysis of destiny is: which hidden gene-relation ship has brought their marriage together? Our
investigation shows that the brother of the husband (#5) and a son of the brother of the wife (#11) are feeble-minded (1939, 48).
A second kind is sociotropism, which means that latent recessive genes direct persons toward others as ideals or friends. It is expressed as
sympathy for and antipathy against one another. The formula is Aa x aa.
A third kind pertains to vocational choice, and it is called operotropism. Case #10 is an example:
A man (family tree: #6) suffers schizophrenia (dementia paranoides) with lethal origin. His brother (#7) struggles with the anxiety of also
becoming ill with schizophrenia. He remains healthy. His destiny unfolds in the following manner: He falls in love with his cousin (#10,
libidotropism), who later gets sick as a paranoid schizophrenic and commits suicide. He will become a psychiatrist and spend many years
in a mental hospital. The chief object of his
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scientific research is schizophrenia (operotropism). (1939,55) In the same lecture Szondi discusses the work of the Danish geneticist
Wilhelm Johannsen. He takes over Johannsen’s definitions of phenotype and genotype, which remain basic in genetics. The phenotype is
the content of all the characteristics existing in the appearance of the organism. The genotype comprises the totality of heredity given
through the constitutions of both gametes. Genotypic manifestation occurs when a gene appears in the phenotype. Dominance and
recessive are the principal modes of genotropic transmission.
Szondi also uses Johannsen’s calculations of the frequency of carriers of latent recessive genes. For example, Johannsen had determined
that out of ten million people approximately 1,800,000 would carry a single dosage gene for feeble-mindedness. Szondi quotes (1939, 58)
the following passage from Johannsen’s book (1926, 578): “It is certainly possible, indeed true, that a conscious or unconscious
preference of analogous Aa-individuals for one another has validity....” Johannsen expresses the opinion that such marriages are not by
chance. Szondi agrees and suggests that the concept of genotropism provides a psychological framework for the findings of Johannsen
and Mendel.
Szondi concludes his lecture by reviewing the then current proposals for the sterilization of defective persons in Nazi Germany, Great
Britain, and the United States. In light of Johannsen’s calculations sterilizing carriers of psychiatric disorders would virtually destroy
society. Szondi argues that genotropism is the opposite of sterilization. Carriers of defective recessive genes can produce productive
offspring. For example, carriers of the gene for schizophrenia become psychiatrists. Since schizophrenics, both manifest and latent,
produce physicians, they should not be sterilized.

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Five years after his expulsion from Hungary, Szondi wrote: “The theory of genotropism - as we have expected - has awakened a great
resistance not only in genealogical and biological but also in psychological circles.” He goes on to say: “The situation is astonishing that
in the past ten years to my knowledge not one single publication has appeared, which has attempted to refute the thesis of genotropism on
the basis of a precise genetic analysis” (Szondi 1949b, 12).
As evidence proving genotropism, Szondi cites the following case:
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Two identical twin sisters choose marriage partners. The one (twin #2) first marries a lawyer, who is later persecuted by paranoid
delusions like his father, a lawyer, who had to be hospitalized for paranoia.
Her twin sister (twin #1) marries a physician who appears to be healthy but whose father and sister are paranoid. In the family of the
marriage partner of twin #1 we find with the male and female cousins, uncles and aunts, a number of paranoid ego disturbances and
character anomalies.
The analysis of each family of the twins’ partners would confirm in every case a series of paranoid illnesses. The father, a paternal aunt,
and paternal cousin of each were paranoid. On the other hand, three cousins were socially abnormal in a paranoid sense. Likewise, a
maternal aunt and her daughter were paranoid. Thus, two identical twins, who are carriers of paranoid-schizo´phrenic factors, choose
marriage partners who are either manifestly paranoid themselves (in the case of twin #2) or descend from a family that frequently exhibits
paranoid illnesses and character anomalies (in the case of twin #1).
Therefore, the chosen marriage partners of these twin sisters are reciprocally but also genetically related to their wives. The twins, the
chosen marriage partners, further more, the parents of the twins and the two fathers-in-law were carriers (with respect to the manifest
illnesses) of the same abnormal genetic factors (1949b, 12).
In the same essay Szondi explains that he is describing, primarily, the heterozygous carrier, that is, one who has received in single dosage
a lethal recessive gene from one parent. In contrast, the noncarrier is either one who is totally free of the inherited trait or is a “pure blood”
homo zygous person, one who has received the two recessive genes for the specific trait from both parents. If two carriers marry and
produce children the following percentages are in effect: 25% chance of acquiring the trait, 25% chance of complete immunity, and a 50%
chance of being a carrier.
In the case of a deleterious recessive condition, the homozygous person will suffer the ill effects, but the heterozygous carrier will not.
Szondi emphasizes that the carrier has a superiority, which is known as heterosis or high Darwinian vitality. Heterosis confers a selectional
or genetic advantage upon the carrier. The concept of heterosis came out of pioneering experiments conducted by the Swedish geneticist
Ake

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Gustafsson in 1946. He demonstrated that single dosage recessive genes improve the vigor of animals and plants, as in barley, for
example. Subsequent research has demonstrated other forms of heterosis, such as carriers of the recessive gene for sickle cell anemia and
for thalassemia are resistant to malaria (Milunsky 1977, 69). Genotropism is the human version of heterosis in the sense that carriers
choose vocational or friendship groups which provide socially constructive outlets for latent lethal tendencies.
Szondi proposes that the idea of a genetic load be revised in terms of a “familial load” (familiäre Belastung). The genetic load means that
all sexually reproducing creatures acquire lethal or defective genes from mutations. Many mutations are recessive and survive for several
generations because they are concealed in genotypes. All creatures, including humans, bear genetic loads in their evolutionary histories.
Normally, many generations elapse between the rise of mutations and their elimination by natural selection.
Szondi’s notion of a familial genetic load represents a fundamental insight. It corresponds to a shift in genetics from the classical model to
the balancing model of the genetic load. According to the classical model, the genotype produces a normal type, from which mutant
recessives deviate and lead to elimination because the load is too heavy to bear. With the balancing model evolution has a balancing
selection which normalizes lethal traits and makes them beneficial. Heterosis is one of the most important means of balancing selection.
One reason for heterotic balancing is that humans are heterozygous for several thousand genes and because of this variety we can adapt to
changing environments. The seminal exposition of the balancing model may be found in the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky (1970, 124-
127). Dobzhansky’s explanation of the marriage of carriers is the same as Szondi’s (1964, 131-135). The difference is that Szondi posits a
familial load on the basis of extensive pedigree studies.
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II. Types of Marriage Choice
To understand the familial load more fully, let us return to Szondi’s original essay on marriage choice (1937). He develops various
categories of choice. One is concordant and is designated by the formula “sick x sick??. It consists of mutual attraction between two
partners who have the same disease or defect. Case #2 is an example.
A stuttering man marries the stuttering daughter of his own sister. All the eight children of this concordantly ill couple are stutterers. But
stuttering can be found also in the children of healthy parents, among the relatives. In the branch A of this family, there are three stutterers
among the children of parents of normal speech. Similarly, the boy in the branch C of the family is a stutterer with both parents healthy
(1937, 9).
Szondi reports that he reviewed one hundred marriages of this defective category and found only one concordant situation. Thus,
concordant marriages represent only one percent of human populations. Here the attraction is hidden, because one does not intend to
choose a partner who is manifestly defective.
A second kind is discordant and is designated as “healthy x sick”. In families with feeble-mindedness Szondi found 15-20% of cases,
wherein a healthy person marries a diseased or defective partner. Case #3 suggests an answer as to why this might happen.

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A well-to-do, in every respect healthy girl (also of intact hearing) marries a man almost entirely deaf. The latter’s deafness is of
otoscierotic origin. The hereditary genuine character of the defect is evident in view of the fact that one of his sisters and [ of his] elder
brothers are also deaf. From this discordant marriage originated two children: the one, a boy, is hard of hearing, he has remained a
bachelor for life; the other child, a girl, was of normal hearing, married a man and has now a 10 year old daughter. Szondi points out that
this girl is hard of hearing and communicates only by reading peoples’ lips. This tragical case one cannot help asking how it could have
happened that a healthy woman knowingly married a deaf man transferring thereby the husband’s deafness to the children and
grandchildren. An explanation may,
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however, be derived from the study of the family tree of this woman; she herself though entirely healthy, turned out to have had a deaf
father and deaf sister (1937, 13). A third type is concordant, involving partners who remain healthy throughout their lives but whose blood
relatives bear hereditary disorders.
Case #5 is an example of this “healthy x healthy” kind. A 21 year old man, metal worker, falls in love with a girl two years older than he.
From this marriage originated eight children, one of them (8 years old) has neurotic symptoms and enuresis, presents besides educational
problems. Is there any “gene-relation” between the parties? According to the findings of the family research the father of the wife was
blind, the father and a brother of the husband was of very reduced sight, almost blind. One of the 4 children of the latter was born
completely blind (1937, 22). As this and many other case studies show, heterozygous carriers tend to contract the “healthy x sick”
discordant and “healthy x healthy” concordant forms of marriage.
III. Serial Monogamy, Rape, and Incest
Szondi presents rich case material, indicating that recessive genes are implicated in seemingly abnormal situations. Case #50 concerns a
50 year old physician who married three times. Each wife descended from criminal parents and exhibited sadistic tendencies. His first
wife was an intelligent, good-humoured woman of great wit. She bore three children. The first child, a girl, died young. The two others
[ both sons,... [ the mother beat them often with a spiked stick. In the ninth year of her marriage she got involved in a love affair with a
man, who finally shot her to death (1937,44).
The widowed husband later fell in love with and married an extremely cruel woman. She mistreated her stepsons by locking them up in a
room and then going out looking for fun. They later became thieves. After eight years of marriage, the physician divorced this woman.
Within two years he married a third wife, who was brutal toward the two sons. They hated her even more than the first two mothers. The
sons were eventually arrested for robbery.
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To understand the motivations for this choice behavior Szondi looks at the families of the three wives. In the family of the first wife the
father was a heavy drinker, and a sister was a hysteric who gave birth to two insane daughters. The son of another sister was a hard-core
criminal. A third brother died of pneumonia.
A cousin of the second wife was politically prominent, but he was arrested for embezzlement. The mother of the third wife was a miser,
the sister a lewd person, and the brother a convicted thief and embezzler. The physician was a healthy man from a distinguished family.
His father died of cancer at an early age. The mother was nervous, irritable, and sadistic, and she tormented her grandchildren. The
woman became a fortune teller and seller of herbs. The physician could not relate well with his mother, so he left home at an early age to
get married.
Szondi explains how the tragedy started. Like the mythical Oedipus he also married his “mother” over and over again three times. He
married the person he tried to escape. We lay stress on three points in this case: 1. the similarity between the characters of the three wives;
2. the similarity between the character of the wives and that of the mother; 3. the tallying as to criminality of the blood relatives of all
three wives and even of the children (1937, 45).
Szondi goes on to analyze several rape cases and, of these, case #25 is an example. A seven year old girl was raped by her maternal uncle,
who, thereafter, maintained a sexual relationship with her. The uncle lived in another city far away. The attraction was so strong that the
girl often ran away from home to visit her uncle. She did this despite the fact that he beat her frequently and threatened her with death, lest
she reveal their relationship. Finally, after an argument, she did expose the secret to another uncle. Szondi points out that the girl was
epileptic and that her epilepsy manifested itself also in some mental equivalents: in compulsory running away and in poriomania. Her
father was also epileptic. The mother must have been heterozygote, since she bore the epileptic child. Thus the maternal uncle who
committed the stuprum might have been, with great probability, heterozygote with respect to epilepsy too (1937,53).
Finally, Szondi considers incestuous relationships based upon case materials taken from the Girls Correctional Institute in Budapest. Data
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indicate that 28% of non-virginal girls had had sexual intercourse with a brother, father, or stepfather. Case #27 is an example that deals
with a young boy who was raised in an orphanage. He was sent to a foster home but was returned to the orphanage after setting a fire. He
had a sister, all the while he was at the orphanage but was completely unaware of her existence until age 15. When he learned she was his
twin, he began to search for her. In the summer of 1918 he saw a girl coming out of the Correctional Institute and recognized her
immediately as his sister. They fell in love with each other yet were told they could not marry. He decided to support her, but he had to
become established in a trade. They continued to see each other, off and on, for ten years. They were separated for a short period of time,
while he was looking for work. During the separation, she had a brief affair with another man and gave birth to a baby, who died after
three months.
The brother returned and rejoined his sister, who had been released from the institute. While away, he drank heavily and spent most of his
money. After returning, he became ill and was cared for by his sister. A mutual sexual desire arose and intercourse began. They never felt
they were committing a sin. They wanted to marry but were informed by a priest and city officials that they could not. She became
pregnant four times, only succeeding with the last one. They had a girl and were determined to legitimate her birth.

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After listening to their story, Szondi asked each to explain what the other meant. The brother wrote a long statement, which includes the
following: “I fell in love with her at first sight. I felt my blood boiling, her kisses burnt my lips. In that moment, I determined that she will
belong to me and to no one else until my death, since God created her for me” (1937,58). Similarly, the sister confessed: “I should choose
death rather than life without him, since my life would then be only suffering....”
IV. Incest and Genotropism
At the end of his essay Szondi tests his theory with respect to the incest taboo. He acknowledges that the meaning of incest varies. In
biology incest means sexual intercourse between parents and children, brothers and sisters, grandparents and grandchildren. In civilized
countries
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incest also includes sexual union with brothers-, sisters-, and mothers-in law. The meaning of incest in tribal societies differs even further.
These societies are organized around a totem system. A totem is an animal that functions as an ancestor and protector of the people in the
tribe or clan. Descendants of the totem are regarded as blood relatives, and they arc not allowed to marry or have sexual relations with one
another. Totemic organization correlates the incest taboo with exogamy, the law of marrying outside the clan.
Szondi takes up an illustration used by Freud in his Totem and Taboo (1913). The example comes from the Australian Aborigines, whose
society is matrilineal. Suppose a man from the Kangaroo clan marries a woman from the Emu clan. All their children belong to the
mother’s clan. Consequently, the incest taboo applies to the children and their mother.
The father descends from the Kangaroo clan and is not regarded as a relative of the mother and children. Because he belongs to another
clan, he is a stranger, an outsider, who is exempt from the incest taboo. He may have sexual union with his daughter and, likewise, his son
with his sister. Since the incest taboo is strictly unilateral, the possibilities of familial sexual activity are increased.
Szondi argues that totemism corresponds to his genetic theory of marriage choice. In our society we may not marry blood relatives but, in
actual practice, we marry gene relatives. In this sense marital patterns are unilateral. Szondi’s argument rests upon two asssumptions. First,
totem, ancestor, and gene are identical. The totem functions like heredity, defining a common descent. Second, what is tabooed is
desirable. Incest must be tabooed, because there is a natural desire for it.
Szondi turns Freud’s example into a genetic formula. Under totemic organization the marriage is discordant. So the Kangaroo man might
be homozygous dominant (AA) and the Emu woman homozygous recessive (aa). This discordant marriage pattern is AA x aa. Were they
to have two sons and two daughters, then the children would all be heterozygous (Aa).
All the children carry the concealed recessive gene (a) in their familial load. By virtue of this recessive, the children are attracted only to
the mother and not to the father. The sons and daughters are attracted to
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one another. Because the attraction is on the mother’s side, the incest taboo is imposed upon the Emu members.
What are the implications of Szondi’s reasoning? Totemism implies a belief in the return of the ancestor. Mythically, at death the soul
leaves the body and waits for a time to return to life. At conception the soul returns to the mother’s body, since in primitive thought the
role of paternity is unknown. The mythic return of the ancestor conforms to the flow of recessive genes in the familial load. In tribal
society it is not easy to determine which ancestor has returned at birth; so in the same way it is difficult for the geneticist to trace
recessives in the family.
In civilization the incest taboo is bilateral, applying both to the father’s and the mother’s lines. Actual marriage practice demonstrates
attraction among gene relatives. Marrying gene relatives is in a sense gene incest. Thus, civilization substitutes gene incest for blood
incest. Whether blood related or gene related, all love is incestuous.
V. Incest and Participation Cosmology
Szondi’s conclusions in his 1937 essay on marriage choice are provocative and need to be reviewed in terms of recent research. The
common biological explanation of the incest taboo is that inbreeding leads to the manifestation of lethal traits (Bischof 1972, 12). This
assumes that recessives are mainly harmful and that natural selection only works on manifest traits in the phenotype. The sociological
explanation is that the taboo prohibits the possession of females in the family, promotes inter action with outsiders, and builds up the
family to avoid isolation. Thus, the incest taboo promotes genetic and social variability.
A current estimate is that we all carry four to eight lethal recessive genes and, therefore, that incest causes a five-fold increase in defective
off spring (Milunsky 1977, 80). This fact is a product of contemporary genetics and cannot be ascribed to typological thinking of tribal
society. Yet in any kind of society the fact of defective offspring does not explain why incest is tabooed. Further, the incest taboo cannot
be regarded as completely universal. At least 96 societies permit incest (Fox 1980, 6). Hence, there can be no universal horror of incest, as
Freud thought.
Instead, as Szondi points out, the desire for incest is a natural, innate, and collective impulse (1956, 225). Whether matrilineal or
patrilineal,
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totemic society actually stimulates forbidden love through various outlets (Fox 1980, 63). Violations of the taboo may take the form of
magical incest. Among the matrilineal Trobianders magical incest displays one’s power over against clan morality (Malinowski 1929,
512). In African tribal society magical incest means young men copulate with their mothers or sisters to gain power for heroic adventures
(Bischof 1985, 31-32). Thus, forbidden sexual intercourse co-exists with the incest taboo. xxx
The co-existence of magical incest and the incest taboo means that love involves compromise. In civilization love motivates marriage
choice on the basis of gene relatedness. If we cannot find a gene relative to marry, then we tend to regress and become fixed upon a blood
relative, for instance, a son upon a mother, as in a neurosis. Pathology shows a fixation upon primitive patterns of conduct. Thus, a
successful marriage enacts a compromise between blood and genetic incestuous desire.

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Cross-cousin or first cousin marriages are an example of such a compromise. In Trobriand society this kind of marriage occurs when a
father, Out of love, establishes a permanent stability for his son. At birth he arranges for his son to marry his sister’s daughter (Malinowski
1929, 97). The practice is a lawful compromise between paternal love and matrilineal right. Szondi reviews Malinowski’s material and
observes that cross-cousin marriages reflect a specific socio-economic organization, maintain the matrilineal incest taboo, and are not
regarded as incestuous
(1956, 228-230).
First cousin marriages are regularly contracted in Japan and Andhra Pradesh, a state in India. About ten percent of the population par
ticipates, and the rate of producing defective offspring is six to eight per cent (Milunsky 1977, 80). Among high religions Islam promotes
first cousin marriages, specifically between the son and daughter of two brothers. Islamic endogamy is grounded in an old Arab belief in
dual descent. The South Arabian Tribes descend from one ancestor, Qahtan, and the North Arabian Tribes from another, Adnan (Patai
1983, 216). Males must marry within their tribal lineage and be hostile to those of the other. Islam encourages endogamy in relation to
fratricide.
Szondi reviews the evidence of dynastic incest in ancient Egypt, Peru, and Iran (1937, 68-69; 1956, 224-225). For example, Iran had a
long standing practice of next-of-kin marriage. Cambyses, son of Cyrus The Great, married two full sisters. He asked judges if this were
lawful. They

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informed him that no law existed permitting incest, but that as king he could do whatever he wished. So Cambyses sanctioned incest by
law and defined it as a religious duty (Boyce 1982, 75-76). Thereafter, father- daughter and brother-sister unions became commonplace,
bringing heavenly rewards. Interference with incest meant punishment in hell.
These illustrations indicate that when incest is socially approved the sanction system is grounded in a religious cosmology. Whether the
justification appears in sacral kingship, reincarnation, or ancestral descent, incest is a means of participating in the essential nature of the
universe. As Szondi notes, theories of genetic descent are relative to socio-political organization, physical environment, and religious
belief. Theories of genetics are not cross-culturally or uniformly objective. Genetic systems are relativistic and participatory.
In order to illustrate Szondi’s theory more precisely I choose tradi tional Hawaiian religion as a sanction system that includes dynastic
incest.
This example helps to update Szondi’s thinking.
The basic Hawaiian social unit is the extended family (ohana), which incorporates both blood relatives and in-laws. The family is
interrelated through many generations. Members of the same generation are regarded as brothers and sisters. The family even includes the
ancestors (aumakua), who arc divine and immortal.
Ancestors take various forms, such as sharks, lizards, stones, or volcanic fires. These figures serve as totems and must be revered. Were
they eaten, mutilated, or disrupted in any way, sudden death would result. In Hawaiian psychiatry such a death is the consequence of “clan
allergy” (Pukui 1972, 38).
Traditional society comprises a hierarchy of common and royal families. Royalty consists of extended families that transmit mana, which
is a human power, tinged with mystical quality, and emitted from the gods. In primitive thought mana represents a “genetic inheritance”
from the gods to the king and to his descendants (Pukui 1972, 150). Royal incestuous marriages are a practical way to preserve an
undiluted transmission of mana. This is a mythic correlate of “pure blood” homozygosis.
The king is the mediator between humans and the gods. The basic royal ritual is the human sacrifice. The king is the sacrificer and the
victim is a transgressor, usually a contender for the throne. By virtue of his social supremacy, the king participates in the totality of being.
He

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embodies the union of heaven and earth, a fact symbolized by the rainbow crescent on his headdress.
There are no clear rules of accession to the royal throne. As a result of continuous intermarriage, birth ranks are relativized. For example,
King Kamehameha The Great had 21 wives. His successor, Liholiho, had five wives, one of whom was his own sister and two of whom
had been wives of his father. After King Kamehameha died, his favorite wife, Kaahumanu, became “chief executive officer” by claiming
to speak for her deceased husband (Daws 1968, 56).
Both seizure and maintenance of power are by political struggle. Contenders are relatives, brothers or sisters. Thus, fratricide is the basic
political law and is based upon sacrifice. The slain victim is consecrated on the altar in the temple. Fratricide is also linked to incest,
because the sacrifice of the brother gives the king the right to mate with his sister, so as to transmit mana in his “pure blood” offspring.
This pattern is well illustrated in Hawaiian history. For example, Kamehameha killed his rival cousin or brother Keoua in order to gain
control of the big island. The killing was a sacrifice and had three characteristics: (1) The conflict was inevitable; (2) expressed a contra
diction inherent in kinship relations; and (3) displayed a love-hate ambivalence between the two rivals (Valeri 1985, 163).
Patterns of incest also appear in Hawaiian mythologies. One type, which reads like a Szondi case study, concerns brothers and sisters who
are raised separately. They meet and fall in love, because they see their own images in the other. Another type is of a father who orders his
son and daughter to marry, because they are identical and perfect. Each type expresses incest as a union of complementary opposites.
All Hawaiians believe themselves to be dependent upon the creation story. According to the story, the primal father (Wakea) is associated
with the sky and the primal mother (Papa) with the earth. They give birth to the islands. A child (Holoa) is born prematurely and dies. He
is buried but sprouts as Taro. A daughter (Hookokuikalani) is born. The father marries his daughter, and she gives birth to a son who is
named after her deceased brother (Holoa). He is human and the ancestor of royalty. Because of common descent humans and Taro are
related.

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The daughter becomes a beautiful woman. The father wishes to sleep with her but cannot escape the sight of the mother. He creates a

VI. Evaluation of Genotropism

I have read your interesting work with satisfaction, in which you have conducted a study with an analytic method. I am not in a position to
confirm, in so far as your own genetic thesis could be confirmed through your investigation. The theme is strange to me. Certain
objections to your material are obvious. Marriage choice and love choice do not always go together, very often the free choice is limited.
Psychoanalytic experience uncovers an appropriate variety of love conditions: the tie to a very early love object and the imprinting
acquired from it; the narcissis tic tendency of everyone; often in the sexual part of the person that does not mature (e.g., the boy who
wishes to be a girl). The love relation can also show a negative
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sacrificial system, involving a separation of the pure and impure. Women become impure and must be separated from men, when they
menstruate, give birth, and eat. The father visits his daughter during a period of impurity, an action which is tabooed. He is discovered by
the mother; so he divorces her in anger. Thereafter, the mother marries her grandson and, in turn, marries her descendants through five
generations.
This material shows that Hawaiian religion revolves around fratricide, incest, and sacrifice. They are all aspects of a participatory
cosmology. The role of incest in foundation mythology strengthens the view that incestuous love is a deeply-rooted, collective human
need (Szondi 1956,224). The impulse toward incest is one of participation in the primal ground of being, and it necessarily entails
fratricide and sacrifice, motifs which are central to Szondi’s theory of religion.
Szondi’s concept of genotropism was, then and now, a far-reaching idea. However, both the 1937 essay on marriage choice and the 1939
lecture on genotropism were essentially neglected. The apparent reasons for the neglect were the massive disruption caused by the Second
World War and the abuse of psychiatric genetics under the Nazi regime.
Nevertheless, two brief reviews appeared shortly before the war. Szondi sent a copy of his paper on marriage choice to Freud, who replied
in a note sent from Vienna on June 18, 1937 (Reprinted in Szondi 1968a, 57):

32
dependency. Also as far away as possible from the incestuous image of the mother, sister.
The factor raised by you could have played a role, but not the sole or decisive one. Apology for these under developed remarks.
Freud’s note actually clarifies four kinds of love choices: (1) incestuous; (2) narcissistic, dependent; (3) immature; and (4) incest-
avoidance.
Szondi was surprised that Freud did not show more openness, because he had already expressed interest in Lamarckian genetics, i.e., the
theory of acquired characteristics (Pongratz 1973, 422). Freud’s reply presupposes his well-known view that marriage choice is
determined by the imagos laid down in the closed world of childhood before age six. “The people to whom he is in this way fixed are his
parents and his brothers and sisters.... All of his later choices of friendship and love follow upon the basis of the memory-traces left behind
by these first prototypes” (Freud 1914, 243).
Besides Freud’s note, Szondi’s paper (1937) received a brief evaluation in a psychoanalytic journal. The reviewer concludes: “The
demonstration with the help of family trees is fundamentally inadequate” (Grotjahn 1939, 342). This dismissal presupposes the fact that
psychoanalysis has no theory of genetics and that the model of early childhood causality is definitive.
In The Analysis of Destiny Szondi responds to the psychoanalytic critique (1978, 140-150). Szondi offers extensive case material,
showing how genotropism influences incestuous, bisexual, active-narcissistic, passive homosexual, incest-avoidance, and rational
marriage choices. With reference to Freud in particular, Szondi observes that in families with recessive disorders, there are high
frequencies of marriages between blood and gene relatives as well as incestuous love relationships. In his experience of war and
revolution many families were torn apart, many siblings often separated from one another in early childhood. He argues that brothers and
sisters can fall in love with each other, if they have been totally separated since age three. Without interpersonal interaction images cannot
be laid down and guide the subsequent love choice. The attraction must be genotropic.
Szondi documents the fact that mathematically-ungifted daughters of great mathematicians marry mathematicians or physicists. A
Freudian would argue that the daughter chooses her husband in the image of her mathematical father. Szondi contends that the situation is
not as obvious

33
as it seems. The Freudian argument does not account for the lack of mathematical ability in the daughter. Mathematical inadequacy is not
a part of the psychic mechanism. Rather heredity would account for both the presence and absence of mathematical ability in the family.
Toward the end of the war era, the first edition of The Analysis of
Destiny was reviewed by a biologist. This volume defends the concept of genotropism on the basis of family studies. Of the four editions
of the book, only the first one draws an analogy for genotropism from physics. Szondi compares the process of genotropism to radiation.
“We hope that the ‘genetic radiation’ will yet find its ‘Madame Curie,’ who will be able to confirm experimentally the ‘genotropic stuff
and its emanation” (1944,15). The analogy was dropped from the second edition without explanation.
The reviewer is Monika Holzapfel-Meyer, a student of Konrad Lorenz, the pioneering ethologist. She notes Szondi’s analogy with physics
and recognizes that he tries to find patterns in human heredity that determine object choice. This contrasts with the ethologist who locates
the causes of human choice in animal behavior. She states that many of Szondi’s case studies demonstrate coincidences rather than causal
relationship and that he works primarily with monomerie recessive factors, i.e., single gene pairs. In any case, it is impossible to verify
that abnormal conditions are transmitted through genotropism.

6
Holzapfel-Meyer admits that Szondi’s research is important and that it should stimulate further research. She then makes a revealing
observation:
“If identical twins, who grew up in different environments, were to marry gene-related partners in whose blood relatives similar
pathological character properties could also be shown, then one such case would have more confirmatory power than many of the
foregoing examples” (Holzapfel-Meyer 1945, 58). Szondi replies in detail to this critique (1978, 238-244). However, let us recall that he
has already presented a twin study proving genotropism, namely, the case concerning two twins who marry into paranoid families, cited
above (Szondi 1949b, 12).
Holzapfel-Meyer’s charge that Szondi works with monomerie recessive heredity is not entirely correct. On reading his entire work we find
that he deals with cases involving dimerie and polymerie recessive genes, that is, two or more gene pairs, particularly in his studies of
epilepsy and its equivalents (Szondi 1978, 435-489). The common rule, which Szondi

34
acknowledges, is that normal traits are conferred polygenetically but that severe psychopathologies tend to show the classical Mendelian
patterns of dominance and recessive (1972,76). The contention that Szondi’s family studies are more coincidental rather than causal
presumes a principle of verification derived from linear and objective causality. With the develop ment of field theory and nonlocal and
noncausal models of rela tivistic-quantum physics, the concept of genotropism would become more intelligible.
Despite these few early reviews, Szondi’s concept of genotropism was neglected for about forty years. At the present time, there is
considerable interest in this idea, particularly in the German-speaking areas of Europe. Edith Zerbin-ROdin has recently reopened the
issue and provided a helpful evaluation of Szondi’s idea. She states that contemporary geneticists would confirm the following
contributions made by Szondi: (1) Psychological disturbances have hereditary origins; (2) recessive genes influence the selection of mates
and vocations; (3) genes and environments interact; and (4) pathogenesis and etiology are differentiated (Zerbin-RUdin 1982, 318).
She repeats the rule, as stated above, that Mendelian patterns occur mainly in exceptional cases of hereditary illness. Yet not all disorders
can be traced to recessive genes, such as Huntingdon’s chorea, which derives from a single dominant gene. Her principal criticism is that
geneticists no longer speak of a gene struggle at conception. To think of such an “ancestral struggle” is to personalize the genes.
Recessives are latent, not because they are conquered by dominants, but because they are weaker and need a double-dosage to become
manifest.
Although she acknowledges the influences of recessive genes on choice behavior, the precise nature of this fact needs to be explored by
further research. Zerbin-RUdin believes that it is impossible to veri1 objectively that healthy partners choose one another on the basis of
lethal genes. Even if recessives do influence mate and vocational choices, then they are not entirely latent. Nevertheless, she admits that it
is good to make us consciously aware of our genetic heritage.
In reply we should ask the following question. Why should we become aware of our genetic heritage? Is it not because actual genetic
patterns exist which, although they may not be fully objective or verifiable, show meaningful relationships? Is not the significance of
genotropism relational rather than precisely causal?

35
As an example, I submit the following case taken from my own teaching experience. In 1980 an 18 year old, female freshman enrolled in
one of my classes. Her brother, a 21 year old senior, suffered cystic fibrosis, but she was not cystic. She reported to me that her mother’s
sister married her father’s brother. They were fully aware of the cystic fibrosis in their siblings’ family. They had two daughters who were
not cystic. Believing that they were not carriers, that they had escaped the familial fate, they had a third child, a daughter, who was
diagnosed as cystic at nine weeks of age.
Although these parents are not blood relatives, they are in fact gene relatives. Cystic fibrosis is an autosomal recessive genetic disease and
common in Caucasian populations. We may not be able to prove objectively that cystic genes caused this marriage. However, cystic genes
are the common factor between the parents, their brother and sister, their daughter and nephew. This marriage is indeed genotropic, and
the parents must live with the suffering brought about by this disease and with this fact - the knowledge that they might have already been
carriers by virtue of their sibling relationships.
Zerbin-RUdin suggests that if recessives influence choice, then they might not be entirely latent. This idea raises the possibility of genetic
variation with respect to the degree of penetration of the phenotype. When discussing the genetic load, Dobzhansky speaks of incomplete
recessives, intermediate genes, semidominants, and incomplete dominants (1970, 124). This implies that genetic information may be
transmitted in an intermediate range, which is neither recessive nor dominant. Most variations occur with inherited dominant disorders but
may be found among the recessives (Milunsky 1977, 65). For example, cystic fibrosis may vary among siblings. Still another example is
Wilson disease, which is autosomal recessive and skips generations, going from grandparent to grandchild (Jarvik 1976, 9)
Current investigations of post-traumatic epilepsy indicate the existence of threshold genes (Niedermeyer 1984, 112). Suppose that two
persons of the same age sustain a trauma to the head but only one gets epilepsy. The victim has to be a carrier of genes, which have
attained a threshold in order to penetrate the phenotype. When the trauma happens due to spouse abuse, as may often be the case, the
epileptic genes might even be implicated in the marriage choice. This and the above illustrations suggest

36
that genotropism is a threshold function; certain genes must evolve at an appropriate level so as to activate choice behavior, whether
recessive or dominant.
This emphasis upon variability is also consistent with some of the changes in Szondi’s own thinking. Szondi updated his theory of
genetics in a series of lectures delivered late in his career (1972, 73-89). The notion of a primordial gene struggle, to which Zerbin-RUdin

7
objects, is missing. This is due to the fact that Szondi frequently referred to the ancestor metaphorically. Thus, the concept of genotropism
is not dependent upon the image of the ancestral struggle. The image of the ancestor may be used to symbolize the recombination of the
genes at conception instead of denoting an actual struggle in a categorical sense.
The same lecture series gives evidence of a shift in the definition of genotropism itself. “One calls genotropism the effect of genes which
consists of the attraction between two individuals possessing, in their genetic heritage, identical or related genes, that is, homologies”
(Szondi 1972, 73). This definition means that genotropism is not confined to recessives. Szondi goes on to add two variant definitions.
One is cyto genotropism, which is the attraction of homologous genes in identical chromosomes of the cells (1972, 80). The other is
psycho-genotropism, which is an attraction between two persons. Similarly, at the end of his life Szondi interprets genotropism as a power
of attraction between bearers of the same or similar genetic factors (1980, 105). He cites support for this definition on the basis of global
terms for love in most languages, which imply that people who fall in love are essentially identical or related to each other.
Altogether, genotropism comprises patterns of attraction at the microscopic level of genes, chromosomes, and cells as well as at the
macroscopic level of psychological interaction. Thus, genotropism is a function of the hierarchical organization of the organism
comprising multi-layered attraction processes. Because the hierarchical organism contains levels of complexity, genotropism cannot be
reducible to a simple linear and causal model. Genotropism activates certain relationships, depending on the particular threshold function
in the organism.
The expanded definition of genotropism provides for better dialogue with the new genetic findings, which Zerbin-Rtidin recommends. For
example, ever since Franz Kallmann began his pioneering investigations,

the evidence for hereditary manic-depression points toward a single dominant gene as the cause (1953, 142). More recently, George
Winokur found depression to be more common among women than among men (1975, 14-18). The early onset female, one who becomes
depressed before age 40, shows a high degree of alcoholism among her male relatives as well as an increase in depression among female
relatives over male relatives. With the late onset male, who contracts depression after age 40, de is distributed equally among male and
female relatives and alcoholism is less frequent among male relatives.
Winokur raises the possibility, but not the proof, that early onset depression among females might be sex-linked. Thus, the gene for early
onset depression might be located on the X chromosome. Since women inherit two X chromosomes, they would be more susceptible to
depression. Winokur also reports the established fact that the gene for red-green color blindness occupies the X chromosome (1975, 14).
On the other hand, his evidence of late onset depression points away from sex-linked to autosomal dominant transmission. Although
Winokur’s work does not claim conclusive causality, the demonstrated correlation of depressive females and alcoholic males in the same
family entails genotropic attraction.
The well-known study of Old Order Amish, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania gives evidence of a single dominant gene for depression
on chromosome 11 (Egeland, et.al. 1988, 64). This study supports the view of autosomal dominance and penetration of the gene at age 30
and above. The high incidence of depression in Amish families is reinforced by endogamy, according to which marriage must occur in the
Amish com munity. Of 1850 couples in Lancaster County all but three are related (Hostettler 1980, 321). About 250 couples are second
cousins.
These cumulative findings may be compared to one of Szondi’s own case studies, dealing with incest as a form of depression (1980, 269-
277). The patient is a 36 year old manual laborer, in whose family incest runs for three generations. His father, paternal uncle, and paternal
grandfather went to prison for sexual abuse. The patient committed incest with his three sisters and his own daughter, from her eleventh to
her fifteenth year. His sexual abuse was complemented by oral perversions and was usually performed under the influence of alcohol.
The patient is alcoholic and addicted to drugs, as are his paternal grandfather, sister, brother, and daughter. His wife has four female
37

38
relatives who had been sexually abused by their father. The mother’s family has five members with red-green color blindness, specifically,
the maternal grandfather, patient’s brother, two maternal cousins, and the patient himself.
The marriages of the mother and the patient are genotropic. Some of the factors implicated are red-green color blindness, alcoholism, and
depression. As indicated above, these are currently understood as a cluster of sex-linked and dominant heredities. Thus, by expanding the
definition of genotropism beyond recessivity, greater coherence may be provided for the new findings and for Szondi’s own case studies.
Genotropism is a function of attraction based upon the familial gene pool. It accounts for both individual choice and the patterns of
attraction traceable in the multi-generational family.
VII. Genotropism and Genesmanship
One of Szondi’s intentions in proposing the concept of genotropism was to develop the psychological implications of the classical genetics
of Mendel and Johannsen. Forty years after it appeared, the German biologist Wolfgang Wickler observed that the concept of genotropism
has a significant role in the history of genetics. Within that history the theory of natural selection, in particular, evolved through the work
of R. Fisher (1930) and J. Haldane (1932) to that of W. D. Hamilton (1964), which led to sociobiology (Wilson 1975), on the one hand,
and to the concept of genesmanship, on the other (Dawkins 1976). Genotropism anticipated the latter.
In Wicklers’s view, genesmanship means that “to understand the theory of natural selection correctly we may visualize the genes as
manipulating the behavior of individuals and ultimately benefiting from it” (1979, 433). In the same context, Wickler goes on to say the
following: “Well versed in genetics, Szondi carefully examined hundreds of families of mentally abnormal human individuals and finally
arrived at the theory of ‘genotrop ism’ (1944), claiming that similar genes which by common descent come to inhabit different individuals
induce, among other things, cooperation of these individuals.”
What is the relationship between genotropism and genesmanship? W.

8
D. Hamilton contends that genes can cause the perception of like genes

39
in other organisms. This involves a process known as “assortative mating” and is defined as “attraction between likes for the purposes of
coopera tion....” (Hamilton 1964, 25) Persons can be attracted to likes for benefits and to unlikes for socially negative effects. Beneficial
attraction provides selectional advantage and, among higher animals, involves discrimination based upon intimate familiarity.
In developing the concept of genesmanship on the basis of Hamilton’s work, Richard Dawkins argues that genes facilitate their own
survival (1976). He says that the individual is the basic unit of evolution and opposes the so-called “good of the species” arguments of
sociobiology. Genes group themselves together to form aggregates, because natural selection favors genes that cooperate with one another.
Genes create patterns of attraction between individuals in order to promote their own interests. To induce attraction genes must yield
multiple effects. They must both confer a specific trait and create a tendency to be altruistic toward those who cariy it.
Dawkins illustrates the role of multiple effects with the idea of the “green beard altruism effect” (1976,76). Suppose a gene causes a green
beard to grow on certain persons. The same gene also creates a tendency to be kind to people with green beards. Thus, the gene prospers
through reciprocal recognition of copies of itself.
Where might genes recognize copies of themselves? The answer is among kin. It is more likely that relatives share the same or similar
genes compared with the general population. Genetically conferred traits evolve in individuals who live in kinship groups. Kinship
selection is a special form of gene selection. The latter is a broader, more inclusive category, embracing both near and far relatives. Let us
recall that Szondi’s case studies demonstrate the cooperation of similar and identical genes in families, indicating that genotropism is a
function of gene selection.
Dawkin’s analogy for genesmanship, the “green beard altruism effect,” is quite benign. What if the analogy were drawn with a lethal gene
like that of cystic fibrosis? It is estimated that one out of 16 white Indo-Euro peans is a carrier (Harris and Super 1987, 13). Such a high
frequency presupposes that a heterozygote advantage must exist for carriers. Specialists theorize that the cystic gene in single-dosage
confers an increased resistance to influenza and possibly to cholera (Harris and Super

40
1987, 74). This advantage provides a further example of heterotic balancing selection as a function of genesmanship.
Wickler’s observation, noted above, means that a historical line may be drawn from the pioneers of the genetic theory of natural selection
through Szondi and then to Hamilton and, finally, to Dawkins. This line of thought deviates from the customary argument that
sociobiology consum mates the theory of natural selection, an argument that presumes that the “good of the species” is the goal of
evolution. Taken together the combined work of Szondi and Dawkins demonstrates that the “good of the individual” is a natural goal of
evolution.
This interpretation is supported by Rainer Knussmann, who made the first constructive reference to genotropism in the post-war literature
(1965,44). In footnote number eight of his paper on partner choice he classifies genotropism as an individual, endogenous, and
autogenetic type of selection. He does not develop its connection, however. Yet Knussmann’s insight implies that genotropism comes out
of the innate development of the individual and operates among gene relatives.
Wickler’s comparison of genotropism to genesmanship is essentially correct but breaks down on one point. Dawkin’s understanding of
genesmanship is reductionistic; he describes genes as entities from which he infers the behavior of the whole organism (Sheldrake 1988,
84-87). To account for the whole Dawkins posits a so-called genetic program as a mediating term. The problem is that the essential
wholeness of the organism is not reducible to the parts. Dawkins confuses the hierarchical nature of the organism.
In conclusion, genotropism is valid, but it is a relational concept. It functions like genesmanship by accounting for relations established
among gene relatives. Genotropism presupposes that reality is fundamentally whole, that wholeness pervades all space-time regions, that
entities like genes derive from relationships, and that attraction is a process of mutual participation. As genes facilitate their own survival,
through the creation of relationships, they activate participation at appropriate threshold levels. Since genotropism entails heterosis and
balancing selection, it involves a multi-layered hierarchical conception of relatedness within a participatory cosmology.
CHAPTER TWO (BookAncestors pages: 41 – 55) Structures of the Animal Brain.
I. Genes and Drives
The concept of genotropism entails the fact that genes influence human choice behavior. Even though they may be identified as entities,
genes exist in groups because evolution favors cooperation. Within gene groups it is possible to detect specific needs that function as
mechanisms of screening and selection. Needs are the intermedialy principles between genes and behavior. Similarly, needs are not single
entities either; they too exist in groups. Needs co-exist with one another in relationships. In fact, both needs and genes are relational.
In Szondi’s system each need comprises a polarity of positive and negative tendencies. Needs also group together in polarities to form
larger wholes called instinctual drives. The instinctual drive is a synthesis of conceptually distinguishable needs. Altogether, tendencies,
needs, and drives constellate patterned wholes.
Drives are relatively independent, and they induce respective kinds of behavior. They are virtually ahistorical in the sense that they have
gained evolutionary stability. Drives are like habits in the Darwinian tradition, namely, repeated patterns that are constant but not rigidly
fixed (Sheldrake 1988, 13). As is clear in the German literature, instinctual drives (Trieb) are to be distinguished from instincts (Instinkt).
Instincts pertain to animals, drives to humans. Instincts are ego-centric, stereotyped, and genetically programmed patterns of behavior.
The idea of instinctual drives is common to the older biolog ically-oriented theorists, and it has been replaced by equivalent concepts in
some contemporary schools of thought. For example, psychologists who employ learning theory prefer such terms as “primary
reinforccrs” or “motivation,” and students of animal behavior speak of “action-specific energies”. Whatever the term, however, the
meaning remains the same.

9
42
The philosophical equivalent of the drive is the concept of the act, as developed particularly in process thought (Langer 1967, 275,
291,300). The act is an indivisible whole, the potentiality for which is the impulse. Relations between acts are internal. Acts have a
rhythmic build-up of energy, a consummation, and a closing phase. Acts are relational, motivational, and rhythmic. The same could be
said of drives, whose potentialities are the needs and tendencies.
In accord with evolutionaiy thinking nature is a field of change and is fundamentally and inseparably whole at all levels. The difference
between drive and instinct presupposes the fact that nature consists of a hierarchy; these are structures of activity at their respective levels
in the interrelated and inseparable universe. The lower the animal is nested on the hierarchy the more it is controlled strictly and
instinctually by genetic information. Humankind occupies a higher niche and is influenced by drives, which are more malleable by
learning and by traumas, as well as less stereotyped. However, drives correspond to instincts in the sense that they share similar
mechanisms. When humans and animals have the same genetic link, a homology is obtained.
Szondi has a four-fold drive system. The shape of the drive theory came to him in a dream, sometime between 1936 and 1938 in
Budapest. Having worked with instinctual drive material for many years, the dream clarified the harmonious and dialectical order of the
system. By 1939 he had worked out the drive theory systematically. It would be expounded in The Analysis of Destiny (1944),
Experimental Diagnosis of Drives (1960), The Disintegrated Drive (1980) and others.
The drive is a synthetic whole, comprising the respective needs and tendencies which are inherited. A tendency is determined by a gene or
genes received from either mother or father, a need by genes from both parents. At a minimum, every drive has at least four genes. It is
more likely, however, that drives have polygenic sources, because of the fact that drives have evolved as normal, survival-oriented,
balancing systems.
The four Szondian drives are (1) contact, (2) sexual, (3) paroxysmal, and (4) the ego. They are implicated in their corresponding
psychiatric disorders and equivalents: (1) manic-depression, (2) sexual abnormality, (3) epilepsy and hysteria, and (4) schizophrenia,
respectively.
By locating mental disorders in biological drives, Szondi can show that illness is a disharmony of basic needs. Each drive yields a
continuum of

43
normal and abnormal behavior. Each drive has its respective childhood manifestation and conforms to a specific character typology. In
times of crisis drives may split and destabilize, provoking tension and conflict within the organism. The general function of
psychopathology is to resolve unconscious conflicts through abnormal channels (Szondi 1952, 27).
IL. The Contact Drive
The first person who investigated animal behavior as a source of data for human conduct was the Hungarian psychoanalyst Imre
Hermann. He saw that ape children spend the first few months of their extra-uterine lives clinging to their mothers’ bodies and grooming
their own. These observed patterns of behavior had two aspects. One was the erotogeneity of the hand, and the other was a mother-child
dual-union (Hermann 1936, 349).
Hermann also saw a grasping reflex in the hands of human infants. This reflex enables babies to grasp objects tightly. He hypothesized
that humans inherit this grasping reflex from their primate ancestors. At birth, both pre- and post-natally, mother and child share a dual-
union. When the infant feels a threat, he or she grips the mother for security.
Hermann followed Freud by interpreting these data as sexual, but Szondi regarded them differently and made a seminal conceptual
contribu tion. Szondi conceived the grasping patterns as an independent system called the contact drive. The grasping reflex is the
common genetic link between humans and animals which makes contact homologous. The contact drive may be defined as the drive to
make and maintain relation ships.
Contact behavior begins with the newborn seeking and finding the mother’s breast during the first year of life. As the baby realizes the
nature of the relationship with the mother, usually after the first year, the grasping reflex in his or her hands begins to diminish. Gradually,
the child separates from the mother, seeking and finding new objects and relation ships in the environment. This rhythm unfolds
throughout all life. Of the four drives contact is basic, because we live in relationships.
The contact drive comprises two needs. One is the need for attach ment, and in Szondi’s diagnostic system it is designated as factor “m”.
This need must be satisfied originally with the mother, other family members, and then friends. The attachment need contains two polar

44
tendencies, one toward bonding and the other toward separating. The attachment need is satisfied by the rhythm of bonding and being
alone. Contact-bonding is the biological tendency behind the psychoanalytic oral phase and contact-separating behind the impulse toward
solitude.
The other need is that of searching for and acquiring objects, and it is called the “d” factor. In order to develop the child must go beyond
the parents and acquire new relationships. This need for acquisition comprises dual tendencies, one toward seeking and one toward
clinging. Con tact-seeking involves change and openness to novelty, and contact-clinging indicates control or appreciation of the past. The
psychoanalytic phase of anality expresses the clinging tendency.
Normal interpersonal experience has a rhythmic flow pattern of acquisition and attachment. Relations are sought and established,
renewed, expanded, or surpassed. During infancy, the oral and anal phases do not discharge erotic pleasure, as Freud emphasized, but they
simply express the limitations of childhood (Szondi 1960, 188). Contact-seeking and -bonding also underlie the smile, which every baby

10
does in response to the configuration of the mother’s forehead, nose, and eyes in movement (Spitz 1965, 89-91). Since babies born blind
and deaf smile as well, then the impulse to smile is due to the contactual presence of the mother rather than a purely sensory stimulus.
Conclusions derived from animal studies, published mainly after World War Two, veri! the existence of the contact drive, even though
Szondi’s name is often omitted. For example, Konrad Lorenz found that among animals, personality emerges when two individuals
participate in the life of the other, particularly in the parental caring of the young (1966, 138). His student, Ircnaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt,
confirmed the drive to make and maintain relationships, based upon neonatal contact-seeking for security and parental caring (1974, 128).
The contact drive is also affirmed in the neo-Darwin argument that females select as mates those males who will be good providers, that
is, who will both procreate and raise their children.
Neo-Freudian theory emphasizes the role of transitional objects and phenomena in early childhood. The transitional object is a thing, such
as a teddy bear, that serves as an extension of the mother’s breast, during separating phases (Winnicott 1951). The object creates an
imaginary bridge between inside and outside, so that the child can explore the environment and still feel bonded to the mother. The
transitional

phenomenon is a ritual, such as a bedtime story, which bridges waking and sleeping or, in the baby’s mind, living and dying.
Transitional objects and phenomena are certainly real, as any parent can attest, and the concept of the contact drive grounds these in
biological nature. They are evolutionary stable mechanisms that facilitate the contact development of the organism. Transitional
phenomena illustrate the fact that symbolization is a biological function, whereby ritual establishes an equilibrium between separate
domains.
Szondi finds the contact drive to be implicated in a major group of pathologies, namely, depression, addiction, and related disorders.
Whereas in American psychology mania and depression are defined as disturbances of affect, Szondi treats them as moods. The difference
is that an affect has an object, a target. Affects are organized as actions toward objects; they have intentionality. A mood is a state of being
with neither object nor intentionality. Since human experience is relational, a mood expresses one’s relatedness, one’s being in the world.
The symptoms of mania are well-known: restlessness, hyperactivism, sleep impairment, and so on. The manic personality desires to bond
but the seeking has become futile. The hyperactivism conceals a search for a perfect relation, a maternal presence, often accompanied by
breathless phases of elation and yet a sense of failure, which may result in death.
In contrast, the depressive has found an object or relation, but it has been lost, perhaps by disappointment or death. Unable to acquire a
new one, the depressive hangs on vainly to the lost object or relation. Depression is, essentially, futile clinging, and it is this that brings
about the characteristic ambivalence. Depression is polar in the sense that it defends against mania; likewise, mania defends against
depression.
The two basic aspects of the contact drive illumine some of the corresponding types of marriage choice. Depressives may be attracted to
one another, as well as to manic and sadistic personalities (Szondi 1956, 239). The sadistic partners may be alcoholic. Alcoholism is
classified here as a contact disorder, whereby one needs an unbroken dual-union with the mother. Ironically, an abstinent daughter of an
epileptic may choose a marriage partner who drinks; or the selected mate may become an alcoholic while married to a tee-totaler (Szondi
1963a, 519-520). Similarly, manic personalities marry one another, depressive, or hermaphroditic types. These patterns are examples of
genotropism, and they may be classified as
45

46
forms of psychological exogamy, that is, marrying a gene relative as an alternative to incest.
Finally, the notion of the contact drive bears upon the debate about incest. Although the incest taboo is not strictly universal, there is no
species in nature that engages in inbreeding on a regular basis (Bischof 1972, 16-17). Incest avoidance is commonly formed among
animals that live in bonds and recognize one another as individuals. Routine attach ment behavior evokes a fear of incest and an
inclination toward exogamy. Contact-bonding tends to generate contact-seeking. In contrast, the desire for incest originates in the sexual
drive and involves an impulse toward fusion or identification.
III. The Sexual Drive
Contact must be distinguished from sexuality, even though psychoanal ysis disagrees. Szondi assigns priority to contact and argues that a
relationship must be established before sexuality can be experienced. This parallels the fact that in the animal kingdom sexuality supports
but does not create bonds. The contact drive establishes relationships, and these are reaffirmed from time to time by sexual union.
Szondi recognizes two needs in the sexual drive. One, called eros, is the need for love, tenderness, femininity. It is designated factor “h”.
The need is satisfied positively in a loving relationship with another person and negatively in a collective. The other need is that of
aggression and it involves dominance, muscular action, masculinity. Designated the “s” factor, it is the impulse to control another person
or to manipulate oneself.
Szondi emphasizes that normal sexual experience combines both the erotic and aggressive needs. This psychological union presupposes
the verifiable biological link between sex and aggression in neurology (MacLean 1973, 17). The same connection has been made in
animal studies, except Lorenz (1966) tends to confuse the meaning of aggression, sometimes calling it evil and sometimes good or life-
affirming (Szondi
1980, 117-121).
The various sexual pathologies are well-known. Some disturbances of eros are homosexuality, hermaphroditism, transvestitism, and
erotomania. Acts of pleasure are performed as substitutes for normal sexual intercourse,

47

11
often to a high degree of narcissism. Marriage choices may reveal attraction between hermophrodites, homosexual inverts, or sadists.
The disturbances of aggression are mainly sadism and masochism. Sadism is cruelty toward another person for one’s own pleasure, and
masochism is sadism turned against the self. The etiology of sadism may include a significant traumatic aspect, such as parental abuse of
children. Sadists and masochists may be attracted to one another in marriage choice. The attraction may be conditioned by familial
pressure. In familial descent sadomasochists may co-exist with homosexuals, affect killers, and paranoids (Szondi 1963a, 319).
LV. The Paroxysmal Pattern
Humans share with animals the capacity to be startled. Every human and every animal is susceptible to a seizure in response to an
epileptogenic stimulus or irritation (Niedermeyer 1984, 112). This common genetic link is presupposed in the use of electro-convulsive
treatment. The seizure is a defense against danger. With animals the threats are external, but with humans they are both external and
internal.
Some basic animal defenses are (1) the feigning-death reflex (Torstell reflex), (2) motor disturbances, and (3) change of color or mimicry.
The corresponding human defenses are (1) epilepsy as a substitute for death, (2) hysterical motor movements, and (3) becoming pale or
blushing (Szondi 1960, 102).
These defenses do not constitute an instinctual drive as such, but they are drive-like. The seizure generates primitive emotions which are
cyclical and intentional. The emotions act to preserve the integrity of the organism and, therefore, have a moral intent. Since the defenses
serve survival, the morally intentional affects have achieved evolutionary stability.
To account for this drive-like defensive action Szondi uses the classical term paroxysmal. It is linked with such medical conditions as
fever and tachycardia. As a hereditary pattern, the paroxysmal factor includes the following phases: (1) accumulation of pent-up emotion,
(2) explosive seizure, and (3) restitution.
The concept of paroxysmality stands at the center of the theory of religion and is one of Szondi’s most far-reaching contributions. The

48
paroxysmal pattern is presented in terms of the biblical figures of Cain and Abel, which are used as metaphors. Metaphor is herein defined
linguis tically. It derives from the Greek preposition “meta” (with, after) and verb “phoreo” (image, likeness). Thus, a metaphor is an
image that enhances the meaning of an object.
The paroxysmal pattern consists of two basic needs. One is that of vindication or restitution and is called the “e” factor. The two
tendencies are those of Cain and Abel. The Cain tendency entails anger and rage, envy and jealousy, hatred and vengeance. These become
pent-up and are discharged in seizure states. Since the Cain affects have intentionality, they may lead to killing.
The Abel tendency includes love and courage, joy and desire, passion and compassion. The difference between the Cain and Abel
emotions is quantitative, the former being crude and the latter refined. The Abel emotions may be discharged in shock states, but they aim
to resolve the Cain tendency or to make atonement.
The other paroxysmal need is that of love, recognition, or self-esteem. It is designated factor “hy”. The negative tendency is the impulse to
hide one’s face amid shock events. The hiding can be blushing or becoming pale or even feeling shame, guilt, or anxiety. The positive
tendency is a self-affirmation, a striving for a legitimate self-worth. These tendencies co-act with the Cain and Abel in that a killer may
push the sense of self-worth to an extreme exhibitionism and then become seized with anxiety or guilt. Out of remorse the Abel moves
toward restitution.
The paroxysmal pattern yields a wide range of seizure behavior. At one end of the scale stands epilepsy and at the other hysteria. The
epileptic suffers the need to vindicate or, in extreme cases, to kill, but instead of killing he or she undergoes a seizure as a substitute. The
hysteric suffers the need to be loved and strives to satis! this need by acting out animal defenses. Both epilepsy and hysteria have several
equivalents, which will be discussed more fully in chapters three and six. One equivalent is that of epilepsy and paranoia in
symptomatology and marriage choice. Szondi finds that a mutual attraction exists between epileptoid and paranoid persons and that
marriage between the two is quite frequent (1956, 239). His extensive pedigree studies document polygenic origins of epilepsy through
multiple alleles that follow a recessive pattern.

49
Although Szondi’s work on epilepsy began in the 1930s, it is currently being discovered in American psychiatry (Blumer and Benson,
1982; Blumer, 1984). The current status of epilepsy in neurology and psychiatry will be reviewed in chapter six. Meanwhile, one of the
neurological developments has to do with the reciprocal inhibition between the sexual and startle functions in the brain (Szondi 1980, 88).
This conforms to the clinical fact that persons who suffer epileptic seizures are inclined to lose interest in sexuality and not to experience
arousal.
Paroxysmality, sexuality, and contact co-exist as the energy structures of the animal brain. Both humans and animals share these functions.
The three drive structures may be located in specific neural sites, according to the current tripartite model of the brain, namely, the
hierarchy of cerebral cortex, midbrain and limbic system, and brain stem (MacLean 1973). Sexuality and paroxysmality belong to the
limbic system, each lying adjacent to the archaic olfactory zone. Both comprise the co-active reptilian stem and the old mammalian
midbrain.
Contact emerges in the limbic system, but in its evolution it has by-passed the reptilian stem. The contact drive co-acts with the cerebral
cortex, which is new mammalian. The exclusively mammalian nature of the contact drive indicates that it bears selection pressure toward
caring, communication, and interiority in evolution. Because contact manifests distinctly human functions of relating and communicating,
it receives priority in the Szondian drive system.
V. The Ego

12
Human evolution culminates in the emergence of the ego. This is the fourth drive system, and it is uniquely human unlike the animal-
based sexuality, paroxysmality, and contact. Essentially, the ego is a drive for participation, a drive for oneness, likeness, and relatedness
in social and metaphysical reality. Whereas the animal structures have energies, the ego consists of power. The ego is autonomous, but it
cannot be located precisely as an entity or organ. The ego comprises functional relations, which center the personality, make decisions,
and represent social and metaphysical reality. The ego arises out of the neuro-instinctual hierarchy due to the evolution of feeling in the
human mind (Langer 1967, 4).

50
Like the other drive systems, the ego contains two needs. One is the need for adaptation, delimitation, material possession. It is the “k’
factor. Through the satisfaction of this need the ego makes decisions, engages in reality-testing, and takes possession of life in the power
of having. The need conforms to what is traditionally named the will. Its two tendencies are introjection and negation, which will be
defined and elaborated in chapter four.
The other need is that for expansion and spirituality. Designated the “p” factor, it is the need for self-transcendence and the power of
being. It pertains to the traditional notion of the imagination. The dual tendencies are inflation and projection, which will also be explored
more fully in chapter four.
At birth the ego lies dormant as a non-differentiated whole, based upon the mother-child, dual-union of the contact sphere. During the first
year or two, the participation drive unfolds projectively and contactually, for example, feeding, smiling, and mirroring. The mutual
mirroring of the faces of mother and child is a projective means of participation. Similarly, the transitional object is a projective-
participation between inner and outer space, a bridge between self and world, subject and object.
By means of participation the ego develops in the human life-cycle, alternating in the rhythm of expansion and contraction, imagination
and will, abstraction and realism. Disruption of this rhythm, as by heredity, precipitates schizophrenia. Disturbances of the expansive
phase or
function lead to the paranoid type and those of the contractive or “k’ function to the catatonic type. The “k” function pertains to catatonia,
because of the German spelling of katatonia.
Szondi’s studies in genetics find schizophrenia to follow the recessive pattern. His research goes along with that of the pioneering
geneticists (Kallmann 1953, 151-152; Dobzhansky 1962, 121). Persons heterozygous for schizophrenia develop schizoform personalities
and tend to be attracted to one another in concordant marriages. Variations include reciprocal attraction between catatonics and paranoids,
catatonics and hysterics, and paranoids and epileptics, as noted above (Szondi 1956, 239).

51
VI. Concepts of Pathology
There is considerable interest, currently, in Szondi’s drive system as a framework for psychopathology (Melon 1981, 79). This interest is
particularly prominent in French and German-speaking areas of Europe. From the beginning of Szondi’s work the main criticism of it was
raised in the following questions: Why are there four drives, eight needs, and sixteen tendencies? Why not others? The drive system was
originally understood, however, as a conceptual map like a paradigm in physics (Ellenberger 1970, 867). I believe the analogy with
physics means that the drive system lacks linear causality, absolute space-time location, and the ideal of objectivity. The drive system
entails probabilities of patterns, relativity of components, and a mutual participation between observer and observed.
Szondi’s drive system contains a polar structure not as fundamental but as derivative of an elemental wholeness. Polarity is present
because chromosomes come from two parents and are arranged in pairs (Szondi 1952, 84). Polarity belongs to the DNA molecule,
according to which there is an identical reduplication of biochemical forms, as the DNA unzips, producing two strands which unzip again
and again.
The polar drive system is useful in the psychiatric diagnosis of human behavior. Since life is fundamentally whole, normal and abnormal
behavior are analyzed in terms of integration and disintegration of drives. The German term for integration, which Szondi uses, is
Vermischung, which comes from chemistry and refers to a mixture or alloy. The mixing of opposite needs creates a drive as an alloy,
which is a new and distinct reality. The mixture is a dynamic equilibrium, in which elements are balanced and bound together. Integration
manifests harmonious life and parallels the fact that life evolves with polygenic balancing mechanisms.
The idea of disintegration accounts. for psychopathology. The German term for disintegration is Entmischung, which also comes from
chemistry, denoting the breakdown of compound substances. The mixture falls apart and loses the balance. The constituents split,
becoming surcharged forces. Similarly, the person who suffers illness falls apart, breaks down, and yields to the control of split-off,
autonomous, and animal-like forces.
In many works Szondi expounds a complex theory of the kinds and degrees of integration and disintegration. He normally reserves the
idea

52
of splitting for neurotic behavior and disintegration for the more extreme abnormal states like psychoses (Szondi 1980). When Szondi
analyzes advanced phases of disintegration, it becomes apparent that defense and splitting co-exist as functions. For example, a
paroxysmal-epileptoid personality suffers periodic outbursts of pent-up emotion. After or between fits, he or she becomes passive, calm,
or remorseful. The passivity is a split-off Abel tendency which defends against the Cain.
Szondi’s conception of pathology is grounded, further, in a dual perspective of foreground and background relationships. Foreground and
background comprise a complementary whole. Each is logically entailed in the other with internal relatedness. The foreground shows the
manifest personality as an emergent, the background the hidden or latent heredity and drive factors.

13
Under traumatic conditions foreground and background may rotate like a revolving stage, exchanging positions. What has been hidden
emerges into a manifest state, while the formerly manifest content recedes to a position of latency. Neither disappears totally in the
exchange. These rotations are particularly prominent in the turbulent paroxysmal per sonality, who may attain momentary unity and then
fall apart, becoming surcharged with coarse Cain impulses and alternating seizures of fear and guilt.
These perspectives are consistently expressed in specific German terms. The idea of foreground is a rendering of Vorderganger, that of
background Hinterganger. The noun Ganger means “one who goes or walks,” and the adjectives vorder mean “front” “forward”, or
“anterior”, and hinter “behind”, “hind”, or “posterior”. So the Vorderganger is the one who comes to the fore, to the foreground, and the
Hinterganger is the one who goes behind, in the background.
To a certain extent, Szondi’s notion of the background self resembles Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow. The shadow is the totality of
personal and collective content which is denied expression and, therefore, becomes an unconscious splinter personality. The shadow
embodies the so-called inferior aspect of the self that compensates consciousness. In contrast, Szondi defines the background partly
psychologically, partly biologically. It is not confined to the same species as is the shadow. The background self can deploy ego
mechanisms and guide existential choices, such as mate and

53
vocational selection. The background complements the personality and
gives it wholeness (Szondi 1952, 234).
VII. Concept of Sublimation
One of Szondi’s working concepts is that of sublimation. This is hardly anew idea, since it has come from Freud. For Freud sublimation is
one of the defenses of the drive. The object and the goal of the drive are changed, so that the instinctual energy may be satisfied through
higher moral and social values. Specifically, the energy of the sexual drive is intensified and expressed through non-sexual forms.
Meanwhile, the energy remains the same. Some examples of sublimated sexuality are mythology, art, and culture.
Szondi accepts Freud’s definition of sublimation but disagrees with it in two significant respects. First, Szondi argues that sublimated
energy is neither asocial nor unethical (1952, 150). The implication of this point is that sublimation cannot be confined to sexuality but
operates in a broader range of experience. Sublimation occurs in morality, culture, religious experience, and vocational selection. For
example, a surcharged Cain tendency may be sublimated easily in extreme religious experiences. This often involves a fanatic or reformer
who imposes the law of God with considerable hostility. Savonarola is an illustration of such a figure in the history of Christianity (Szondi
1956, 365).
Second, sublimation is hereditary. Both the pathologically-tainted need and the corresponding form of sublimation are produced by the
same gene group. This is illustrated by the fact that heterozygous carriers of recessive genes produce heterosis. Hereditary sublimation is
also a version of genesmanship and the function of multiple effects. The biological basis of sublimation is polarity, specifically, the pairing
of genes and chromosomes.
In order to illustrate the idea of this chapter I cite one of Szondi’s great cases, which deals with a fourteen year old boy who murders his
mother (1968b; 1973, 135-136; 1978, 221-225). The boy was the son of a well-known professor of chemistry in Budapest. The father, an
alcoholic, had been married twice. His first wife, the murder victim, was paranoid and psychotic. Ever since childhood, she had stolen
various things and hoarded them at home. She exhibited herself sexually to strangers, engaged in lesbian activities, and sometimes worked
as a prostitute. The woman

54
was constantly involved in financial speculation, litigation, and quarrels with her relatives. She hated her mother, sister, husband, and son.
The woman bore seven children, of whom only three survived. After her last child was born, the murderer, she and her husband divorced.
The two elder children were placed in an institution, while the youngest stayed with his mother. Because of the psychotic and promiscuous
behavior of the mother, the boy was sent away to live with his father, who meanwhile had remarried.
Eventually, the father threw his son Out of the house, believing he was still attached to the mother. The son was then put into an
institution, from which he escaped. He returned to his mother’s house and, after quarreling with her, killed her with repeated blows of a
hatchet. The boy was sent to prison for four and one half years. While in prison, his brother killed himself, and his sister went to Asia as a
missionary. Before the murder, the sister had become a nun, and while in Asia, she met her cousin, a Jesuit priest, who was also a
missionary. Later, another member of the family chose a religious vocation.
The murdered mother had a homosexual sister with bi-sexual ten dencies. The mother had a male cousin, a teacher, who fatally shot his
bride and then killed himself, simply because he saw another man standing by the piano his bride was playing. Further, two maternal
uncles of the murdered mother committed suicide. One of the uncles began a promising career in music but then turned to a life of theft,
loafing, and theosophy.
A third uncle of the slain mother was an army officer, who became mentally ill and died of a progressive paralysis. His life had been
characterized by a sense of guilt and worthlessness. During a hearing to determine his condition, he evaded questions put to him.
However, he whispered the word for disgrace (Schmach) and confessed: “I have killed everybody.” When asked what he meant, he
replied: “Physically.” In reality he had killed no one.
The young murderer had gone to an adult prison. During the first year of confinement, he suffered catatonic negativism and did a hunger
strike. At age 19, he was released from prison. He changed his name and got a job as a hair dresser, but while shaving his customers, he
would feel the urge to confess that he was the famous mother-killer. The same compulsion to confess came over him when courting girl
friends.

14
55
He later married and fathered children but abruptly left his family to wander and contemplate grandiose plans for world reform. He served
in World War Two, after which he spent time in penal and mental institu tions, suffering alcoholism and paranoid schizophrenia with
grandiose religious contents. In 1968 he began to write a book entitled Man is God, Reflections of a Mother Killer, describing his
religious experience in a prison chapel.
On the surface these people seem strange and pathetic, but when viewed in terms of the analysis of destiny, they appear as players in an
epic tragedy. The drama begins with a schizoform concordant marriage between the professor and paranoid woman. The family shows
clinically established correlations between homosexuality and paranoia, alcoholism and proto depressive hoarding. The several murders
and suicides indicate a trans-generational Cain tendency with quantitative variations among the members. The choice of religious
professions correlates with criminal activity.
The boy inherits his schizophrenia from his parents and goes through the paranoid aspect in his gross delusions and the catatonic in his
hunger strike. His killing and wandering are of the Cain tendency, his compulsion to confess an extreme disintegrated Abel. The
confession of killing by the mentally ill uncle is a deluded Abel phase. This fact goes beyond psychoanalysis, according to which the
compulsion to confess is a neurosis. In this case the compulsion belongs to a psychosis, the content of which is familial and trans-
generational. Consequently, the same impulse may be manifest in correlated choice behavior, both normal and abnormal, in the extended
continuum of the family. The multi-layered, multi-genera tional field of interacting persons also demonstrates the working of genotropism.
(finish page 55)

CHAPTER THREE (Book pages: 57 – 70) Genotropism and Family Relationships.)

I. Vocational Selection
In his extensive family studies Szondi raised the question of vocational choice. Does genotropism play a role in the selection of work? Do
hereditary factors guide us toward particular vocations, whether in the industrial or service sectors? Common sense tends to exclude
genetic origins of vocational choice and emphasizes social and economic factors instead.
If, however, we view the family as an evolving, trans-generational system, we will find evidence of genotropic patterns of vocational
selection. For example, some families exhibit paranoia, homosexuality, and suicide along with artistically-gifted members; other families
have deaf or hard-of-hearing members together with those who show outstanding musical ability. This fact is well illustrated in the
biography of Beverly Sills, the renown opera singer. Her daughter “Muf! is deaf (Sills and Linderman 1987, 139). Her son “Bucky” is
deaf as well as retarded, autistic, hyperactive, and epileptic. Likewise, she has one step daughter who is retarded.
Carriers of specific hereditary tendencies are inclined to take certain jobs. This does not entail a precise one-to-one correlation between
every vocation and every person. Thus, not every ballet star is a latent homosexual, not every pastor a latent epileptic, and not every
psychiatrist a latent schizophrenic. Rather, genotropic evidence points to probabilities among heterozygotes, who bear selection pressures
toward corresponding kinds of work.
We choose jobs according to whether we descend from predominately paroxysmal, schizoform, contact, or sexually abnormal families.
Tendencies in these family groups exhibit appropriate genotropic selection, because members have the potential for the major psychiatric
disorders.

Chapter Three:
Genotropism and Family Relationships
I. Vocational Selection
In his extensive family studies Szondi raised the question of vocational choice. Does genotropism play a role in the selection of work? Do
hereditary factors guide us toward particular vocations, whether in the industrial or service sectors? Common sense tends to exclude
genetic origins of vocational choice and emphasizes social and economic factors instead.
If, however, we view the family as an evolving, trans-generational system, we will find evidence of genotropic patterns of vocational
selection. For example, some families exhibit paranoia, homosexuality, and suicide along with artistically-gifted members; other families
have deaf or hard-of-hearing members together with those who show outstanding musical ability. This fact is well illustrated in the
biography of Beverly Sills, the renown opera singer. Her daughter “Muf! is deaf (Sills and Linderman 1987, 139). Her son “Bucky” is
deaf as well as retarded, autistic, hyperactive, and epileptic. Likewise, she has one step daughter who is retarded.
Carriers of specific hereditary tendencies are inclined to take certain jobs. This does not entail a precise one-to-one correlation between
every vocation and every person. Thus, not every ballet star is a latent homosexual, not every pastor a latent epileptic, and not every
psychiatrist a latent schizophrenic. Rather, genotropic evidence points to probabilities among heterozygotes, who bear selection pressures
toward corresponding kinds of work.
We choose jobs according to whether we descend from predominately paroxysmal, schizoform, contact, or sexually abnormal families.
Tendencies in these family groups exhibit appropriate genotropic selection, because members have the potential for the major psychiatric
disorders.

58
Sometimes, however, serious pathologies are inherited and lead toward related professions, even though they cannot be located in the four
major psychiatric groups. For example, cancer cuts across all four groups, and yet specialists in oncology may study that disease because
they consciously or unconsciously suffer it. Many years ago, Johannes Fibiger, a Nobel Prizewinning oncologist, died in 1927 from the
disease he studied (Szondi
1939, 56).

15
The following four sections of this chapter will present and illustrate types of vocational choices. Athough we discuss vocational selection
in terms of the hereditary drive-needs, we recognize that sometimes work is chosen to sublimate more than one need. Gene coupling is a
frequent phenomenon, and the most common need pairings are homosexuality and paranoia, homosexuality and oral mania,
homosexuality and hysteria, sadism and epilepsy, sadism and depression, epilepsy and paranoia, hysteria and catatonic schizophrenia, and
paranoia and depression (Szondi 1978, 338).
II. Paroxysmal Vocational Selection
Families may be designated paroxysmal, when they transmit hereditary epileptiform and/or hysteriform tendencies. Paroxysmal-epileptoid
family members generally feel pent-up emotion, irritability, periodic outbursts of intense hostility, before and after which they express
deep remorse, a resolve to be good, and religious states. They are Cain personalities who wear Abel masks.
These families are characterized by clusters of epilepsy, migraines, stuttering, and their equivalents, some of which are turbulent tempera
ments, capacity for startle, gross Cain emotions, rigidity, and sudden change of psychic opposites. Some common examples of paroxysmal
alternations are from calmness to restlessness, flexibility to rigidity, modesty to grandiosity, optimism to pessimism, vigilance to apathy,
moderate eating to gluttony, abstinence to alcoholism, timidity to verbosity, loyalty to disloyalty, sociability to solitude, inhibited sexuality
to excessive sexuality, sinfulness to holiness, domesticity to nomadism, and affirmation of life to desire for death.
Paroxysmal vocational selection takes place along the following lines:
(1) occupations dominated by sense organs (e.g., smell); (2) occupations oriented toward air (pilot, paratrooper), earth (coal miner,
pioneer), water

59
(sailor), fire (smith, baker, fireman), and the psychic realm; (3) occupa tional contexts consisting of height and depth, ascent and descent,
fluctuation and rotation; (4) occupations requiring motor vehicles; and (5) religious and other helping professions, such as medicine, law,
and social work.
Religious professions are frequently found in paroxysmal families. In the course of several generations epileptiform pathologies can
alternate with religious activities in accord with the Mendelian laws of recessive inheritance. Such families reveal metaphorically an on-
going struggle between Cain and Abel. Case #48 in the Analysis of Destiny provides
an illustration (Szondi 1978, 275-276). A male patient enters Szondi’s institute in Budapest suffering hypogenitalism. His family is
dominated by religious professions. The maternal grandfather of the patient as well as two maternal uncles are rabbis. His father is a
synagogue cantor. The maternal grandfather is married to a woman with an epileptic brother. The patient’s father has an epileptic cousin,
and he is married to a woman with migraines, who has two epileptic and one stuttering brothers.
A similar example follows in case #49 of the same volume (Szondi 1978, 276-277). The daughter of a Reformed pastor is an epileptic. Her
husband is an alcoholic who displays fits of rage and, later in his life, suffers delusions. Their marriage produces nine children, of whom
four die prematurely. Among the surviving children, two sons become theologians, and two daughters suffer migraines. One of the
daughters gives birth to a son who, in the course of his life, exhibits bedwetting, lying, pathological wandering, and criminal tendencies.
On the other hand, paroxysmal-hysteroid personalities give the impression of being rough, masculine, or violent, but they actually conceal
a need for love. The need is expressed in hysterical episodes, including theatrical displays and animal brain behavior, such as fainting
spells, self-mutilation, or stereotyped motor movements. Hysteroid persons may identify with actors and actresses who play tragic roles in
film and the theatre. They are Abel personalities who wear Cain masks.
Symptoms of paroxysmal-hysteroid families include hysteria, tics, anxiety attacks, and nightmares. Some psychological characteristics are
startle behavior, acting out and simulating, repression of feminine tenderness, Cain outbursts, and animal defenses, such as motor
disturbances, feign ing-death reflex, hypnoid talent, egocentricity, and lack of inhibition.

60
Typical hysteriform vocational types are the theatre, politics, sports, automobile dealerships, animal training, and those of business
women.
Case #52 illustrates vocational patterns common to paroxysmal-. hysteroid families (Szondi 1978, 283). A landowner and his wife suffer
severe hypochondria. They have five children, three of whom commit suicide. One, a daughter, has a serious case of hysteria, and she kills
herself in a hysterical attack. Another daughter is healthy; she marries a farmer and gives birth to five children. One child is a hysterical
neurotic who acts out dramatic scenes, and the other four children are normal. One of her healthy children, a son, becomes an actor against
his family’s wishes. His vocational choice indicates that he is heterozygous for hysteria. He has a cousin who marries a playwright and
who descends from a family of actors.
HI. Schizoform Vocational Selection
Some families transmit tendencies toward schizophrenic and schizoid personalities. They may be understood according to whether they
belong to the general catatonic or paranoid branch.
Schizoform-catatonic families exhibit the following symptoms:
catatonia, schizoid neurosis, asthenic neurasthenia, obsessional neurosis, and conversion hysteria. There may be criminal tendencies, such
as work-aversion, vagabonding, and world-wandering. Some psychological characteristics are aristocratic exclusivity, eclectic friendship
choices, formal and systematic thinking, rationalism, pedantry, humorlessness, coldness, hypersensitivity, obstinacy, inhibition, bigotry,
compulsiveness, omnipotence, and reserved personality.

16
Catatonic family members are likely to select vocationally education, military service, engineering, higher education, particularly in
linguistics, logic, mathematics, physics, philosophy, social sciences; art history and criticism; book buying and selling; post office and
telegraph services, printing, agriculture and forestry; night watchmen; mannequin work; and outdoor work.
Case #54 illustrates this type of family circle (Szondi 1978, 286-287). The patient is a 30 year old engineer who is a severe schizoid
neurotic. As a child, he was lonely and friendless. He was, however, an excellent student. In speaking he is painfully correct and pedantic,
humorless, and

61
rationalistic. Since puberty, he had been sexually inhibited. After four years of marriage, his wife was still a virgin.
Both blood and gene relatives of his belong to professions of the military, mathematics, music, education, economics, agriculture, and art
history. Two relatives are pathological wanderers. One paternal cousin shares the patient’s schizoid nature. The father of the patient is a
world-renown musician and composer.
In contrast, the paranoid branch of the schizoid families includes symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, quarrelsomeness, irritative neuras
thenia, gross paranoid illusions, paranoid homosexuality, and narcomania, involving morphine, opium, or cocaine. Corresponding kinds of
criminal activities usually consist of fraud and embezzlement.
Paranoid psychological characteristics include inclinations toward boasting, creativity, psychic sensitivity, omnicompetence, psychic
inflation, irrationalism, fanaticism, exaltation, ambivalence, omnipotence, prophetic insight, magical thinking, spiritualism, occultism, and
sectarianism.
Vocations in the paranoid group encompass exploring or directing expeditions, archeology, geology, paleontology, mythology, research,
writing, medicine, music, monastic orders, chemistry, pharmaceuticals, prostitution, law, espionage, detective work and natural healing
arts. Astrology and graphology belong here, even though they overlap with the hebephrenic group.
Case #55 exemplifies some of these patterns in the life of a 32 year old, female, music teacher (Szondi 1978, 288-291). She had sought
medical help for her insomnia. Szondi’s initial analysis establishes that she is paranoid-homosexual, feeling both passion and hatred for
other women, and that she is schizophrenic.
The analysis also discloses four phases in the life of this woman. The first began at age 13, when she felt homosexual desires for the
young daughter of a neighbor and, one year later, for a famous female pianist. She wrote poems to this pianist and dreamed of kissing her
hands and face. She reacted with hatred, however, when the pianist rejected her. Meanwhile, at age 16, she felt sexual desire for a female
friend of her mother and, later, for a female associate of her father.
These homosexual feelings were periodically interrupted by sexual attraction toward men, one a musician, another a famous musical
director. These heterosexual feelings were followed, still again, by homosexual

62
feeling for a female violin virtuoso, the wife of a lawyer, and others. All of these desires ended in feelings of hatred toward the people.
This first, homosexual phase was also plagued by occasional crying fits as well as outbursts of rage and hatred.
The second phase is that of religious fanaticism and illusion. While enrolled in a school of music, she became attracted to a male student.
He tells her that he has seen Christ and has spoken to him about a life of transcendence, poverty, and suffering. He preaches this message,
and she attaches herself to him as though he were a spiritual father. She too begins to speak of transcendence, poverty, and suffering, but
her family is shocked. She spends many hours in prayer, petitioning the Virgin Mary to return to earth and be transfigured. She starts
converting men, even though she hates them. She adopts one young man as her spiritual child. She tells her family that she wants to
become a nun and scolds them for not giving up their Judaism.
The third phase is dominated by theosophy. She continues her spiritual pilgrimmage by leaving Catholicism on the grounds that it has not
solved her “psychological riddle”. She takes up theosophy and becomes attracted to a professor of theosophy. Her fantasies toward him
are transformed onto a higher level, where she becomes his “holy wife” and identifies with the center of the world.
In the fourth and final phase she moves toward Hinduism and yoga. She also falls in love with a professor of philosophy and studies meta
physics. However, her original symptoms of insomnia, fits of crying, and outbursts of rage return, so that she has to be admitted to a
hospital, where she dies, one year after receiving her initial diagnosis.
There are several familial patterns to be considered in this case. A brother of the paternal grandfather is schizophrenic, and a brother of the
maternal grandmother is a schizoid eccentric. A paternal grandfather is also eccentric as well as hypochondriac. The father and brother of
the mother are quarrelsome paranoids. The marriage of the father and mother has sexual difficulties. The entire family has intellectual
professions. For example, a maternal grandfather is the head of a publishing house. Many family members are interested in graphology
and theosophy.
Not only does this case illustrate the psychoanalytically documented relation between paranoia and homosexuality, but it also
demonstrates some basic dynamics of paranoid schizophrenia. On the one hand, the

paranoid goes beyond bodily limitations and gains a cosmic identification. On the other hand, the move from homosexuality to fanaticism,
theosophy, and Hinduism exhibits a regression to the magical level of primitive religions. The end-stage is an elemental union with a
collective soul. The movement toward the magical-occult level is due to the unique capacity of the paranoid to strip away bodily
limitations.
In conclusion, paranoid-schizoform families frequently bear epileptoid symptoms, such as migraines and stuttering, in neurotic forms.
Such families often produce psychiatrists and psychologists, who are likely to specialize in depth psychology, psychoanalysis, and
extreme disorders.

17
A similar coupling of schizoform and epileptoid families is common among theologians and students of religion. This fact may be
illustrated anecdotally. In April, 1979, a distinguished biblical scholar visited our campus, and I discussed with him my Szondi studies. He
told me that every professor of New Testament in every major American graduate school is married to a musician. He said this could not
be a matter of chance. Appropriately, he is married himself to a musician, is the father of an epileptic daughter, and his lectures betray
intermittent gaps known as petit mal absences.
IV. Contact Vocational Selection
Contact families may be broadly classified as manic or depressive. Symptoms of the manic branch include mania, hypomania, irritative
hypomanic neurasthenia, tendency toward diabetes and gall stones, alcoholism, nymphomania, and such criminal activities as fraud,
bigamy, and impostering.
Some corresponding behavior characteristics are optimism, hedonism, activism, materialism, light-heartedness, freedom, lack of
responsibility, geniality, and orality. Typical vocational choices are those of an oral character (e.g., cooking, bartending, music, speech),
banking, politics, and the performing arts (e.g., singing, managing artists, directing music schools, writing lyric poetry).
Symptoms of the depressive branch embrace melancholia, cyclical depression, irritative-depressive neurasthenia, tendency toward
diabetes, and, with respect to criminality, theft. On occasion, depression may mix with catatonia. Some of the behavioral characteristics
are clinging, death
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fantasies and disgust with life, inhibition, tendency toward crying, sentimen tality, lack of satisfaction, scrupulosity, self-criticism, lack of
appetite, and anality. These characteristics could also take on a paranoid depression and a bi-polar manic depression. Vocational choices
are those of anal qualities (e.g., collecting antiques), museum work, garbage disposal, tending store, painting, tanning, chemistry, banking,
and street crossing attendant.
Case #70 exemplifies this group (Szondi 1978, 307-310). The patient is an art and music critic who lives in a foreign country. Originally,
however, he wanted to be a composer. Although married and the father of one child, he is constantly looking for new wives. He fears the
seriousness of divorce and contemplates suicide with an oral method. He suffers periods of depression followed by those of mania. During
his manic phases, he becomes euphoric and fabricates grandiose schemes but then slides into a manic-depressive psychosis.
The familial background corresponds to the patient’s condition. His father, daughter, and brother suffer manic-depression. He, a paternal
uncle, paternal cousin, and a paternal grandmother make suicide attempts with depressive periods. The patient’s father and a gene relative
of his wife have diabetes. The patient’s daughter also has gall bladder disease.
Family members are inclined to choose contact professions. The father and mother of the patient are both lyrical poets. All family
members tend to associate with lower class people, which is common for contact-oriented persons. Finally, the patient’s nephew marries a
cook.
V. Sexual Vocational Selection
Human nature is essentially bi-sexual, a fact established in both cell and gene biology. Sexual disturbances arise, when we cannot
reconcile our respective masculine and feminine natures. For example, sexually disturbed males display excessive tenderness and
passivity, deviation from factuality, and preference for fantasy and subjectivity. Females show masculinity and activity, desire for facts,
objectivity, rationality, and ethical strength. Accentuation of either kind of pattern indicates an intermediate or incompleted stage of sexual
development.
The principal forms of such disturbances are genital hermaphroditism, bodily hermaphroditism or androgyny, transvestitism,
homosexuality, and matatropic inversion. Corresponding criminal activities are fraud, espionage,

65
and prostitution. Vocational outlets for men are those that require a costume, fashion designing, fine arts, dance and ballet, textiles, hair
dressing, cooking, baking or pastry-making, mathematics, music, gynecology, lyrical or sentimental literature, and espionage. Vocational
outlets for women are those requiring male uniforms, fine arts, singing, dance and ballet, sports, manicure and pedicure, and that of a
lady’s maid.
Case #74 offers an example for this group (Szondi 1978, 324). The patient is 43 years old, married, and lives in a fashionable hotel. He
has studied at a university and possesses an extensive knowledge of music. Currently, he manages the hotel, which is owned by his father.
He complains of impotence toward his wife, while being attracted to little children.
His father is a paranoid-masochist, and the brother of the father is manic. The mother of the patient is a hysteric who has the most energy
and power in the family. A sister of the mother is a hysterical liar. One brother of the patient is a physician, while another brother has an
impulsive domineering nature.
The other group of sexual pathologies, besides those of gender disorders, is that of sadism. The symptoms arc mainly active anal
homosexuality, pederasty, and sodomy. The principal criminal form is murder, which involves lust and robbery. Vocational choices are
those that use tools, such as hatchet, knife, scissors, drill, tweezers (e.g., surgery, manicure, pathological anatomy), axe, hammer and
chisel, whip-in-hand (e.g., circus animal trainer), sports, and machinery operator.
Sadism is difficult to study because it may mix with other forms. For example, it could fuse with homosexuality and take an inflative
form, or it could be sublimated as a part of a healing profession like surgery. Families of sadistic murderers could even have religious
professions, which could take extreme forms of expression, such as monastic orders, where asceticism and flagellation are practiced.
Monks may struggle against the sexual drive or the sadistic impulse toward cruelty.

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Case #76 concerns a man born in a Swedish village in 1905 and who was raised in poverty (Szondi 1978, 328-329). While attending
school, he was a good student, particularly in arithmetic, but he began to steal from his friends. He did not like to work and developed
interest in religious movements and rituals. For one year he served in the Salvation Army,

66
later becoming a Baptist and then a Pentecostal brother. He became
Pentecostal due to his excommunication by the Baptists.
In 1931 he suffered a hysterically-tainted mental illness with hallucin ations, compulsions, and crying spells. In the same year he made a
nonfatal suicide attempt. Five years later he became a milkman, the significance of which, with respect to sadism, is its connection with
animals. He made a favorable impression on people, as he delivered milk. He also expressed a desire to conduct religious services in a
local parish.
However, on the stormy night of June 20, 1936 he stole an axe and hammer and went to the pastor’s house. The pastor welcomed him at
the front door, led him to the kitchen, where he was hit three times on the head by the visitor with the axe. The man then ran into the
bedroom, killed the pastor’s wife, and stole money, a gold watch, and other valuables. The man was later arrested and charged with the
two homicides. The villagers believed that the murderer was, in fact, the pastor’s son.
The murderer had had an unhappy childhood. The mother was a washer-woman, the maternal grandfather an alcoholic. One cousin
committed forgery and fraud. The murderer himself had a refined, effeminate appearance and red hair. Such an appearance suggests latent
homosexuality. Thus, the case manifests the linking of homosexuality, Cain-homicidal, and sadistic-aggressive impulses.
VI. Friendship Selection
Szondi was often asked whether genotropism would be a factor in the
choice of friends. He would reply affirmatively but admit the difficulty in
distinguishing between love and friendship selection. Several case studies
are available, showing that the inclination to choose certain friends
represents mutually shared characteristics.
As an example, two men have been close friends since the first grade (Szondi 1972, 92-93; 1978, 248-249). They sustain their friendship
through elementary school and university years and into adulthood. The families of both men have members with paroxysmal-
epileptiform disorders, and they are listed below in terms of their distribution:
Male #1 Male #2
Epilepsy 0
1

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symptom. Be conceptualizing reality as a whole, it is possible to discover the relationships among diseases. For example, asthenic
constitutional types incline toward schizophrenia, peptic ulcers, and they frequently die by tuberculosis (Szondi 1978, 343).
Disease selection may also be governed by periods in the life cycle. Puberty and menopause are two critical times. The central issue is
which hormonal cycles influence these periods and which gene groups are implicated. Puberty and menopause are genetically related to
such degenerative diseases as diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer. Hormonal crises can activate any disease in the gene stock,
influence gene tempering, and control the timing of the onset of symptoms.
Finally, familial heredity influences susceptibility to infections and traumas. Genes may be latent until traumas or toxins strike. Szondi
raises the question as to why a bodily trauma produces blindness in one person, paralysis in another, and deafness in still another. These
observed conditions presuppose the fact that genes create thresholds, which function as dispositions toward particular disorders.
VIII. Death Selection
The last kind of genotropism pertains to death, and it is called thanato-genotropism or, more simply, thanatotropism. The term derives
from the Greek thanatos, which Szondi translates as both death and murder (1978, 357). The translation reflects the existential fact that
death may be both natural and tragic. Furthermore, thanatotropism coincides with three obvious facts: (1) everyone dies; (2) life
expectancy is inherited, and; (3) fatal diseases run in families.
First, the fact that everyone dies corresponds to the maximum life span, which, currently, is about 110 years. The span is evolutionarily
stable, and it is acquired by individuals at the moment of their conception. The span is genetically-determined, species specific, and
independent of the environ ment (Walford 1984). The gene group that regulates life span also controls the immunological system, whereby
toxins are destroyed through a surveillance mechanism. As we near the end of the life span, we become more susceptible to degenerative
diseases due to inefficiencies in the immunological system.

69
Second, thanatotropism entails a life expectancy because of a built-in time clock in the bodily cells. Experimental data show that bodily
cells, when placed in a culture, will divide and replicate themselves so many times and then stop (Hayflick 1980). This fact is known as
the “Hayflick limit,” and it attests to an ancestral memory inherent in nature. There are two exceptions to the Hayflick limit; sex and
cancer cells replicate themselves indefinitely.
Third, thanatotropism conforms not only to the fact that fatal diseases run in certain families but also to the existence of death genes that
kill either germ cells, zygotes, or newborns (Szondi 1978, 357). We may consider the incidence of cystic fibrosis and Tay Sachs as well as
the several thousand babies born each year so defective that they cannot survive. Some are born without skulls, brains, or kidneys, some
with defective lungs, conditions which virtually kill them.

19
Familial patterns of fatalities even extend to suicide methods. Paroxysmal-epileptoid persons generally choose immolation and impact,
that is, jumping from high places, as means of self-destruction. Sexual suicides are characterized by suffocation, hanging, or cruel cutting
with knives, scissors, daggers, or hatchets. Paranoids select poison and firearms, catatonics starvation. Contact methods are primarily oral,
as in an overdose.
Finally, thanatotropism accounts for the fact that frequently murderers are related to their victims by blood or by genes. It is even not
uncom mon for victims to choose their own murderers. The selection may occur unconsciously through marriage choice and not become
manifest for several years. Within the marriage one partner acts so as to bring about one’s own tragic death. This potential is particularly
present in couples who descend from paroxysmal-epileptoid stock.
The relation of victim and murderer is well known to homicide detectives, and it is represented by a specific ritual in African tribal
religion, which Szondi quotes (1978, 370) from a book entitled Jungle Ways (Seabrook 1931, 266-270). In the mountain tribe called
Hebbe
there lived a gardner, named Yaro, who killed a man named Kogu. The high priest, a relative of the victim, consoles members of both
families. The mothers of the murderer and the victim grieve together. The murderer prays all night and, in the morning, announces to the
assembled villagers that an ill thing had befallen both him and Kogu.

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The murderer must now go on a three-year exile. His mother and the mother of the victim give him food for his journey. He wanders on
his exile, as though he were dead. After the three years are ended, he returns from exile, from death, in order to be purified. Wearing a
white shroud and holding some salt, Yaro sacrifices a black bull. He is welcomed by his family and by the family of the victim. Both
families eat the sacrificial bull. The sacrifice purifies the community.
The sacrifice is followed by a restoration of the deceased. The family of Kogu, the murder victim, must use its blood to bring him back to
life. The high priest chooses a boy and a girl most closely related to the deceased. In this case he selects Kogu’s brother and a niece. They
lie together, she conceives and gives birth to a baby. The child is given the name of the deceased, Kogu, and is granted his inheritance.
Thus, the murder is expiated, and the dead person has returned to life. This tribal custom portrays the mythic return of the ancestor within
the cosmology of primal religion.
CHAPTER FOUR: EGO PSYCHOLOGY (Book pages 71 – 95)
CHAPTER FIVE: STRUGGLE AGAINST THE ANCESTOR (Book pages 95 -109 )
I. Fate and Freedom
Szondi’s family studies have shown that the basic choices of human existence are not made by chance but are influenced by unconscious,
pre-personal forces. To understand these forces we must uncover recurrent patterns in the trans-generational family. Analysis discloses the
family to be a stage, on which members play roles in an epic drama. The dramatic vision of the family opens up the perspective of destiny.
By making destiny central Szondi enters into dialogue with classical
antiquity. Greek has several terms for destiny. One is moira, and it
means “lot,” “portion,” or “allotment.” In Homer’s Iliad nzoira refers
mainly to death as an allotment of a god, impersonal force, or mythic
figure. In the Odyssey it usually means portion in the sense of honor, conduct, or material acquisition as allotted in a stratified society
(Dietrich 1967, 212-213, 231). Related terms are aisa, which means an “equal share” and potmos, which means “that which befalls.”
Szondi interprets moira as a mythic being, a goddess of destiny, who
sends both good and bad fate, disaster and death (1963a, 17). His view
reflects the combat setting of the Iliad, the pre-Homeric chthonic culture of the goddess, and the modern German Schicksal, which means
“that which is sent.” It also conveys the image of destiny in Hungarian, the term for which is sors, meaning “falling Out” or “coming out”
(Kerenyi 1963, 6).
Post-Homeric Greek literature features abstract, metaphysical concepts, such as the working of allotment (heirnarmene), chance (tyche),
and necessity (ananke). The latter is used most frequently by Szondi, when describing metaphorically the influence of recessive genes.
Szondi correctly
Chapter Four: Participatory Ego Psychology

72
translates necessity in both Greek and Latin (necessarius) as constraint of the will by outside forces and by blood relatives.
Informed by classical learning, Szondi understands destiny as an allotment of human existence, both as a finite life span and as a dynamic
unfolding of meaningful behavior through major existential decisions. Frequently, the decisions befall us like shock events. For many the
decisions are maladaptive, compulsive, or destructive and, therefore, described in causal terms and represented by the metaphor of fate.
Fateful decisions are often tragic in the sense that they lead to destruction. Although not conceptualized as a category, the motif of tragedy
is a pervasive motif in the analysis of destiny.
After his expulsion from Hungary, Szondi went beyond his early biological-medical approach to a dialectical-interactional model of
destiny. In a pivotal essay he explains that destiny embraces both freedom and fate (Szondi 1954b). Compulsive choice is expressed in the
German phrase Zwangs-Schicksal and free choice in Freiheits-Schicksal. These correspond to the English terms fate and freedom,
respectively. Destiny is a unique human capacity, because only humans can make conscious the heritage of the ancestors and the
possibilities of existence. Destiny correlates freedom and fate, future and past, culture and nature, consciousness and uncon sciousness.
Destiny is dynamic, functional, and dialectical. It is neither totally determined nor totally free.

20
There is a common tendency, particularly among theologians, to equate destiny with death. This point of view has been inspired by Martin
Heidegger’s classic phrase “being-toward-death.” Szondi objects to the linking of destiny with death as too dangerous, one-sided, and an
absolutization of only one part of human existence (1963b, 117). He does not develop this insight, but he offers a clue when classi!
Heidegger’s existentialism as a sublimation of autistic schizophrenia (1956, 364).
Szondi’s opinion is, in my view, a political judgment. A student of German culture has detected a profound continuity between
Heidegger’s “being-toward-death” and Nazi ideology (Pachter 1976, 52). Both Heidegger and the Nazis used military terms to emphasize
that life is a training for death. They elevated death to an ultimate level, where destiny is fulfilled in a glorious and inevitable catastrophe.
As Szondi learned in the First World War, death is an abstraction. The German soldiers who returned from the front as tragic heroes and

who comprised the nucleus of the Nazi Party sustained the abstraction as a necrophilia. They loved death by means of a denial Gf guilt
and a projection of responsibility for the war upon others, specifically the Jews. Szondi returned from the front with a more realistic
outlook. Working in the shadow of proto-Nazi Hungarian Fascism, he developed the theme of destiny as a vision of human dignity and
responsibility.
LI. The Familial Unconscious
Szondi’s development of a new model of destiny by 1954 also represents a shift from genetics to depth psychology in his work. The task
of depth psychology is to make the unconscious conscious, in so far as this can be done. The entire range of unconscious content cannot
be known absolutely. One of Szondi’s original contributions to depth psychology is the concept of the familial unconscious (Das fanziliare
Unbewusste). Although this idea grew out of many years of studying families, the 1937 paper on marriage choice may be regarded as the
primary documentary source. Szondi was the first to synthesize heredity with personality development (Wurmser 1963, 315).
The term familial is a translation of the German farniliare, which refers both to blood relatives and to what is customary (Bischof 1985,
195). With the findings of Szondi’s family research we may classify the practice of marrying gene relatives under what is customary.
The familial unconscious is essentially the same as the genetic load but differs from it in two respects. First, the familial unconscious
expresses content in the form of polarity. This pattern correlates with the pairing of genes and chromosomes. Polarity accounts for the fact
that the same genetic group can produce both normal and abnormal traits, both sickness and sublimation. Second, the familial unconscious
has a latent proportion. This accounts for genetic variability, strengths, weakness, and distribution of traits among families.
Originally, Szondi contended that latent recessive genes constitute the familial unconscious. This must be revised in light of the current
evaluation of Szondi’s studies in genetics. A revised model would include not only recessives, but also dominant, sex-linked, and the
intermediate range of threshold genes. Such a view would go beyond the classical notion of the genetic load as a heavy burden and
include the balancing
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and adaptive features of an evolving psyche. The actual working of the familial unconscious is disclosed through genotropism.
The concept of the familial unconscious was initially proposed in light of Freudian psychoanalysis and Jungian archetypal psychology. As
is well-known, Freud explored the personal unconscious, which bears repressed and forgotten material since birth. Jung discovered the
collective unconscious, which contains the hereditary archetypal forms and instinctual drives.
By combining these three dimensions, Szondi intended to lay a foundation for the unification of depth psychology (1956). He understood
these domains functionally and neither spatially nor topographically. They are co-active and complementary with consciousness. The
personal unconscious is manifest in symptoms, the collective in symbols, and the familial in existential decisions.
Szondi did not integrate these unconscious domains uncritically. He agreed with Jung that archetypes conform to psychic reality and that
they inform religion and culture. Yet Jung failed to correlate archetypes precisely with instinctual drives, making it difficult to diagnose
psychopath ology (Szondi 1952, 25). Similarly, Szondi believed that Freud’s theory mainly reflected the struggle between two partners in
the familial unconscious. Otherwise, Szondi conceded a profound indebtedness to Freud, as one who changed fundamentally the vision of
human existence. After Freud, existence must be conceived developmentally, and the life of the spirit must be understood in terms of the
unconscious as well as the ambiguity of creation and destruction (Szondi 1963b, 96).
III. Concept of the Ego
• What makes the unconscious conscious is the ego. The emergence of the ego signifies the birth of the human being in relation to the
animal kingdom. By means of the ego humankind surpasses the tyranny of the instincts in the hierarchy of nature. The ego creates
uniquely human activities, such as religion, art, and culture. The ego also makes the existential choices which project unconscious familial
content.
Szondi defines the ego with reference to the history of religion and philosophy (1947, 130). The original and governing source for the
understanding of the ego is Hinduism, specifically the teachings of the

75
Upanishads in the eighth century B.C.E. Szondi quotes several passages in the Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad (1956, 114-115), using the
translation of Paul Deussen.
One passage portrays the ego existing alone at creation as a primal
being (1.4.1):
In the beginning the atman alone in the form of a man was this universe. He gazed around; he saw nothing there but himself. Thereupon
he cried out at the beginning:- “It is I.” Thence originated the name I. Therefore today, when anyone is summoned, he answers first “It is
I;” and then only he names the other names which he bears (Deussen 1966, 265).

21
Szondi translates the Sanskrit term atnzan as ego with the understanding that human nature is identified with the divine. As the creator of
the world, the ego was named Lord (Ishvara).
The other source from the same Upanishad identifies the ego as that which dwells in creation and yet is distinguished from it (3.7.3.): “He
who dwelling on the earth is distinct from the earth, whom the earth knows not, which the earth is, who rules the earth from within, he is
thy soul, the inner guide, the immortal” (Deussen 1966, 206-207). Hence, the ego is the immortal and inner guide of all persons.
Szondi documents the history of the concepts of the ego and concludes that the various definitions are actually projections of the nature of
life (1956, 115-129). The projections mediate reality and the human being. The various definitions of the ego may be classified in terms of
functional dependencies, which are paired dialectically: divine omnipotence and human powerlessness, spirit and nature, conscious and
unconscious, subject and object, femininity and masculinity, soul and body, waking and dreaming, and immanence and transcendence.
These characteristics also express the general antitheses of life. These polarities are embraced by the ego and, therefore, may be regarded
as correlative aspects. Since these antitheses are aspects or functional dependencies, the essence of the ego is relational and cannot be fully
located in space-time regions.
IV. Phases of Ego Development
At birth the ego rests in a non-differentiated oneness. With the
activation of the contact drive, through the rhythm of seeking and finding,

76
the organism separates from the mother and strives for an independent existence. The separating organism is threatened, however, with
loneliness, beginning particularly in the second year of life. Thereafter, the possibility of loneliness is always present; and it is this threat
with which everyone must contend in life.
After separation, ego development procedes through the following stages: (1) projection, (2) inflation, (3) introjection, and (4) negation.
They are virtually ahistorical and contain general, non-specific content. The ego phases may appear sequentially, simultaneously, or in a
variety of forms. The goal of each is to re-establish, amid the struggle for existence, a primal wholeness. The phases inform the
physiology and pathology of the psyche, and they operate in the three personal, collective, and familial unconscious domains. The four
ego functions with respect to the three realms of the unconscious are defined below, using illustrations from the history of religions:
(1) Projection is “the primal, primitive unconscious elemental striving of the ego to transfer the power and drive of the unconscious
toward being onto an object of the external world” (Szondi 1956, 160-161). The primary function of projection is the drive for
participation. Freud originally discovered projection as the psychic mechanism of paranoia. In a pathology like paranoia unconscious
content is transferred onto distorted or delusional objects without obtaining a real relationship. Such a transfer without participation is
called secondary projection.
Jung discovered a collective projection in the sense of an unconscious subject-object identity in archaic society. Collective projection
establishes transpersonal forms of being and dissolves individual identities. Szondi would agree with Jung and emphasize that collective
projection is experienced as a mystical participation in being. Both Jung and Szondi drew upon the work of the French scholar Lucien
Lévy-Bruhi, who established the category of mystical participation (Lévy-Bruhl 1966a). Szondi defines this as “the mysterious
participation of heterogeneous things in one another, which is realized through mystical powers, working in them” (1956, 166).
The development of relatedness through projection is called the law of participation. This law is exemplified by the fact that ancient
languages are synthetic; each word has a variety of meanings. Further, concepts of chance, linear causality, objectivity, and verification are
not fundamental in

77
reality but purely secondary. Because of the interrelatedness of all things, images are just as real as the objects they represent.
The law of participation also accounts for the fact that the invisible realm, which is disclosed in dream and vision, complements the
visible, sensory world. The correlation of the two domains entails a bi perspectivism, according to which the universe is physical, from
one perspective, and spiritual, from another. Consequently, the physical- sensory and spiritual-invisible worlds participate in each other,
creating an interrelated whole.
Recent research has helped to clari! even further Ldvy-Bruhi’s concept of mystical participation. Not everything in the universe is actually
animated by a non-differentiated mystical participation. Rather, participa tion is differentiated by powers (Riviere 1989, 233-234). In light
of current scholarship we may acknowledge that the projective-participation operates in the individual, the family, tribe, and physical
nature. Each domain is unique in itself and not reducible to a homogeneous soul. Thus, the critical revision of Lévy-Bruhl’s law of
participation makes it even more applicable to the analysis of destiny, because Szondi emphasizes the co-related personal, collective, and
familial dimensions.
Primary familial projection is the transfer of hereditary tendencies to the descendant, creating a oneness, likeness, and relatedness with the
ancestor. Such projection presupposes the working of genotropism, as one unconsciously seeks and finds relationships, particularly those
of love and vocation. When the relationship is made, continuity with the ancestral model is established. Familial projection involves both
blood and gene relatives. In its secondary form familial projection entails a transfer of pathological hereditary traits, whereby one pursues
mate and vocational choices compulsively and without creating real relationships.
The social context of familial projection would be small village cultures, which have face-to-face relationships and are organized around
totems. In such societies the individual is identified by participation in the whole family. For example, in African tribal society when one
person gets sick and is admitted to a hospital, the entire family goes in too. The family remains with the patient until discharged. This
indicates that sickness and health are relative to the whole family. At death one enters the realm of the living-dead, who are the deceased
family members of five generations (Mbiti 1969, 89). They dwell in this state as long as they are

22
77
reality but purely secondary. Because of the interrelatedness of all things, images are just as real as the objects they represent.
The law of participation also accounts for the fact that the invisible realm, which is disclosed in dream and vision, complements the
visible, sensory world. The correlation of the two domains entails a bi perspectivism, according to which the universe is physical, from
one perspective, and spiritual, from another. Consequently, the physical- sensory and spiritual-invisible worlds participate in each other,
creating an interrelated whole.
Recent research has helped to clari! even further Ldvy-Bruhi’s concept of mystical participation. Not everything in the universe is actually
animated by a non-differentiated mystical participation. Rather, participa tion is differentiated by powers (Riviere 1989, 233-234). In light
of current scholarship we may acknowledge that the projective-participation operates in the individual, the family, tribe, and physical
nature. Each domain is unique in itself and not reducible to a homogeneous soul. Thus, the critical revision of Lévy-Bruhl’s law of
participation makes it even more applicable to the analysis of destiny, because Szondi emphasizes the co-related personal, collective, and
familial dimensions.
Primary familial projection is the transfer of hereditary tendencies to the descendant, creating a oneness, likeness, and relatedness with the
ancestor. Such projection presupposes the working of genotropism, as one unconsciously seeks and finds relationships, particularly those
of love and vocation. When the relationship is made, continuity with the ancestral model is established. Familial projection involves both
blood and gene relatives. In its secondary form familial projection entails a transfer of pathological hereditary traits, whereby one pursues
mate and vocational choices compulsively and without creating real relationships.
The social context of familial projection would be small village cultures, which have face-to-face relationships and are organized around
totems. In such societies the individual is identified by participation in the whole family. For example, in African tribal society when one
person gets sick and is admitted to a hospital, the entire family goes in too. The family remains with the patient until discharged. This
indicates that sickness and health are relative to the whole family. At death one enters the realm of the living-dead, who are the deceased
family members of five generations (Mbiti 1969, 89). They dwell in this state as long as they are

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In summary, both projective-participation and inflation constitute the expansive power of the ego, the so-called “p” factor, which
participates in the spiritual realm of being. This expansive aspect of the ego is present in primal religion, so named because it participates
directly in the fundamental interrelatedness of the universe. Primal religion comprises small communities, oral tradition, myth and
symbol, dream and vision. Primal religion normally lacks a historical founder and is shamanistic and relatively changeless.
One example of primal religion is the Native American tradition, wherein the sacred pipe illustrates the expansive power of the ego,
according to which
the pipe is the universe, it is also man, and the one who fills a pipe should identif himself with it, thus not only establishing the center of
the universe, but also his own center; he so “expands” that the six directions of space are actually brought within himself. It is by this
“expansion” that a man ceases to be a part, a fragment, and becomes whole or holy; he shatters the illusion of separateness (Brown 1972,
21).
On the other hand, the expansive power of the ego is balanced by an opposite function, one that contracts in order to deal with material
reality. It is called the “k” factor, and it comprises the next two ego phases.
(3) Introjection is “the unconscious, original elemental striving of the ego for possession and incorporation of value-objects, value-
represent ations, and all value-contents of the outer and inner world” (Szondi 1956, 193). Introjection is governed by the ideal of having
all, shaping not only character but also woridview, personal and corporate ideals, vocational and ideational communities in its primary
form. Secondary introjection is the psychic mechanism present in the formulation of pathological symptoms.
Personal introjection comes out of one’s own experience and does not derive from repression. One example is grief, in which the bereaved
incorporates the deceased in a clinging relationship. Hanging on to a lost object promotes a depressive reaction, which is characterized by
a love-hate ambivalence toward the deceased. This understanding is the product of psychoanalysis.
Szondi clarifies three other kinds of introjection. Hyper-introjection occurs when the lost object is remembered with great photographic
clarity. Detail-introjection is the retention of the part of a lost object, such as a

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fetish. An ad hoc-introjection is the imprinting of a psychic trauma, resulting in a fixation.
Collective introjection is the assimilation of objective content from outside one’s own sphere of influence. What Jung calls the persona,
the socially acquired identity, is a collective introject. Modern capitalistic societies, which rely on high technology, encourage introjective
ego states, as in a collective search for goods and wealth. In times of crisis collective introjection takes the form of magic in order to satis1
a need for control.
Familial introjection is the incorporation of properties, capabilities, and ideals belonging to one’s forebearers. Primary familial introjection
is the assimilation of an ancestor, whom one has not experienced, into one’s character. This presupposes genotropism and often occurs
unconsciously. For example, Jung’s #2 personality was probably an introjection of his paternal grandfather, also named C. G. Jung, who
may have been an illegitimate son of Johann W. von Goethe (Wehr 1987, 14, 43-44). Because of Jung’s fascination for this eighteenth
century ancestor and Goethe’s Faust, he may have confused the distinction between the familial and
collective realms of the unconscious (1961, 35-36, 234).
Secondary familial introjection is the acquisition of a hereditary illness or mode of death, which also presupposes genotropism. This kind
of introjection may occur in mate and vocational selection.

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(4) Negation is “the partly unconscious, partly conscious elemental striving of the ego for avoidance, denial, inhibition, alienation, and
repression of particular claims, representations, and ideals” (Szondi 1956, 217). Primary negation adapts to social and moral reality. It
compresses the ego for the sake of practical tasks and protects against any threatening or one-sided ego expansion. Primary negation
involves reality testing, decision making, and assessing the value of projection or inflation. Secondary negation is a pathological
destruction of values and reality that results in a compulsion, alienation, or catatonic negativism.
Negation is personal when it derives from repression. Whereas Freud makes repression primary and negation secondary, Szondi reverses
the order of priority. Personal negation alternates between conscious adapta tion and unconscious rejection of projections, inflation, or
character opposites (e.g., femininity). With a negativism (i.e., secondary negation) one suffers a latent need to be all and to have all but
cannot satisfy this need.

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Collective negation informs the commands, laws, or rules that com munities impose upon individuals for social control. Szondi makes the
proper distinction between morality and ethics and defines them with both ego and instinctual drive content. “Morality is the external
command against specific behaviors, which are tabooed by the community” (Szondi 1956, 224). Such a command is motivated by the
paroxysmal-hysteriform need for value, both as a claim of self worth and as an inclination to hide one’s face. Thus, morality is a collective
prohibition of certain shameful actions (e.g., incest) in order to protect the moral worth of the individual.
“Ethics is the internal command, the inner law against killing and against incest love” (Szondi 1956, 223). Ethical commands are
motivated by the paroxysmal-epileptiform need for restitution, specifically, by the Abel tendency. Since ethical commands are internal,
they have a sacred quality, as in the monotheistic injunction: “Thus saith the Lord.” In contrast, morality rests upon a cultural ethos rather
than an experience of the sacred. Both are grounded in the paroxysmal pattern.
Familial negation is a consequence of genotropism. One opposes a compulsive hereditary pattern and substitutes a free choice. By means
of negation one may deny, inhibit, or adapt to familial tendencies or become alienated from them. Since we often carry out familial
patterns uncon sciously in mate and vocational selection, familial negation may not be too common.
Secondary familial negation is a pathological denial, repression, or inhibition of asocial psychopathic, criminal, or mentally ill figures in
the family. Ironically, we often manifest the characteristics of the persons we deny the most. The relative most opposed is the relative most
resembled. Such negation can become a fixation and lead to personal disintegration.
In summary, the ego alternates in a rhythm of expansion and contrac tion, imagination and will. Each ego phase tends to dominate
particular periods of the life cycle. Projection is common to infancy, inflation to adolescence, introjection to youth and middle age, and
negation to maturity. As phases of the life cycle, they presuppose a primitive psychic stratum which is found in primal religion. Projection
reflects the mystical participation in spiritual being, inflation the exaltation of ecstatic and androgynous states, introjection character and
worldview, and negation ethical and moral behavior.

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When one or more of these phases becomes extreme and falls out of balance, one becomes fixed and suffers a compulsive, destructive, or
disintegrated fate. In extreme cases disintegration brings out twilight states in individuals and anarchy in societies. Both are flooded with
cruel instinctual forces of raw, primitive life. The task is to achieve wholeness, to integrate a free and personal ego and live within a just
democratic society.
V. The Pontifical Ego
Szondi’s ego psychology largely took shape during the first decade after the Second World War. It represented a dialogue between the
human and natural sciences, particularly between depth psychology and genetics. Szondi intended to create a bridge between these
different fields. Szondi refers to the bridge as a metaphor of the “between” (Das Zwischen). He “seeks to reveal the mysterious ‘between’
of two living beings, about which Plato earlier in The Symposium and also currently Martin Buber have spoken. [ is] even the ‘between’
which drives two humans to one another and maintains a double-union, a mystical union” (Szondi 1978, 17-18).
Szondi approves of Plato’s argument that “what belongs to us by nature has been shown to be something we needs must befriend” (Lysis
222A, Loeb). In Szondi’s reading of Plato, we love one another because we share the same nature. Our common nature is defined as gene-
relatedness (Szondi 1978, 259).
Similarly, in The Symposium Plato narrates mythically that human nature was originally three-fold, comprising man, woman, and a union
of the two. The latter was primal humankind, the androgyne, a round being with one head, two faces, four hands, four feet, and so forth.
This primal being was murdered by Zeus because of its rebellious spirit. Ever since, each half has been looking for the other. “Thus
anciently is mutual love ingrained in mankind, reassembling our early estate and endeavoring to combine two in one and heal the human
sore” (Symposium 191D, Loeb). Hence, love is a reunion of separated relatives, who are, as Szondi would say, gene-related.

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Szondi cites Buber in many places, but a revealing discussion is found in the Ego Analysis. Describing faith as union, Szondi explains that
“participation also enables only the encounter, only the meeting, only the dialogical conversation with the spirit in the sense of Martin
Buber” (1956, 519). When the human and divine meet in religious experience, they retain their integrity. The encounter has an otherness,
in which one’s identity is not dissolved. Human and divine are inseparable but unique.
These references to Plato and Buber clarify Szondi’s understanding of human and religious experience. Unification of the ego realizes the
essential power of being through participation and achieves transcendence. Integration, participation, and transcendence signify the
highest develop ment of the ego, the union of psychic opposites. This exalted state of fulfillment is represented in the concept of the
metaphysical or pontifical ego (Pontifex Ich). The term Pontifex derives from the Latin words for bridge (pons) and for making (facere).

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Thus, the pontifical ego is that of the whole person, the fully relational self, which in the fullness of its power, participates in the realm of
spirit. This high state of being is represented in the metaphysical image of the bridge of opposites.
The concept of the pontifical ego provides a framework for a theory of personality development, a transpersonal psychology of being, and
a mystical vision of religious experience (BUrgi-Meyer 1988). The central statement of the transpersonal ego psychology is as follows:
“The ego transcends and moves itself as trans-real in a participation-projective world dimension of Being, which we will briefly name the
‘-dimension. This i ‘-dimension is the fourth dimension, in which the p5yche may extend itself-in opposition to the body” (Szondi 1956,
464). As attested by one of his students, Szondi had presented this idea in a lecture in ZUrich in 1947 (BUrgi-Meyer 1989, 43).
Szondi goes on to explain that the term dimension consists of an extension of the body in space, according to length, breadth, and height,
and of the succession of time. Ordinary reality is shaped by the extensive continuum of space-time, wherein causality operates. The
spatio-temporal, causal dimension comprises the bounded or subjective aspect of the ego. Let us call this the perspectival ego whose
content is immanent consciousness.
In its pontifical aspect the ego transcends the ordinary space-time, causal dimension and participates in a space-less, time-less, and final
state.

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These qualities of finality lie as potentials in the unconscious. They are also found in contemporary physics, which conceives of
fundamental reality without matter and subject-object forms. Fundamental reality is empty, radiant energy which enfolds all forms. To
participate in this fundamental radiant being is not to be deluded pathologically but to be whole.
Szondi’s reference to physics means relativistic-quantum theory. The universe is an inseparable whole, a dynamic process, in which all
opposites unite, as in the wave-particle aspects of matter, for example. The wholeness of reality is knowable only through participation,
and conceptual descriptions are products of projection. The pontifical ego is a primal wholeness, which is empty of particularate space-
time causal forms. It includes the possibility of pure experience, universal relativity of all space-time regions, and translocal and
transcausal relationships. Thus, ful fillment of the pontifical ego manifests a co-participation of self and fundamental reality.
VI. Sources of the Ego Psychology
As stated above, Szondi’s ego psychology was heavily influenced by Hinduism. His first literary reference to Hinduism appeared in a
1943 Hungarian manuscript (BUrgi-Meyer 1988, 13). He compares the expansive power of the ego, the “p” function, to the ahamkara, a
striving for power that can come under the spell of illusion. Szondi also compares the con tractive power of the ego, the “k” function, to
the mahanatman, which incorporates the gross, material world.
The next reference to Hinduism appeared in his pivotal essay “Human kind and Destiny” (1954b) wherein he shifts to depth psychology.
He proposes that the concept of the pontifical ego is the answer to the old question of the Upanishads: “What is your ego?” Szondi
describes the pontifical ego as the distributor of power, organizer, administrator, socializer, sublimator, individualizer, and humanizer.
Szondi goes on to describe the ego as a union of opposites; for example...”the ego is neither spirit nor nature; it is the bridge between spirit
and drive-nature” (1954, 22) and so forth. The antitheses are repeated and expanded in the Ego Analysis (1956, 156-157).

86
function. The Gita also accounts for the pathology of projection: “But he who is deluded by egoism (ahamkara) thinks: ‘I am the doer.”
(3.27).
Szondi’s appeal to Buber’s ideas is also more consistent with post Vedanta Hinduism. Both Szondi and Buber qualify the pure mystical
experience with a sense of otherness. Early in his career Buber was attracted to Vedanta, but he went beyond its monism to his mature I-
Thou teaching, which reflected Jewish Hasidism (Friedman 1976, 413-414). According to Buber, the immediate experience of relatedness
discloses the nature of fundamental reality.
Like the Bhagavad Gita Hasidism also recognizes a gap between the divine and the human, and it bridges the gap by withdrawing from
the sensory realm and uniting with God in a mysticism of prayer. The Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav teaches: “The entire
world is a very narrow bridge; the main thing is to have no fear” (Witztum, et.al., 1990, 125). Historically, Hasidism depended upon
Platonic metaphysics, wherein the worlds of light and darkness are distinct but share a dynamic unity (Scholem 1987, 102-103, 316).
In the Platonic tradition the ultimate and sensory realms, those of light and darkness, unite in the intermediate world (Rep. X, 614C;
Statesm. 309C; Tim. 90A) The intermediate world is the “between”, which is known in seizure states, expressed in twilight images, and
defined only by negation (Conze 1974). Significantly, the setting of the Upanishads is the way of the forest. The forest is secret, dark, and
mysterious, and it symbolizes a twilight state, a lowered threshold of consciousness, as experienced through a shock event.
Therefore, the concept of the pontifical ego is a new version of the Platonic intermediate world. The union of the ultimate and sensory
realms resonates with the metaphysics of Hinduism and Hasidism. However, the ego phase of projective-participation refutes both
monistic and dualistic conceptions and faithfully represents the relational vision of historic Judaism. Consequently, the image of atnzan as
“bridge” informs the concept of the pontifical ego metaphorically rather than categorically.
VII. Forms of Pathological Participation
As a union of psychic antitheses, the pontifical ego displaces the space-time-causal realm and participates in an “other” domain of spirit.

Positing this kind of ego psychology inevitably raises the following question: What is the difference between normal and abnormal concep
tions of reality?
When the primal drive for participation is not fulfilled, delusion obtains. Delusion (Wahn) is a misappropriated power of being (Szondi
1956, 412). It substitutes for real relatedness and takes such common forms as addiction, neurosis, psychosis, and magical speculation.
These substitutes mean that one lacks personal integration and suffers powerless ness. The kinds of delusion correspond to the four basic

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ego phases. These delusions can occur individually or collectively, simultaneously or sequentially. Here Szondi goes beyond Freud who
confines delusion to projection.
(1) Projection-delusion is “the product of an ego function which is characterized by a pathological power distribution and an unreal mode
of participation” (Szondi 1956, 425). One externalizes one’s own power onto someone or something else, making the object omnipotent. A
mutual hate relation arises between subject and object. When the transfer is total without any relatedness, paranoia results. The projection
could be mixed with the Cain homicidal intent and be directed toward others or towards oneself depressively or compulsively.
Underlying projection-delusion is the inability to be alone. Some popular cultural forms of this delusion are astrology, superstitition, and
non-scientific parapsychology. This type accounts for 32.2% of all delusions (Szondi 1956, 458). To achieve genuine relatedness, one
must go beyond self-interest. Szondi believes that real transcendence is the only cure for pathological narcissism.
In this context Szondi refers to a psychological study conducted in Lambarene, Africa, by Emmerich Percy, a physician working with
Albert Schweitzer (1956, 170). Percy found that among native Africans the dominant ego phase was total projection. This could be
interpreted as a mystical, archaic, or autistic ego, on the one hand, or an undiagnosed schizophrenia, on the other. However, schizophrenic
symptoms do not appear in these people, because their society satisfies the need for participation, the “p” function. Participation is
achieved by identi1 with plants, animals, and ancestors. Hence, a person with an autistic ego would be normal in tribal society and primal
religion but abnormal in modern civilization.
87

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(2) Inflation-delusion doubles one’s power by expressing unconsciously and separately the psychic antitheses of the ego (Szondi 1956,
436). The frequency is 10.5%. Some common forms are megalomania, erotomania, and transvestitism. Mythologies of androgyny, as in
the primal being who is both male and female, are examples. Szondi cites a case of a hebe phrenic schizophrenic, for whom the left arm
was the wife and the right the husband (1956, 481). With the inflation-delusion the patient could be both and love both.
(3) Introjection-delusion is the desire to possess everything, a narcissism of having (Szondi 1956, 440). Behind the introjection lies a
strong sense of guilt. One example is the fetish, which gives one a magical omnipotence or narcissistic sexual identity. Introjection-
delusion often appears at the beginning and end of a psychosis as a cosmic grandeur, feeling of persecution, sexual powers, or pedantic
orderliness. The frequency is 2.2%. Such delusion informs materialism, rationalism, positivism, and any other worldview that denies
transcendence.
(4) Negation-delusion is the total devaluation of the powers of being and having (Szondi 1956, 443). Total devaluation creates a
negativism and tends to be destructive. The clinical symptoms are feelings of worthless ness, illusory hypochondria, addiction, and
suicidal and homicidal mania. The frequency is 22.7%. Thus, the negation-delusion is nearly as common as the projective. Yet, each is
unique. With projection-delusion one has no ideals, but with negation-delusion no more ideals.
VIII. Participation Theory of Dreams
Delusion is related to dreaming in the sense that both go beyond the limits of ordinary, space-time, causal reality. The climax of the dream
comes when the dreamer, for a brief moment, experiences a wholeness. Szondi calls this momentary oneness “autogenic participation”.
Every dream is a nightly search for wholeness, for participation in the side of the personality that is not manifest in waking consciousness.
The dormant half is the background self (Hinterganger). Though separated by waking consciousness, the background self is essentially
related to the foreground self (Vorderganger), with which it unites in the dream. In the totality of the dream time is relativized. Dreams
may reflect past or future or be causal or final.

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In the human life cycle a splitting of the foreground and background selves usually occurs about ages three or four. After that period,
stronger drive impulses become repressed and are reduced to the background self. The mechanism of repression is the waking
consciousness in the perspec tival ego. The background and foreground selves assume a contrary role, creating a sharp polarity. For
example, with an inhibited foreground self the background is autistic, and with a sexually feminine foreground, the background is
sadistically aggressive.
One of Szondi’s patients illustrates such polarity. In Case #1 a 55 year old businessman appears to be a “Don Juan” type (1956, 233-234,
473-474). He has a brother, a passive homosexual, who died prematurely. The patient represses his femininity, so as not to repeat the sad
fate of his homosexual brother. Yet he has a constantly recurring dream, in which he is a wife in bed with a Don Juan. In the dream the
wife represents the background, Don Juan the foreground. The purpose of the repression is familial negation, to avoid the brother’s pattern
of behavior. The male- female images mean that the dream work takes an inflative form.
Szondi’s theory also accounts for ancestral dreams, visions, and hallucinations. Case #9 concerns a 29 year old, female organist, who is a
psychiatric patient. She has hallucinations in which her grandmother appears, and, behind her, the ancestors are standing. From this group
a voice speaks: “Be brave, as I was brave, and the ancestors were brave”
(1956, 482).
Case #10 is about a 55 year old, female mathematician, who has a series of five long visions in which her ancestors appear. She describes
the first one as follows:
I had the image that a deep stream of blood wandered through the streets with me. I wandered in this stream which was as high as a man.
Suddenly, I became ill with high fever and rhinitis, because this ancestral blood stream was in me, and I suffocated in it. The only thing I
knew is Lthat] the ancestral blood had saved me. I believe I was previously dead (1956, 482).

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The patient hated her mother but loved her father. The mother suffered depression and had to be hospitalized for paranoid ideation. The
more sick the mother became, the more she was repressed in the mind of the daughter. Thus, the mother represented the background self
of the patient, as disclosed in the second vision: “I found her in a dark cave,

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whose walls were bordered with dark breasts out of which milk dripped.” Her mother appeared to be in a death-like condition. The patient
continued: “I sat still...on the bed, while out of the depths of the cave came a procession of ancestors” (1956, 483).
The patient repressed this imagery for twelve years, during which time the visions changed form. The mother and father grew younger,
becoming bride and groom again. In the third vision the mother brings four candles, sets them in a cross-shaped holder, while their flames
dance. Then in the fourth vision the mother holds a two and one half year old child, who is the patient as an infant. The mother speaks to
the girl: “Now even you must drink, because you are also my child, just as I am your mother and child.’ I too drink from her breast and
feel a stream of new life in me. I think: This at last is the means of healing. I need nothing more.” In the same vision the patient realizes
that the union with the mother is a ritual of renewal, which is symbolized by the drinking of the breast milk and the dancing of the candle
flames. The patient knows she is whole, as symbol ized by the four candles which are an archetypal quaternity, representing wholeness.
Finally, in the fifth vision the patient understands that her original repression of the hated mother was caused by familial anxiety. It was
the anxiety that she would suffer the same ill fate that plagued her mother; so she denied her maternal heredity: “Anxiety in the face of
destiny, which was carried by the blood of the ancestors and was pre-existent. Up to my 48th year I had defended against this fate by
negation of the blood” (1956, 485).
The few brief excerpts from these visions demonstrate that the personal, collective, and familial realms of the unconscious co-act. The
personal informs the mother-child conflict, the collective is in the healing images and archetypal quaternity, and the familial is in the flow
of the ancestral blood. The achievement of wholeness in the patient indicates that the visions facilitate autogenic participation. They are a
form of participation therapy.
To explain the dynamics of dream work Szondi employs metaphors from the theatre. The dream is the stage, the waking ego the stage
director. The background self is expressed through personal, collective, and/or familial content. The waking consciousness, embodied in
the foreground self, chooses the content and directs the play.

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Falling asleep is the same as the curtain rising. The opening scenes present the existential possibilities in the destiny of the dreamer. As
sleep moves through its cycles, the ego crosses a threshold, proceeding from the ordinary space-time world to the dream world. The
waking ego recedes, becomes passive, and watches the stage. Personal, collective, and familial figures step out of the background as
actors. They are symbols whose identities are normally hidden and barred from appearing in public. The play comes to a climax, uniting
the psyche in a participation mystique. The drama ends, as the ego awakens to the light of day.
IX. Participation Theory of Faith
Szondi’s ego psychology culminates in a theory of faith. As a thera pist, Szondi learned that humankind has a fundamental religious need
which, if not fulfilled, deteriorates into mental illness. The human need for faith is just as basic as that for contact or sexuality. In a
revealing lecture, published posthumously, Szondi describes faith as the “royal road” to humanization (1954a, 1989, 53).
In the Ego Analysis Szondi poses the issue of faith in terms of illusion, in as much as Freud and Eugen Bleuler had already identified the
two. Freud had proclaimed faith to be an illusion, and similarly Bleuler had regarded illusion as the physiological equivalent of faith. We
note that neo-Freudian psychology of religion continues to speak of illusion, but defines it as a creative reality much like that of art
(Rizzuto 1979).
Szondi treats the issue philosophically by arguing that the relationship between faith and illusion depends upon a prior woridview. In his
view, Freud and Bleuler were both monists and their approach to life was essentially materialistic. They were religious, but the “god”
whom they revered was natural science. They were great monotheists of natural science. Szondi contends that physical nature does not
exhaust reality but is a half-world; likewise, spirit alone is also a half-world. Neither nature nor spirit constitute reality. Rather both nature
and spirit comprise reality. Thus, the theory of reality, or metaphysics, can be neither monist nor dualist but relational. Only in the relation
of nature and spirit may reality be conceived, and this conception is achieved by real participation.

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Faith is a state of integrated wholeness, a participation in the full nature of being. In contrast, illusion is an extension of the perspectival
ego or an object onto a boundless plane in the sense of a totalism. There is no genuine encounter, no otherness. What appears to be other is
purely negative, evil, or unreal. Under illusion the ego suffers powerless ness. It splits and disintegrates.
The German term for faith (Glaube) may be translated as faith or belief. Szondi would prefer faith, and he illustrates its quality etymolog
ically. The Indo-Germanic root of Glauben is “leubh,” which means “to praise;” the praise is directed toward the future (Szondi 1956,
514). Faith as praise is positive, mystical, and continuous, and this quality is not determined by reason. Faith belongs to the realm of spirit.
As a spiritual function, faith has two psychological aspects. On the one hand, faith involves a transfer of one’s own power onto God,
thereby achieving a centered self. In this relationship the power of being becomes stronger than the power of having. On the other hand,
the law of participation is fulfilled at the highest level of reality. This spiritual maturity is a fulfillment of the primal wholeness, which is
latent in the original mother-child, dual-union.
The model of faith is the pontifical ego. In this state one is trans parent to the divine as well as fully human and fully personal. It is a
mystical or pure experience, bridging this world and the other world. The pontifical ego activates the constitutive ego phases, other than
the projective, in three basic aspects of religious experience: (1) symbolization through myth, dream, and vision (primaly inflation); (2)

27
development of woridview, character, and sacramental object (primary introjection); and (3) adaptation by means of morality and ethics
(primary negation). These three functions of religious experience are distinctive modes of participa tion in the realm of spirit.
Finally, faith is destiny. God or the realm of spirit is both “subject” and “object” of existential choice. When the choice of the object is
compulsive, environmentally-conditioned, or purely rational, faith dimin ishes, as does one’s own personal humanity. One becomes
dehumanized and may suffer a variety of mental disorders, such as total delusion, an autistic-undisciplined ego possessed by occult forces,
hypochondria, or the obsessive superstition of religious orthodoxy. These conditions betray a dread of death, and they are inadequate
defenses against basic anxiety.

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In summary, fate consists of (1) heredity, (2) instinctual drives, (3) social conditioning, and (4) the influential ideas of the prevailing
culture. Taken together, they are a half-world and a one-dimensional force. They encourage compulsive, genotropic choices and inhibit the
spiritual drive for participation. In contrast, freedom emerges in (1) the perspectival ego and (2) the pontifical ego. The perspectival ego
makes free choices, and the pontifical ego exalts the “p” function, the projective-participatory power of being, and gains wholeness. Since
we can never escape the animal brain, freedom always occurs in nature, amid genes and ancestors. Therefore, freedom is destiny. In the
complementary wholeness of freedom and destiny we face the world directly, confronting tragedy and ambiguity. In the realm of destiny
death befalls us not as a threat but as a personal choice.
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Chapter Five: Struggle Against the Ancestor
I. Ground of the Psyche
The last major work in Szondi’s system appeared in 1963, and it dealt with therapy. He formulated his method of therapy in dialogue with
those of other psychologists. For example, the Freudian conception of the psyche is microscopic, anatomical, topographical, and
mechanistic. The Jungian comprises levels of consciousness and unconsciousness, in which the psychic totality is partly identical to the
physical continuum of the universe.
In Szondi’s view both Freud and Jung are monists. The struggle between the Freudian and Jungian schools illustrates the splitting of the
psyche into subjective and objective domains. The historic splitting has led to attempts by various psychologies to recover the wholeness
of the psyche. Szondi’s analysis of destiny is one of the most comprehensive formulations of wholeness.
Szondi has established a therapeutic model based upon functional dependencies. Some examples are the concepts of the familial
unconscious and the pontifical ego. These units are relational in the sense that they represent experiences of wholeness and dialectical in
that they comprise paired contents. Instead of reducing the psyche to a single energy source, the libido, as Freud does, Szondi shows that
the hereditary drives have their own energies. Thus, the psyche in its conscious and unconscious domains is a plenitude of diverse
energies.
Freud also conceived of the conscious and unconscious as psychic qualities, which are known only through signs or symptoms. Szondi
argues that such qualities could only be classified as vegetative or reflective but not as psychic. He contends that “the essence of the
psychic is the impulse of the life function toward freedom” (Szondi 1963a, 33). Conscious and unconscious are stations on the road to
freedom. The achievement of

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freedom involves a genuine wholeness, a real humanization, and not simply an adjustment to physical reality.
To account for the dynamics of freedom Szondi uses a well-known term from German idealism. Friedrich Wilhelm von Schelling
conceived of absolute freedom as the Ungrund. This German term designates the absolute or basic ground of being. The Ungrund is the
realm of absolute non being. It is addressed only by way of negation or by the negative theology.
Szondi translates grund as “depth” and “end;” so the Ungyund means “the deepest place.” Hence, the absolute provides the dimension of
depth for psychology and grounds all distinctions and dualities. More precisely, the Ungrund is the unconscious. Szondi makes this claim
in light of Freud’s belief that the unconscious knows no contradiction, negation, doubt, or opposites but that these are present in
consciousness. Such characteristics presuppose an absolute depth or ground. The unconscious knows no contradiction because the
freedom of the Ungrund is itself unconscious.
Throughout this discussion Szondi employs two terms, the Ungrund and the Urgrund, as though they were interchangeable (1963a, 34-
35). This usage raises a problem in the original German tradition. Alexandre Koyre has shown that Schelling confused Ungrund Urgrund,
and Abgrund and unnecessarily imputed darkness to each (1968, 281). The term Ungrund was introduced by Jacob Boehme and
understood simply as the “Divine Nothingness” or absolute without determination or distinction.
These German philosophers used the notion of Ungrund to explain the origin of being. This presupposes that the explanatory principle of
being be preceded by its opposite, such as a notion of nonbeing or nothingness. Such an approach is common to the NeoplatOflic tradition
and to the circles of medieval Judaism that produced the Kabbalah. In the Kabbalab the source of all being is the ultimate nothingness, the
primordial will toward being, which is the same as Boehme’S Ungrund (Scholem 1987, 459). Thus, Szondi’S understanding of the
unconscious reflects the joint influences of the Platonic, Jewish, and German philosophical traditions.
Szondi finds in the unconscious or Ungrund a drive toward transcen dence, toward a conscious wholeness. The Ungrund is nothing
explicit, but it projects the wholeness of being as a plenitude of energy that pervades the apparent emptiness of the universe (Bohm 1983,
210). The most
compelling manifestations toward being (“p” factor) a former expands the self thr self through the will. TI pontifical ego, in which im
psychic unity. One experiei nature of the universe as an are dissolved in an ultimat
II. Tb

28
The fundamental movefl is illustrated concretely in in dialogue with Freud ar Enlightenment. It seeks t deliver him or her from in
Psychoanalysis deals objectivity of inner and ou subjective psychological ma reality as defined by social physical world. Therapy o
repression as an empirical of the patient. The proc model of the psyche.
Szondi’s judgment of t further reinforced by the hi and thanatos, cannot be liii the eighteenth century hava forces of nature requiring d In
the Enlightenment age r containing instinctual force
Szondi doubts that repri ology. Just to remove neu early childhood trauma, da concentrating on symptoms a whole person who bears in the
familial unconscic

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compelling manifestations of freedom in human existence are the drive toward being (“p” factor) and the drive toward having (“k” factor).
The former expands the self through the imagination, the latter compresses the self through the will. The attainment of freedom culminates
in the pontifical ego, in which imagination and will are elevated to the highest psychic unity. One experiences a transcendent integration
and knows the nature of the universe as an inseparable wholeness, wherein all distinctions are dissolved in an ultimate nothingness.
II. Therapeutic Principles
The fundamental movement toward freedom, which informs psychic life, is illustrated concretely in therapy. Szondi explains his method
of therapy in dialogue with Freud and says that psychoanalysis descends from the Enlightenment. It seeks to cultivate a pure insight in the
patient and to deliver him or her from infantile dependence and the need for guilt.
Psychoanalysis deals with empirical reality, which comprises the objectivity of inner and outer perceptions. The Freudian analyst collects
subjective psychological materials and evaluates them in terms of objective reality as defined by social consensus. Objective reality is the
external, physical world. Therapy consists of a search for early childhood needs, repression as an empirical fact, and the fate of the
repression in the life of the patient. The procedure rests upon a linear, logical, and causal model of the psyche.
Szondi’s judgment of the Enlightenment origins of psychoanalysis is further reinforced by the historical fact that the life and death drives,
eros and t/zanatos, cannot be linked before the eighteenth century. Only since the eighteenth century have sex and death been viewed
together as primal forces of nature requiring defenses and sublimation (Aries 1981, 392-394). In the Enlightenment age nature was
discovered as an independent order, containing instinctual forces that challenged human mastery.
Szondi doubts that repression is a uniform causal factor in psychopath ology. Just to remove neurotic symptoms, caused by the repression
of an early childhood trauma, does not guarantee genuine healing. Instead of concentrating on symptoms as psychic objects, Szondi views
the patient as a whole person who bears several existential possibilities, which are latent in the familial unconscious. The key to healing is
the personal

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relationship between patient and therapist. The task of the therapist is to maintain moral integrity and to treat the patient as a responsible
being, as an end in himself or herself.
Szondi lays down a series of fundamental therapeutic principles (1963a, 56-96). Stating these helps to clari1 further his view of the family
and the experience of freedom. The first principle is that psychoanalysis grasps only a part of human destiny and not the whole. For Freud
destiny is determined mainly by an obsessional neurosis, traumatically acquired from an unresolved Oedipus complex. As Szondi’s many
case studies show, fatefully disordered lives are due to the complex interaction of heredity, biological drives, and the social and
intellectual conditioning and not simply to neurosis.
The second and third principles together entail a distinction between pathogenesis and etiology. As stated in chapter one, this distinction
has been confirmed by contemporary genetics. Pathogenesis means the manifestation of a disorder and etiology its cause. The
psychoanalytic preoccupation with early childhood virtually confuses the two. Although early childhood may be the time of the onset of
an illness, it may not necessarily be the cause. The clinical reason is that childhood traumas do not lead to neuroses or psychoses in all
persons. A trauma is pathogenic only if the victim carries a specific tendency toward a disorder. The cause derives from the genes, and
early childhood simply manifests the hereditary pattern.
The fourth principle involves a distinction between instinctual drive dreams and ancestral dreams. The former display content from the
personal unconscious, which is usually sexual and shaped by repression. The Freudian analyst interprets dreams as though they were
forms of literature portraying hidden sexual themes, The latter express hereditary tendencies as carried by figures in the familial
unconscious, such as epileptic or schizophrenic ancestors.
The fifth principle states that ancestral claims originating in family heredity and appearing in dreams are acted out by the patient. One
does not remember them but simply enacts them. Consequently, the Freudian method of recollection, repetition, and working through
repressed content does not apply to ancestral claims, Confrontation with enacted but unremembered impulses requires a unique approach
to therapy, which will be discussed in the next section.

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The sixth principle mandates two tasks. One is that psychoanalytically the therapist concentrates on the defense and sublimation of the
threaten ing unconscious impulse. Szondi observes this practice, when it fits the situation, which is usually at the beginning of a
therapeutic course. The other is that in the familial phase, when hereditary pathologies are uncovered, vocational therapy may be
indicated. Vocational choices may be recommended as means of sublimation of hereditary disturbances. However, vocational therapy is
more easily done with younger patients or with those who suffer relatively mild disorders rather than with pre psychotics or psychotics.
The familial or vocational stage of therapy is followed by the ego phase, when the therapist helps the patient achieve the faith function.
The appeal to faith is based upon one’s experience and not theology.

29
Finally, the seventh principle clarifies the goal of therapy. The aim is to liberate and to humanize the patient. The end is not a static state
but an on-going process. Humanization is not measured by the absence of symptoms; for even neurotics are capable of fulfillment.
Humanization includes the capacity to make free choices, regardless of one’s early childhood or neurotic symptoms.
Szondi’s book on therapy was concluded with a reference to Martin Luther (1963a, 527). More precisely, Szondi’s clinical distinction
between acting and remembering parallels exactly Luther’s dilemma as a young Augustinian monk. He had trouble receiving the
sacrament of penance, because he could not remember his sins (Bainton 1950, 55-56). If he could not remember, he could not confess; and
if he could not confess, he could not be forgiven. He acted as though he were a sinner, as though he were possessed by the wrath of God.
Luther’s superior counseled him simply to love God, but he wondered how he could love a God of wrath. Luther suffered a paroxysmal
splitting, which was resolved in the justifica tion by faith. Thus, the struggles of the young Luther serve as a prototype of psychoshock
therapy.

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III. Psychoshock Therapy
The aforementioned principles indicate two levels of therapeutic activity. Psychoanalysis is a direct type, utilizing free association and
recollection to uncover unconscious resistance and to bring repressed content into consciousness. Some of the psychoanalytic factors of
resistance are repression, transference, secondary gains of illness, repeti tion-compulsion, and guilt and the need for punishment.
The other, Szondi’s psychoshock therapy, is the indirect kind. He recognizes the fact that sometimes patients go through psychoanalytic
treatment but do not improve. Their symptoms may return after a period
remission or they may not be able to make sound existential decisions. Despite completing a therapeutic program, they remain fatefully
disordered. The reason is that genotropism causes the unconscious resistance. Hereditary patterns in the familial unconscious are
repressed, and yet they influence one’s life.
The task of the therapist is to detect the resistance, including perversions, hallucinations, and delusions, and trace them to familial figures.
The resistances could be called “ancestral reminiscences.” However, these familial patterns may not be uncovered easily, so the therapist
must wait patiently for them to appear, often for years. Metaphorically speaking, the therapist awaits the return of the ancestor.
Discernment of the familial patterns may be aided by psychological testing and by construction of a genealogy.
Getting at hereditary patterns requires the psychoshock technique. The term illustrates the fact that therapy is a shock event. This method
grew Out of Szondi’s experimental work in 1945, following his liberation from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp. He admits that he
and other psychiatrists had unpleasant feelings when treating patients with electro shock therapy. He wondered if a vigorous psychiatric
confrontation on the couch might have the same dramatic impact as electricity.
Originally, he experimented on psychopathic addicts and paranoid and catatonic schizophrenics. Over a span of ten years he received
encouraging results from his work. He found the technique mainly appropriate to prepsychotics and early schizophrenics in institutional
settings but not so much to other patients. To do the psychoshock technique the therapist

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must accept his or her own family background and forms of sublimation. One must come to terms with one’s own ancestors.
One illustration of psychoshock therapy is provided in the following case (Szondi, Moser, and Webb 1959, 271-292; Szondi 1963a, 171-
187). It deals with a 45 year old bank official who has excellent financial ability. Until age 37 he had no relationships with women.
However, his first love affair was with a paranoid-hysteriform woman who was 60 years old or 23 years older than he. The relationship
lasted two years, and it gave him considerable pleasure. He wanted to marry this woman, but her son intervened and dissuaded him from
doing so. The son explained that such a marriage would not be normal and that he should enter therapy with a Jungian analyst.
The man agreed. The Jungian analyst, a female, helped him to realize that the woman served as a mother figure and that he should
separate from her. When the man dissolved the relationship, therapy came to an end. Following therapy, however, the man had another
affair with a woman who was even older than the first one. Meanwhile, he was completely impotent toward younger women. The Jungian
analyst advised him to enter therapy with a male psychiatrist, who would be a father figure and help build up his masculinity. He joined
Szondi in a therapeutic course, which involved 101 two hour sessions over a span of 15 months, including analysis of 152 dreams.
Szondi conducted the psychoanalytic phase in accord with the Freudian method. The patient lay on the couch and spoke, while the
therapist listened passively. During this phase, the patient became aware of the following symptoms.
First, he has a strong incestuous bond with his mother and sister. The patient is the youngest of four siblings, having one sister and two
older brothers. The incestuous aspect appears in dream #11: “An older woman had said to me in a dream, I should not tell her husband.
Yet I thought ‘But I have still loved my mother.” (1963a, .172) Dream #6 recalls a situation from the time he was six years old: “My father
comes home from military service. I lay on my mother and sought her breast. The sister, who is six years older, lay in another bed and
laughed at me with mother.” In dream #18 he desires to sleep with his sister but is prevented from doing so by the mother. The father
appears as a “steer-man” and makes demands upon his daughter.

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Second, many dreams evoke childhood anxiety, featuring, for example, the threatening appearance of his father as a red steer. Third, pre-
genital impulses, such as anality, exhibitionism, and anal-sadism are brought out. Fourth, several dreams indicate repressed
homosexuality, including erotic experiences with the brother and attachment to the father.
At the end of the first series of psychoanalytic dreams, the patient summarizes his own conclusions as follows. He realizes his attachment
to his mother, resulting in various degrees of homosexual or bisexual feelings. The homosexuality is represented by the brother, which

30
creates anxiety. The patient has many fantasies as a Don Juan type, yet he knows that he would fail in this role. He fears encounters with
women, intercourse, and pregnancy. He wishes to be more masculine toward women than he actually is.
In his dreams the figure of the mother pushes him toward a career and toward relationships with specific women. The father, both as a
human and as a red steer, represents his own instinctual drive nature. The mother has given religion to the father as a means of control for
the drives and for his instability. The patient feels anxiety about his mas culinity and has discovered a masochistic side of himself. When
faced with problems, he has a tendency to become ill. He also realizes that the analyst is a substitute for the father. Hence, transference
occurs.
The second series of dreams, while still in the psychoanalytic phase, concerns the man’s first love, the 60 year old woman. The patient
explains that he has experienced an intense, ecstatic love with her: “An unheard-of stimulation, I was in another world, I felt as if
something were flowing into me from God.... I experienced it not as sexual, but as something numinous” (1963a, 73). However, he learns
of the incestuous quality of this love, when in a dream the beloved takes on the features of his mother.
He writes about this discovery on October 9, 1953: “I was impressed- and still am-by the clear presentation of the incestuous and
homosexual stages of development, through which every man has to go instinctually, with the underpinning of the primitive cultures”
(1963a, 174). He understands that his homosexual tendency and impotence toward younger women are consequences of his mother
fixation.
Within two months of the beginning of his analysis with Szondi his impotence disappeared completely. He renounced his incestuous
desires and developed a normal relationship with a woman who was about 30

103
years old. He sustained the relationship for more than one year, until traveling to a foreign country where he became the head of a branch
bank. Although the psychoanalysis had ended, Szondi knew that the analysis had not. The patient reported disturbing symptoms through
both dreams and free association. These symptoms derived from familial figures.
Szondi resumed analysis with the patient in a second phase, the familial. Szondi believes that the hereditary roots of character and
behavior are so strong that the patient should not be confronted with them in the early stages of therapy. The familial phase consists of a
direct encounter of the ancestors, constructing a genealogy, and taking psycholog ical tests.
In the first part of the familial therapy the patient experiences parox ysmal-epileptoid relatives. For example, a stutterer appears in dream
#19:
“Your brother M. had a brother, who stutters. I am astonished and ask, what is his name? ‘Hans’ was the answer” (1963a, 175). Indeed, the
family has a member, who had stuttered earlier in his life.
In a session on the couch the patient feels the onset of an epileptic aura. This occurs after he explains that a cousin of his father, the son of
a railway employee, had killed a friend in college during a prank. The patient becomes distracted by reference to the murder. Szondi
explains that epileptoid states may come out, when associations with violent weapons, knives, swords, or daggers, are made.
The patient also has dreams about other people who suffer epileptic seizures. He cites dream #30 as an example: “Now visualize a young
man with black hair lying on the floor. He then added: He reminds me of an epileptic schoolmate B. He says to me (in the dream) he has
just had a choking attack.” In the preceding dream, #29, he sees his maternal aunt K., lying dead as a result of an epileptic seizure. His
brother is present. The patient explains that this aunt had always excited him sexually and that his brother was a rival for her affection.
The patient goes on to reveal dream #149: “I lay on the couch and asked my mother, who stood nearby, whether she had ever had an
epileptic seizure. She answered: ‘When I was 18, I had had one, and perhaps there is still another one.’ And after a pause she continued:
‘also the female chocolate stormer.’ ‘Chocolate stormer?’ I looked at her questioningly. Then I asked further: And do you know, mother,
what breaks through in

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an epileptic seizure?’ And I answered myself: a murderer! - She looked at me shocked. Yes, a killer, I repeated” (1963a, 176).
The patient acknowledges that his mother is either mildly or manifestly epileptic. In fact, both she and her brother had had periods of
religious ecstasy with momentary absences. In dream #149 there is the unconscious knowledge that the patient’s first love, the 60 year old
woman, is an epileptic carrier and that she is symbolized as the “chocolate stormer.” When the genealogy was compiled, the patient
learned that this woman was the daughter of an epileptic pharmacist. The family tree even contains a male relative, the father’s cousin
noted above, who was a murderer. Another relative, a theologian, had told the patient some time before that a distant ancestor had been
beheaded for poisoning his wife shortly after their marriage.
Szondi discloses to the patient, at this point in the therapy, the hidden presence of epileptics and affect killers in the familial unconscious.
Szondi explains the latent struggle between the Cain and Abel tendencies in human nature. In this case, the latent Cain impulse had
existed in a repressed form, even before the beginning of the familial phase of therapy. For example, the patient had written a paper on
November 12, 1953 listing eight situations in which he had expressed a violent intent. These had taken place between September 7, 1948
and May 11, 1951. In that period he felt a desire to kill a man, kick a pregnant woman, push his first love into a stream, hurt her with
scissors, or drive nails into the head of a little girl. Previously, the patient had suffered enuresis almost until the time of puberty.
Related experiences had also taken place in the patient’s family. Once the father threatened to kill his daughter in a state of rage. Both
maternal and paternal families have members who had undergone delusory religious ecstasy. Szondi points out to the patient that the
disposition toward religious illusions presupposes a combination of epileptiform and schizoform heredities.
Thus, in addition to the epileptiform background the familial therapy uncovers a tendency toward inflative-paranoid schizophrenia.
Schizoform content emerges in a second group of ancestral dreams. In one dream his mother says that he, the patient, had come into the

31
world by “impregnation of the Holy Spirit.” Hence, the mother is Mary, and the patient is Jesus. The mother believes in the Second
Coming of Jesus and that she must

105
prepare the way for it. The patient fears that if Jesus should arrive, he
might not be prepared.
The mother has a brother who has had religious ecstasie3 and who has not had relationships with women. He is called “the Holy One” in
the family. The uncle appears in several dreams of the patient, in both psychoanalytic and familial stages.
In dream #6 the patient says that “I hold the will of my uncle ‘D’ in my hands, i.e., a photocopy of it (black negative), in which it is stated
explicitly in strong words that the descendants are excluded. I look on the empty bed of uncle ‘D’ and find lying there his bright metal
revolver; he has shot himself with the revolver. I unload it.... I am actually able to keep this revolver for myself.” In another room he
discovers his mother in deep sorrow, and she says to him: “It is significant that the inheritance of Uncle ‘D’ (her brother) remains intact.”
With this dream series the patient realizes that he is a carrier of his uncle’s tendencies. He loves the uncle more than the other siblings, and
he is the one who most looks like the uncle. The patient had been celibate until the age of 37, as had his uncle. The mother had insisted
that both her son and brother remain identified with her. She would not allow them to relate to any other women. Moreover, the patient’s
incestuous love with the 60 year old woman has repeated the same kind of relationship between his mother and uncle. The fatal shooting,
in dream #6, means that the patient has broken this pattern and has become liberated from the incestuous bonding. That is why the mother
is sad in the dream.
The patient also learns that he has been predisposed toward religious delusions, even though he has repressed them. He had recently been
informed that, before he was born, his father had to be hospitalized for religious delusions for one and one half years. As he approaches
the end of analysis, the patient does manifest schizophrenia. It comes out in the form of strange and powerful neologisms. He talks out or
dreams these neologisms in response to a rapid fire assault of stimulus words by the therapist.
These neologisms are produced in colloquial German and difficult for me to translate. Some of the neologisms convey such images as a
primeval forest, incest, defloration, and Martin Luther throwing an ink well at the devil mirrored on the wall. These images are followed
by those of beating

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a victim with a club, sexual intercourse, carnal lust, vampire acts, and other forms of sadism.
The discharge of these strange neologisms indicates that Szondi has allowed the patient to be temporarily psychotic. Thereafter, he
confronts the patient with his schizoform heredity, explaining that it had broken into his consciousness. The schizoform carriers are the
patient’s father and uncle. Szondi helps the patient realize that the familial schizophrenia threatens him through incestuous desires, sadism,
and lust murder. The neologisms are defenses against these repressed sexual impulses. The patient also learns that these desires are
infantile and that he can renounce them. Having made these discoveries, the patient writes a paper describing the religious ecstasies he had
experienced between 1947 and 1950. All of these ecstatic states involve him inflated as a messianic figure and receiving mandates from
God.
The next step of familial therapy is the preparation of a genealogy. Other than what has already been stated, some of the significant geno
tropic data follow. The patient’s father descends from a family of farmers, many of whom had died by accidents. Some hold aggressive,
paroxysmal jobs, such as locomotive engineering and farming. The father is a railway employee. Both he and his parents suffer fits of
rage.
The mother descends from an Anabaptist family, in which several members are bakers and confectioners. One brother of the mother is a
stutterer and the other, uncle “D” described above, is a victim of per secutory delusions. Uncle “D” had been fired from his job. Several
sectarian clergy are frequent visitors in the mother’s home.
The genealogy also incorporates data from the family of the patient’s first love, the 60 year old woman. She claims occult powers and had
terrorized her husband and, after he died, her lover. Her father is an epileptic who dies in a falling accident. A maternal aunt is hospitalized
for paranoid schizophrenia and commits suicide with poison. Similarly, an uncle, a pharmacist, poisons himself. Another uncle is a
minister and the administrator of an institution for epileptics. The woman’s grandfather is a church organist and her paternal uncle a rabbi.
Her husband had been a Jew who converted to Christianity.
The 30 year old girl, whom the patient had dated after his psychoanaly sis, descends from a family of alcoholics. She has paranoid
schizophrenic and depressive episodes, for which she has received electroshock. She has

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made one suicide attempt, and, after the patient leaves the country to work in a foreign branch bank, she has suicide ideation.
The familial stage of therapy concludes with psychological testing. In this case the Szondi Test profiles indicate three unconscious
dangers: (1) paranoid schizophrenia; (2) pathological attachment to a mother figure; and (3) masochistic feeling in love and religion.
These threats could come out by way of the Cain tendency, by killing, or by way of the Abel, by studying religion seriously. Through the
shock of therapy the patient encounters his epileptic and schizophrenic ancestors. As long as he represses these impulses, he will suffer a
tragic fate. Giving in to the ancestors makes him ill and powerless.
Finally, the third and last stage of therapy deals with the ego analysis. This involves building up the power of being. Szondi persuades the
patient to transfer his power of being to the realm of spirit. Taking clues from the ancestry, Szondi recommends studying psychology and
religion. This would be done privately; meanwhile, the patient would remain employed at the bank. His personal study of religion would
be a useful source of a healing sublimation and freedom.

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The patient acts upon Szondi’s suggestion and comes to the following conclusion: “A man has not only bright, but also dark sides. This
goes for everyone without exception. Everyone bears the Cain within, even though the strengths and realities may vary. Against this Cain
also stands Abel, to the Devil an angel. The Abel is the light, the Cain the shadow”
(1963a, 186).
In dream #117 the patient sees a gravestone and cemetery, fire and forge and analyzes these:
It has become clear to me, that I have finally buried my uncle D in this dream. The streams, which flowed from this religiously disturbed
uncle in me from the familial unconscious, have been conquered. Also the paternal epileptiform heredity (killer, hell, fire) and even the
castration anxiety have become powerless. Earlier I had produced neologisms, to defend myself against my psychotic uncle and father. So
I tried to hide them both.
Both are now buried.
He goes on to explain that he has become free from his religious obsessions, that he wants to marry, and that he wishes to cultivate his
new spiritual qualities with his wife. In dream #142 he sees the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and says: “Now come problems of
integration,

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problems of humanization, and I am overjoyed. I will become a more sensitive man, who unites thought with feelings.” Thus, the patient
has drawn closer to the pontifical ego at the level of faith.
CHAPTER SIX: ORIGIN OF GOOD AND EVIL ( Book pages 109 – 149)
Page 109
I. Cain and Abel
At the center of the analysis of destiny stands the Cain complex, which is condensed from the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis Chapter
Four of the Old Testament. The Cain complex is defined as the son who hates the brother and loves the father. The respective relationships
are reversed for the daughter.
References to Cain are scattered throughout Szondi’s writings. He typically cites Cain as the symbol of law-breaking, violence, killing, or
evil. The most systematic treatment of this biblical figure may be found in his
book entitled Cain, Forms of Evils (Kain, Gestalten des Bosen), which Szondi published in his later period (1969). Only one translation
has been published, and that is in Spanish (1975a). A shorter version of Szondi’s interpretation of the Cain story appears in one English
language essay (1964). Two of my works contain interpretations of the Cain complex, one psychoanalytically-oriented, the other
theological (Hughes
1979, 1982b).
Szondi’s study of the Cain story is shaped by literary, linguistic, and clinical sources. The principal literary sources are the Law or Torah
of the Old Testament, Jewish mythologies and legends known as the Haggadah, and selected Medieval Kabbalistic texts. Because of his
reliance upon law and legend, Halakhah and Haggadah, Szondi stands in the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism. He also views Cain as a
pivotal figure in the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Cain and Abel are mythic figures who represent semi-nomadic or sedentary tool-making cultures and pastoral, nomadic peoples,
respectively. One function of the story is to describe the age-old conflict between these two ways of life, particularly the blood feuds and
tribal wars of ancient groups. By the end of the Stone Age, the tool-maker or smith had

110
become an alien and threatening figure in the eyes of pastoral peoples (Gaster 1969, 51-52). The smith works with mysterious, metallic
sub stances, which can be turned into weapons.
In the Old Testament the Cain story belongs to the old epic writing, known as the J strand, which was compiled about 950 B.C.E. The J
strand represents Judea or the southern tradition of ancient Israel. The editor(s) of the J strand shaped the story of Cain and Abel into an
epic struggle between Cain the farmer and Abel the shepherd. Other functions of the story are to account for the origins of civilization and
for the worship of God or Yahweh among the Kenites, the so-called descendants of Cain.
Szondi derives the name Cain from the Hebrew root “kana,” which means both “created by God” and “acquired through a purchase.”
These meanings imply procreation and acquisition, two qualities central to Szondi’s psychological portrayal of Cain. He also
acknowledges that in Aramaic Cain means “smith” (1964).
The root meanings of procreation and acquisition are implied in the biblical narration of the birth of Cain: “I have produced a man with
the help of the Lord” (Gen.4:1). Although the Bible governs Szondi’s inter pretation, he cites an haggadic text, stating that Cain is
conceived by Samael, the evil angel of Satan, and that Cain’s birth is revealed in a heavenly countenance (1969,20). Samaci is the
principal name of Satan in Judaism but, beginning with the Targum Jonathan (Gen. 3:6), is identified as the angel of death in later
literature. This implies that the fatherhood of Adam begins not with the birth of Cain, but with that of Abel.
Assigning Cain’s paternity to Satan alleviates humankind of respon sibility for evil. Yet it creates uncertainty as to who the actual father of
Cain is, Is it the evil Samaci or is it God, whose help Eve claims in the birth? Still other sources make both Cain and Abel sons of Satan,
as does the Zohar, for example, the principal text of Kabbalah. Whatever the version, the intent of the myth is to ground good and evil in a
pre-personal, primal depth of being.
Szondi, however, favors the biblical view of Cain and Abel as the sons of Adam and Eve. His intent is to say that Cain and Abel, by virtue
of their descent, are of mixed ancestry. They are capable of both good and evil, as are their parents. So whether Eve conceives of Cain by
Samael or by means of God’s help, she has an inclination to both good and evil. Employing genetic metaphors, Szondi describes Adam
and Eve, Cain and

33
111
Abel, as heterozygotes and not “pure blood” homozygotes. They are all
heterozygous for good and evil.
Szondi goes on to say that Cain and Abel are married, according to most sources. One exception is that in Christian texts Abel is not
married, because he serves as a prototype for the celibate Jesus. Since there are no other families on earth, the brothers’ wives must be
their sisters, more precisely, their twin sisters. Such marriages would ordinarily violate the prohibition against incest in the Mosaic Law
(Lev. 18:9; 20:17). However, the Haggadah grants an exception; incest is permitted as an act of grace, so that humankind can be
procreated. Similarly, inbreeding is present in the story of Jacob and Esau, which reflects that of Cain and Abel, since Jacob is a shepherd
and Esau a hunter (Gen. 25:27). Both Jacob and Esau, the sons of Isaac, marry their cousins (Gen. 28:9; 29:15-30).
Reflecting on the human conditions lying behind the text, Szondi finds that the marriage of brothers and sisters indicates the flexibility of
the incest taboo in early societies (1969,35). For example, we have discussed the fact, in chapter one, that the island cultures of the Pacific
maintain a unilateral incest taboo within a matriarchal tribal organization. They also permit first cousin marriages as a way to maintain the
status for the son within the matriarchy. Biblical society resembles this to a certain extent, except that it is patriarchal. So Cain and Abel
are sons of the father, and they marry whomever the father designates as permissible. Further, the marriage of Cain and Abel to their twin
sisters reflects the psychological fact of incestuous attraction between male and female identical twins, as demonstrated in Szondi’s family
studies (1978, 144-147).
According to the story, Cain and Abel present their first-fruit offerings to God (Gen. 4:3-4). Abel gives a portion of his flock, but Cain’s is
not identified. God accepts Abel’s offering and rejects Cain’s. No reason is stated in the Bible for God’s action. In light of biblical culture,
Cain’s offering ought to be accepted, since he is the firstborn son. As a result of God’s rejection, “Cain was very angry, and his
countenance fell” (Gen. 4:5b). Unable to master his anger, as God counsels, Cain accompanies his brother Abel into the field and slays
him.
Szondi discusses at length the psychology of Cain’s crime. He identifies hatred and envy as the basic motives, as disclosed in the
following haggadic passage: “Hatred and envy burned in Cain’s soul, because his offering was not accepted” (1969, 27). Two other
motives are identified, following the

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haggadic portrayal of the brothers’ wives. We read in the Bible that Adam “had other sons and daughters” (Gen. 5:4b). How many
daughters did Adam have? According to the Book of Jubilees (4:1, 8, 10) he had two daughters or twin sisters of the two brothers, while
an haggadic source identifies three daughters or twins. In any case, Cain murders Abel to possess his wife, who is the most beautiful
woman; or Cain murders Abel because the latter has two wives and the former only one. Thus, we find the additional motives of sexual
jealousy and greed (Szondi 1969, 24, 27). Szondi’s insight conforms to the general rabbinic portrait of Cain as a man of jealousy and
greed (Jew. Ency. III: 493).
After the murder, God looks for Abel and asks Cain where he is. Cain replies: “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9).
Szondi understands Cain’s answer to be one of deception. God then realizes what Cain has done. The blood of Abel cries out for revenge
and soaks the earth. Cain laments: “My punishment is greater than I can bear” (Gen. 4:13). He fears he will be hidden from the face of
God, become a fugitive and wanderer upon the earth, and be murdered by anyone.
Underlying the story is a specific view of nature which is common to the Old Testament and to primal religion. Nature is conceived as a
whole, so that physical actions have psychic correlates. The shedding of blood arouses fascination and horror, because blood is the bearer
of life. In the case of homicide a residue of life in the blood calls for retaliation.
This synthetic view of nature entails an “act-fate synthesis” (Koch 1955). This means that actions, whether good or evil, reverberate
outward from the actor to the community and then rebound back upon the actor. The resonance of act and effect presupposes a social
network of internal relationships, in which persons mutually participate in the lives of one another. The act-fate synthesis binds human and
physical nature in a relationship, as attested in the creation narrative, according to which humankind (Adam) is formed from the ground
(Adamah) (Gen. 2:7).
The horror of the story is that the bond between humankind and earth is shattered by the shedding of blood. Consequently, the ground
loses its fertility and becomes a desert, alien and threatening, a zone of death. Cain is filled with dread, since he can no longer farm the
land. His fate is to become a homeless wanderer on the desert, where being alone means one is as good as dead.

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In Szondi’s reading Cain is emotionally disturbed. He is neither sadistic, depressive, nor psychotic. His hatred, anger, envy, and jealousy
have intensified to the point of killing. These homicidal emotions have triggered, as effects, anxiety over punishment, instability, and
endless flight (Szondi 1969, 28). This affective act-fate synthesis is implicated in the Hebrew term for punishment (Ayon), which means
both subjective guilt and objective punishment.
Although Cain fears he will be murdered, as he wanders across the face of the earth, God declares: “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer
a sevenfold vengeance” (Gen. 4:15a). God places on Cain a sign, so that no one would kill him. The sign is a mark, representing the
ancient practice of branding cattle and reflecting the mysterious sacral quality of the smith (Gaster 1969, 56).
The sign of Cain is central to Szondi’s psychology and ethics. He interprets it as an ethical idea, a normative principle intended to prohibit
any further killing (1969, 36-37). His view has the virtue of representing the intent of the text, namely, to show that God spares Cain’s life;
God pardons him, in effect. God’s action implies that the shedding of blood, which normally dictates a revenge murder, becomes an act of
expiation.

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The sign functions as a taboo, marking off a sphere of protection lasting for seven generations, which is the meaning of the phrase
“sevenfold vengeance.” In Christian and Jewish history the sign has been portrayed as a horn on the forehead. Szondi accepts this image
of the horn as symbolically significant for two reasons (1969, 36). One is that Moses, who committed crimes of passion, has been
portrayed with a horn on his forehead and the other is that the horn is a sacred object in the Old Testament. The horn comes from the
sacrifice of a bull, which occurs during the ceremony of ordination of priests, when sacrifices are made on altars with horns (Ex. 29:12).
In the ancient world this type of blood ritual was found only in the Sinai tradition and, therefore, it was uniquely Mosaic (Weinfeld 1989,
104-105).
This line of thought differs from that of another scholar, who argues that the sign as a horn represents the bestial nature of its bearer
(Mellinkoff 1981, 61). This argument resembles the popular idea of the sign as a stigma or curse. Such a notion presupposes the belief that
Cain rebels from God and is punished for his crimes. The punitive image of

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the sign is, however, post-biblical, since it does not fit the intent of the
text.
After receiving the sign, Cain leaves the presence of God and journeys east of Eden. His wife bears him a son named Enoch. Cain builds
the first city and names it after his son. Following the construction of the first city, the story presents a tribal genealogy, comprising seven
genera tions of Adam, Cain, Enoch, Irad, Mehujael, Methushael, and Lamech (Gen. 4:17-22). This genealogy is characterized by a linear
rather than a branching descent, and it posits a single ancestor as the progenitor of the tribe.
Implied in the genealogy is the fact that Cain dies. There are three mythic sources for the death of Cain: (1) his house falls upon him (Jub.
4:13); (2) he perishes in the flood (Test. Benj. 12:7); or (3) he is killed by Lamech. The third is haggadic, and it has joined the tradition of
the sign of Cain as a bestial horn, becoming the dominant view in modern times. The haggadic interpretation is consistent with Szondi’s
psychology.
In the genealogy Lamech has two wives, Adah and Zillah, who bear him three sons and one daughter. Adah gives birth to Jabal and Jubal,
Zillah to Tubal-Cain and his sister Naamah. Jabal is the ancestor of shepherds, Jubal that of musicians, and Tubal-Cain that of smiths.
In the Haggadah Lamech is a blind hunter, who hunts with the aid of his son. One day he goes hunting, and his son sees something horned
in the distance. He positions his father so as to shoot the arrow accurately. The shot hits the target. As they walk toward the body, the son
cries out that it is human not animal and that a horn is on the forehead. Immediately Lamech realizes that he has murdered his ancestor
Cain; so in anguish he throws his hands together and inadvertently kills his son. Lamech shouts that if Cain be protected sevenfold, then
he would be seventy sevenfold. Lamech’s boast is the “Song of the Sword” (Gen. 4:23-24), celebrating an unconsciously driven reign of
killing and lasting seventy-seven generations, a virtually unlimited span of time.
The vocations of Lamech’s sons represent the tripartite origins of civilization from the standpoint of nomadic tribes. The three vocations
of the shepherd, musician, and smith complement Cain’s role as the ancestor of those who build cities (I Sam. 30:29). The tribal context is
partly nomadic, partly sedentary. Inherent in the tribal genealogy is typological thinking, which is common to primal religion. Primitive
thought posits

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prototpyes that recur in subsequent generations of individuals with
ceaseless rhythms of creation and recreation (Johnson 1988, 13).
The descendants of Cain are known as the Cainites. They repeat the homicidal intention of Cain as a typology. The intent of the J strand is
to narrate how evil spreads by means of the Cainites and that outside paradise primevel history is a succession of fall, fratricide, and
vengeance (von Rad 1961, 108). The Cainites have a connection with the Kenites, an ancient nomadic tribe related to the Midianites. The
Kenites were friendly with the Hebrew tribes, intermarried with them, and worshipped Yahweh. First Chronicles (2:55) even links the
Kenites to the Rechabites, who were also devotees of Yahweh (Jer. 35).
Szondi acknowledges the theological interpretation of the J strand and distinguishes sharply between the Cainites and the Kenites (1969,
38). He defines the Cainites as all those who carry psychologically the homicidal intent of Cain, but in one essay he erroneously calls the
Kenites the Canaanites (1964, 52). While Szondi’s distinction is correct, it should not be pushed too far. Cainite genealogy was apparently
closely related to the tradition of the Kenites (Num. 24: 21-22; Jgs. 4:11). Thus, the combined Cainite and Kenite tradition comprises a
self-contained literary unit (Johnson 1988, 11).
In the final compilation of the Mosaic Law after the Babylonian Exile, the J strand was reworked by the Priestly writing. This fact further
illumines the conflict between Cain and Abel in the haggadic tradition (Szondi 1969, 32). The field, where Cain slays Abel, serves as the
site of the First Temple in Jerusalem. The murder is the prototype of the blood sacrifice performed by the priests in the temple. This
presupposes the belief that Abel’s offering had been a blood sacrifice and that Cain’s murder had, in fact, become a blood sacrifice as well.
When the prophets began to criticize temple religion as corrupt, they proclaimed that its destruction would be the punishment by God as a
consequence of human sin. For example, Micah announced (ca., 750 B.C.E.): “Therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field;
Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins, and the mountain of the house a wooded height” (3:12).
Finally, Szondi interprets the tribal genealogy of the Cainites as the bearer of ancestral memories. There are ancestral traces, lying
dormant in the familial unconscious that erupt in times of crisis. The emergence of unconscious psychic traces corresponds mythically to
the return of the

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ancestor. Such typological thinking gives rise to genetic metaphors, which are useful in explaining the negative traits of the ancestors that
are conferred upon the descendants. Generations of inbreeding facilitate the manifestation of lethal and latent recessive genes. This is not
to use primitive mythic thinking as biological evidence but to provide comple mentary genetic metaphors to amplify unconscious
dynamics. Thus, by analogy the Cainites, through several generations of inbreeding, become homozygous recessive with respect to the
homicidal intent of their ancestor
Cain.
The vocations of Lamech’s sons illustrate the symbolic functions of genotropism and sublimation in the myth. Shepherds, musicians, and
smiths can be derived from paroxysmal heredity. Lamech’s blindness symbolizes the absence of insight and self-consciousness, which
would censor violent unconscious impulses. Cain’s building the first city exemplifies an introjective ego phase as well as a passionate
greed.
In summary, the profile of Cain is quite complex. He suffers a need for acceptance by the father and by God-The-Father. As a defense of
God’s rejection of his offering, Cain reacts with crude, primitive emotions as a need for vindication. The murder intensifies this need to
the point of violent display of self-worth. After committing the crime, the need for self-worth becomes that of deception, followed by the
self-concealing impulse of guilt and dread of punishment. The latter tendency continues in the subsequent instability and restlessness.
The murder discharges the paroxysmal-epileptoid root factor and the deception, guilt, and fear the paroxysmal-hysteroid. To these primary
motivations may be added contributing factors. The need for acceptance is manic, desire for Abel’s wife and aggression sexual, and the
greed an introjective ego phase. Ego instability is also illustrated by the initial despondency and the decision to kill as negativist.
Projection informs the deceptive question: “Ani I my brother’s keeper?”
II. Cain Politics
The mythic story of Cain and Abel expresses a fundamental impulse toward killing in human experience. Everyone is capable of slaying
the brother, both now and in primeval times. With this fact in mind Szondi begins his book with a provocative assertion: “Cain rules the
world” (1969,

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7). Anyone who doubts this should read the histoiy of the world, he suggests.
Szondi’s contention, so reminiscent of St. Augustine’s theory of histoiy, grows out of his own experience of radical evil. He explains that
in times of rapid social change persons like Cain can obtain political power and mobilize a latent homicidal intent in the masses. Such a
situation may be justified by an extreme nationalistic ideology which turns into a delusion. Ideology is a form of delusion which, in
opposition to religious faith, distorts reality projectively, splitting the world into the pure and impure, and exhibiting rigid either-or
thinking. Out of an extreme need for vindication a people becomes aroused and commits mass atrocities. Aggression is discharged as an
end in itself, without moving toward restitution. The twentieth century is an arena, in which Cain political ideology has ruled without
restitution. The primary example has been Nazism.
Having lived through the Hungarian Counter Revolution, Szondi presents a model in the case of Martin Zoldi, a 55 year old chief of
police (1969, 61). As a child, Zoldi suffered epileptic seizures. In his political career he was regarded as a self-sacrificing patriot, who
pursued his enemies relentlessly and sadistically. During the Nazi era in Hungary, Zoldi had responsibility for investigating political
activities in the southern part of the country. Without any explicit order, he acted on his own to exterminate more than a thousand Serbs
and Jews, for which he was honored as a hero. However, at the end of the Nazi period, Zoldi was arrested and executed as a war criminal.
Zoldi was sexually disturbed. Psychoanalytically, he was fixed on a pre-genital, polymorphously perverse, infantile stage. He engaged in
sadomasochistic, anal sadistic, bisexual, and exhibitionist activities. Zoldi belonged to a club of sexual perverts that carried out mutual
whippings. He wanted to sublimate his sexual tendencies through service to the fatherland. Hence, out of his masochism his patriotic
service became a personal sacrifice.
Zoldi also felt persecuted personally. Sublimating his paranoid delusions into his work as police chief, he believed that the Serbian and
Jewish minorities were a threat to the country. By means of Fascist public policy he imposed his bestial sadism upon his victims. When
acting like

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Cain the killer, his religious tendencies receded into the background. When hiding his Cain nature, he displayed himself as a humble
ascetic.
Clinically, Zoldi was a perverted, paranoid Cain personality. Through out his life the Cain intent took several forms. Beginning in
epilepsy, it later mixed with sadism and paranoia, which together blocked any ability to make restitution, and then finally it culminated in
superpatriotism and mass murder. Before his execution by hanging, he was filled with death anxiety and religious delusions. Both
delusion and ideology arose from the same source as does religious faith, namely, the need for spiritual participation beyond the threat of
death. Because they do not achieve genuine participation, neither delusion nor ideology can escape the dread of death, Thus, the Cain
personality has many faces, which change periodically into delusion and ideology to fit social conditions. Whatever form the Cain intent
assumes, one can never be free until resolving it at the level of faith.
III. Cain Pathologies
The vision of history as a struggle between Cain and Abel presupposes a specific origin of good and evil, namely, the fundamental
biological capacity for startle, for a spontaneous discharge of emotion as a defense against shock. This is manifest in the paroxysmal-
epileptiform seizure pattern, which Szondi has developed. The term paroxysmal derives from the Greek infinitive paroxunein, which
means “to urge on,” “stimulate,” “provoke to anger,” or “irritate.” The term epileptiform derives from the Greek deponent verb
epilarnbanornai, which means “to lay hold of,” “grasp,” or “catch.”

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When linked together, the terms designate a two-fold seizure pattern. In the first, coarse primitive emotions accumulate and become pent-
up. The specific affects are anger, rage, hatred, vengeance, envy, and jealousy; they are called the Cain emotions. In the second, these Cain
emotions, having intensified to a lethal peak, explode in a seizure, in a sudden attack that lowers the threshold of consciousness and forces
the muscular system into involuntary stereotypic patterns.
The seizure varies in intensity and object relatedness. The emotional discharge may turn into a killing attack, directed either at the self or
another person. This is the Cain intent. With decreasing intensity, the

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outburst may go towards inanimate targets or, in the absence of outlets, may assume the form of pathological symptoms or behavioral
patterns. At its most intense peak the seizure expresses, metaphorically, the need to kill. With less intense attack states pent-up emotions
seek vindication or restitution.
The dual seizure pattern culminates in a third phase, which is, properly speaking, that of restitution. This is a need that is satisfied by the
Abel tendency. After the seizure, one feels remorse and wants to make amends so as to complete the natural moral cycle. Altogether this
three-fold paroxysmal pattern functions in a cyclical manner, alternating between Cain and Abel phases in search of meaning and value in
experience. This natural pattern is both lawful and ethical.
We must recognize that this natural moral cycle may, on occasion, be broken. When paranoia and/or sadism dominate, for example, the
movement toward atonement does not happen. With the blocking of the restitution need homicidal outbursts become manic, aggressive
ends in themselves. Cruelty, lust, and sheer domination take place. This involves a Cain psychopathology, and it is characterized by the
absence of conscience, the projection of guilt and anxiety onto others, and the inability to sustain relationships (Szondi 1952, 360).
The paroxysmal-epileptiform pattern involves a broad continuum of various manifestations and psychic equivalents. At one end of the
continuum stands murder as an extreme possibility. At the other end stands a group of pathologies identified by the attack syndrome. One
of the most common cluster of attack sicknesses, serving as a psychic equivalent of the Cain intent, is the so-called Szondi triad: epilepsy,
migraines, and stuttering. These have their own unique seizure phases and they follow recessive genetic patterns.
The classical paroxysmal syndrome is epilepsy, particularly the temporal lobe type. Epilepsy is a broad and complex term, referring to
several varieties, such as grand mal and petit mal seizures, absences, narcolepsy, and pyknolepsy, which brings on a short lapse of
consciousness without absences but with rhythmic bodily movements (Szondi 1969, 55). Behavior ally, temporal lobe epilepsy features
emotional lability, including extremes of anger and hyperethical or hyperreligious furor. The temporal lobe epileptic tends to lack sexual
interest or arousal, is ponderous or serious,

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verbose, adhesive or perseverative, and may get paranormal insights into another world (Blumer 1984, xi).
Understanding epilepsy represents one of the major endeavors of modern medicine as well as one of the major controversies. At issue is
the question of specialization, involving psychiatry and neurology. Modern neurology arose in the nineteenth century, when Hughlings
Jackson observed the autopsy of his deceased patient known as Dr. Z. Jackson concentrated on brain lesions and the neuro-chemical layer
of the organism, thereby founding neurology as a mechanistic science. Jackson ignored the biography of Dr. Z., thus promoting a split
between neurology and psychiatry, a dichotomy that has remained until the present day.
Recently, two British scholars identified Dr. Z. as Arthur Myers, a London physician, and life-long bachelor who died by suicide at the age
of 42 (Taylor and Marsh 1980). He was the brother of Frederic Myers, the eminent Cambridge classics scholar who pioneered the
development of the scientific studies of psychic ability. Arthur Myer’s biography clearly illustrates characteristics common to temporal
lobe epileptics (Blumer 1984, 24-25). He was disciplined, good-natured, occasionally irritable, celibate, and interested in the supernatural.
His mode of death is highly significant, since the suicide rate of temporal lobe epileptics is 25% higher than that for the general
population.
Meanwhile, neurology has flourished, particularly after 1929 when the EEG was introduced to map brain waves precisely. Advances in
the neurological study of epilepsy made possible the description of the brain as a tripartite hierarchy of the cerebral cortex, midbrain, and
brain stem (Penfield 1975). These advances have been complemented by successful treatment of epileptics through hospitalization and
anti-convulsant drugs. Progress in neurology has led to the belief that convulsions no longer occur and that the three-fold paroxysmal
pattern of epilepsy is obsolete.
Research in neurology presupposes the prevailing subject-object orientation of modern thought and a preference for epiphenomenal and
monistic metaphysical postulates. However, the reign of neurology is chal lenged by the clinical fact that the paroxysmal nature of
epilepsy has not disappeared. Even with medical treatment psychiatric symptoms persist, especially in subtle and muted forms (Blumer
and Bensen 1982). Ironically, the more severe the epilepsy is the more subtle the paroxysmal pattern is likely to be.

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A balanced perspective is present in the current trend to unite neurology and psychiatry. This goes beyond the subject-object dichotomy
that has plagued medicine during the mid twentieth century. Neuro psychiatry has a historical progenitor in the nineteenth century
epileptic and novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. Unlike Arthur Myers Dostoevsky left behind a large body of literature, richly endowed by acute
awareness of his own temporal lobe epilepsy.
The basic model of epilepsy in Dostoevsky’s life and work consists of (1) foreboding premonitions and ecstatic, erotic auras; (2)
unconscious convulsive seizures; (3) post-ictal psychoses, including a deep sense of guilt and feeling of having committed evil long ago;
and (4) inter-ictal disorders, such as fear, paranoia, restlessness, agitation (Rice 1985, 43-44). The so-called Dostoevsky epilepsy is
uniquely characterized by profound religious aura and a moral struggle between good and evil. The Dos toevsky aura has only recently

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been confirmed clinically (Cirignotta, et.al., 1980). However, the most comprehensive verification of the Dostoevsky epilepsy appears in
the work of Dietrich Blumer (1984), who studied under Szondi. Blumer is a leader in neuropsychiatiy and is making known Szondi’s
significant contributions to this field.
Szondi has shown that, in addition to epilepsy, other paroxysmal-epilep tiform tendencies or conditions include high blood pressure,
allergies, asthma, hay fever, eczema, neurodermatitis, glaucoma, and enuresis. Other equivalents of epilepsy are acute paroxysmal manic
or depressive phases; seizures by paranoid persecution delusions or catatonic negativism, cleptomania, pyromania, dipsomania, homicidal
mania, and poriomania, which is an aimless wandering without awareness of the environment. Accident proneness may also be added to
the list of epileptoid equivalents (Hedri 1963).
Along with these psychopathologies epilepsy is susceptible to a psychosis. This includes seizures, twilight states, and the behavioral
characteristics noted above, but it lacks the chronic mental deterioration as found in schizophrenia. Szondi documents the epileptoid
psychosis extensively, knowledge of which goes back to the nineteenth century (1963a). Throughout his many writings Szondi describes
various relation ships between epilepsy and delusory states (Van Reeth 1981). A classic British paper introduced the term “schizophrenic-
like psychoses of epilepsy,” without, however, acknowledging the pioneering contributions of

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the German scholars (Slater and Beard 1963). Consequently, knowledge
of epileptoid psychosis cannot be regarded as a recent discovery.
Szondi accounts for epileptoid psychoses by a theory of ego splitting (1963a, 426-433; 1969, 56-59). Psychotic behavior exhibits a
rotation of split-off ego parts. On the one hand, there could be schizoform inflative possession and, on the other, paroxysmal-epileptiform
seizures. As these phases rotate, each replaces the other. For example, the schizoform inflative state might turn into migraines, asthma,
eczema, stuttering, or poriomania. Such splitting would be caused by both epileptiform and schizoform heredity.
One aspect of extreme ego splitting is a struggle between good and evil as distinct forces. This involves a distinction between the pure
Cain and the pure Abel. The former comprises the Cain emotions and an exhibi tionism, the latter the Abel emotions as well as feeling of
anxiety, fear of punishment, guilt, and/or shame (Szondi 1980, 160). The pure Cain displays evil, the Abel good. As shown above in the
case of Martin Zoldi, the pure Cain can mix with paranoia and sadism and also be covered by an Abel mask. The Cain and Abel phases
alternated in Zoldi’s life until his execution as a war criminal.
Because of its hereditary origin, Cain behavior may be present in children as well as adults. For children the most common stimulus is
abandonment or lack of love. Anxiety generates rage or hatred against parents, whether in the form of actual killing or paroxysmal
symptoms. Cain reactions attain their maximal frequency (45-50%) between ages three and six. After childhood, there may follow a cycle
of lowering and then rising in the 30s and 40s (20-25%), and then lowering and rising in old age (40-45%). This cycle illustrates the fact
that hostility may appear with the onset of hormonal or biological changes in the organism.
Finally, to determine the Cain equivalents Szondi offers the following criteria: (1) the behavior must involve pent-up Cain emotions amid
inner or outer threatening stimuli; (2) the activity must occur in a twilight state, partly with limited consciousness, partly with seizures; (3)
psychological testing must yield data in the paroxysmal range; and (4) the 123
IV. Cain and Oedipus
It is well-known that psychoanalysis puts the Oedipus complex at the center of human existence. It is defined as the son who hates the
father and loves the mother. Although Freud assigned priority to the Oedipus complex, Szondi believed that both it and the Cain complex
were co-active. The Cain complex provides a useful formula in the diagnosis of certain neuroses. They derive from both existential
conflicts and the paroxysmal epileptiform gene group. Specifically, the Cain complex can exist under three conditions: (1) conflict
between the ego and a hereditary epileptoid disposition; (2) conflict between a manifest Cain personality and the moral and ethical
environment; and (3) conflict within the conscience of a Cain personality (Szondi 1969, 115).
With a Cain complex one has two kinds of relationships. One is a love or bonding between father and son, and the other is an irritability,
hatred, or homicidal wish toward the brother. These two psychological patterns require two specific defenses: (1) projection and (2)
negation, in the sense of self-destruction by means of suicide ideation or intention, self-sabotaging inclination in work or career, or
preoccupation with the crude aspects of life.
The most common neurotic symptoms of the Cain complex are (1) compulsion; (2) alienation; (3) hypochondria; (4) active anal sadistic
inversion; (5) projective-paranoid neurosis; (6) perversions and exhibition ism; and (7) various psychosomatic disorders, such as
migraines, heart attack, hypertension, ulcers, diabetes, and intestinal distress.
We normally find, behind these symptoms, a love-hate ambivalence toward a domineering person in early childhood, such as a sibling or
parent. Because of the cruelty of that person, one would like to kill him or her unconsciously. As a substitute, the killing intent converts
into a disease syndrome or is projected onto an organ. Consequently, the illness masks the killing intent, often with guilt and the dread of
punishment like the mythic Cain. By means of the neurosis one sacrifices oneself instead of the other person.
Diagnosing a Cain neurosis may be difficult due to the lability of emotion. Hostility may be intermittent or screened by an Abel mask,
particularly during a psychological interview. The same problem occurs with epileptics, who might have different test results before, after,
or

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between seizures. One trait of the epileptic is the ability to hide symptoms.
Consequently, we must be alert to what Szondi calls the “camouflaged Cain” in an everyday setting. One carries pent-up emotion and
acquires a camouflage in the form of social modesty, shy charming behavior, narcis sism, or participation in the activities of churches,
service, educational, or scientific organizations. Yet despite the mask, the Cain nature shows through in rough, choppy speech, muscular

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tension, irritability, or competitiveness. Some of the common ego phases of the everyday Cain are the undisciplined autistic personality in
the sense of greed or hostility; inflative excitability; paranoid, compulsively antisocial and stereotyped regimented individuals.
Camouflaging is present particularly with respect to sexuality and evil, and it may be exhibitionist with a strong hysteroid disposition.
In order to resolve the Cain complex there must be a movement toward restitution. This requires a coming to terms with the brother and an
introjection of the father into one’s being. Such resolution takes place outside the family in that one is capable of relating in a brotherhood
or sisterhood. Restitution promotes socialization.
In contrast to the Cain, the Oedipus complex involves a bonding with the mother and hostility toward the father. This duality may be
defended by repression, inhibition, and alienation. The most common neurotic forms of the Oedipus complex are hysteria, alienation,
passive inversion, and such psychosomatic disturbances as tachycardia, diarrhea, colitis, and impotence. Resolution of the complex takes
place within the family, as one introjects the mother in the power of having and accepts the father. This complex revolves mainly around
contact needs of attachment and acquisition.
Szondi argues that the Oedipus complex should be viewed in terms of a three-generational family system. The complex seems to be
natural only under certain conditions. Specifically, the father must see his mother in his daughter, and the mother her father in her son
(Szondi 1978, 149-150). In other words, the daughter takes after the paternal grandmother or sister of the father; and the son takes after
the maternal grandfather or brother of the mother. As Szondi puts it, when a woman brings a boy into the world, she gives birth to her
father; and when a man brings a girl into the world, he gives birth to his mother.

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Co-existence of the Cain and Oedipus complexes could be argued on genetic grounds. Genes are transmitted equally between parents and
children, brothers and sisters. Hence, parent-child relationships are not privileged genetically. Parents and children, brothers and sisters
carry half the genes of the other. Genetic relationships between oneself and uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, grandparents and
grandchildren, and half-siblings are one fourth. Those between oneself and first cousins, great grandparents and great grandchildren are
one eighth.
One of Szondi’s early assessments of the Oedipus complex appeared in his pioneering paper on marriage choice (1937, 58-60). The well-
known story of Oedipus deals with the murder of his father Laius and the incestuous marriage to his mother Jocasta. This pattern accounts
for the Oedipus complex as such; but the problem is that Freud does not account for all the generations of the family in his interpretation.
Oedipus has two daughters and two sons. One son, Polyneikes, dies in combat, and his body is left on a hill. His sister, Antigone, defies
the King’s order by burying her brother’s body. Antigone then kills herself in a love-death pact. Her lover is Haemon who is the King’s
son. He and Antigone are cousins; so they repeat the incestuous love in a second generation.
Szondi asks why the god Apollo initially denies children to Laius. According to the myth, Laius is homosexual. He had seduced
Chiysippus, Apollo’s lover. So the father of Chrysippus arranges for Laius to be cursed by Apollo. Szondi concludes that the “anal-sadistic
(homosexual) character accounts also for the murder of blood relatives. This was, according to the myth, the primary sin in the Labdykida
family, because of that the family had to perish” (1937, 60).
Finally, the myths of Cain and Oedipus have fundamental moral differences. The cry of Cain, that his punishment is greater than he can
bear, evokes an intentional guilt. One purpose. of the biblical writer(s) was to show how this moral intentionality flowed down the
generations and deteriorated in a tragic end. Mythically, the first “Oedipus” is Lamech who slays his ancestor Cain unintentionally and
unconsciously (Szondi 1964, 54). The suffering of Oedipus comes out of an unwitting sin, an unintentional missing the mark. Be defining
the human predicament in Oedipal terms, psychoanalysis fails to penetrate the profound ethical conflicts that frequently inform mental
disorders.

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V. Paroxysmal Symbolism
We have already learned in chapter three, that paroxysmal families are associated with the primal elements of air, earth, fire, and water and
that their members may have psychic abilities. Although he does not ac knowledge the paroxysmal pattern, Erik Erikson illustrates some
of these ideas in his classic study of Martin Luther. Coal miners, from whom Luther descended, work underground and are vulnerable to
superstition and sudden death (Erikson 1962, 58). Coal miners attack the earth with aggressive intensity, extracting material to be
transformed into energy. The earth is a collective soul, a psychic ground, in which the volatile coal miner is embedded. Erikson found that
steel workers in the old Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania shared this mystical conception of the earth (1962, 62). The fire of the steel mills
produces smog which, being a transformation of the earthen metals, means productivity. Many of the old Pittsburghers were emigrees
from Southeastern Europe, where people believed that the application of fire to earth assured fertility or employment.
A similar reading of Carl Jung’s autobiography would be suggestive. Jung explains that as a child he suffered eczema, accident proneness,
desire for another world through suicide ideation, fainting spells with a hint of epilepsy, twilight states, and a worship of fire (1961, 7-9,
20, 30-31). He had a life-long attachment to water and to the majesty of the Alps. All of these feelings and phases belong to the
paroxysmal-epileptiform hereditary circle, a fact that suggests a biological grounding for correspond ing archetypal contents, which Jung
fails to do.
The same critique is fruitful with respect to Freud’s psychology of religion. In his classic essay on a seventeenth century demonic
possession case, Freud derives the figures of God and Satan from split-off images of the love and hatred of the father, respectively (1923).
The subject of the essay is Christoph Haitzmann, who undergoes some dramatic experiences. They consisted of visions and of loss of
consciousness, during which he saw and experienced all manner of things; also of “convulsive seizures accompanied by the most painful
sensation; on one occasion paralysis of the lower limbs occurred....” (1923, 77)

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Freud goes on to say that after an apparent resolution Haitzmann had a relapse, in which “a great light appeared” to him, from which came
the voice of Christ commanding him “to forswear this wicked world....” (1923,

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The patient learned that his attacks were epileptic seizures and that they defended against his own homicidal wishes. By constructing a
genealogy, the patient realized that he was a latent epileptic. His mother was the daughter of an epileptic father, and she suffered
migraines. As a child, the father stuttered, had fits of rage, and engaged in periodic poriomania. He founded a religious sect and became an
itinerent preacher. Several members of the family also had religious vocations.
Out of the familial phase of therapy a striking dream emerged, from which a few lines are quoted: “I run in the twilight over a wooded
hill, where I hope I can see. I see people in the darkness.... But they are only families, no couples. At this time there is a war or period of
military occupation. Uniformed Romans or Russians take possession of the land. We are in a house, I and many soldiers....” (Szondi 1956,
98) The patient says he is holding a Roman sword in his hand and that he must leave his friends and fight. “Nevertheless, I try to flee. I
break out, while I cut as many as possible. It is horrible, what I cause for a blood bath. Beside me I hear someone whisper: ‘Amok!’ I have
really run Amok!”
He tells how he rages as a savage and how the soldiers fall like flies before his sword. They stand in single column, so that he can cut
them down more easily. Toward the end of the dream the patient states that a “face comes near to mine; suddenly I know. He is my father,
and I see his face in mine: It is out of the fire; he is the god of fire.” Finally, the patient cries out: “I wake up still burning in the face”
(Szondi 1956, 99).
The dream images of twilight, wooded hill, fleeing, killing, blood, running amok, and fire express a paroxysmal-epileptoid state. The
dream content is both familial and collective, particularly in the representation of the father as the god of fire. The phrase “run amok”
comes from the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who visited Java in the early twentieth century. He observed natives suddenly losing
consciousness, ruthlessly stabbing themselves or anyone in their way, and afterward remembering little or nothing. The twilight condition,
described by natives as a covering of the eyes, triggered a killing intent along with restless agitation. Kraepelin believed that they who run
amok are undiagnosed epileptics.
The idea of running amok also bears upon the mythic Cain. In Hellenistic Judaism Cain means “loss of light,” which contrasts the fullness
of light or heavenly countenance with which he is born. Cain lost the fullness of light by virtue of his fall or by procreation through the
evil

angel Samael. The haggadic images of the loss of light and of Cain as “the dark one” mean a twilight state, a falling away of
consciousness. Pent-up emotion displaces a lucid consciousness. Out of the darkness, the unconsciousness, a flame bursts forth, burning
with the passion for evil and for restitution.
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Chapter Seven: Formation of Conscience

I. Method of Interpretation
In the eightieth year of his life Szondi published a psychological study
of Moses. Entitled Moses, Answer to Cain, it reveals a personal struggle to come to terms with his own Jewish heritage (1973). The Moses
is a sequel to his Cain. Szondi admits it was difficult for him to realize that Cain stands at the center of Mosaic religion and of Judaism.
In the Moses Szondi intends to show how religion and killing are integrated. To explain the relation between the two he draws upon his
own ego psychology, specifically, the concept of the pontifical ego that came out of his study of Hinduism. The pontifical ego, the highest
level of self-realization, is the bridge between killing and faith, between primitive and high religion. In the context of Judaism the
pontifical ego functions as conscience. From his own experience Szondi points out that only the one who has gone from Cain to Moses
can cross the bridge and form conscience.
Szondi carefully examines the evidence of the pre-Mosaic and Mosaic periods in the history of Israel, relying heavily upon the work of the
older German scholars, such as the pioneering form critic Hugo Gressmann, Gershom Scholem, and Martin Buber. For textual evidence he
uses Bible and legend, Halakhah and Haggadah, combining both the method of Rabbinic Judaism and the spirit of Hasidism. Let us recall
that Szondi survived the Nazi terror and, therefore, his study of Moses indicates that observance of the Law or Halakhah was adequate for
the Holocaust. In Szondi’s experience no post-Holocaust theology is necessary.
Both history and sacred legend are projective aspects of human
experience. History records certain extraordinary events or primal wonders
that erupt and lay down memory traces in the familial and collective

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psyche. Following Buber’s own study of Moses (1958), Szondi acknow ledges that such events are objective, noncausal and yet they
impart an abiding sense of astonishment. They are shock events that imprint subsequent generations with striking images. The collective
memory is reducible neither to repression nor to genetics as such. The collective memory endures as an essential wholeness, as a morphic
resonance in the life of the people. The psychological mechanism is the law of participation.
Szondi recognizes that the doctrine of God includes anthropomorphic attributes but that they are human projections. Projected attributes
constitute the content of religious belief. Projections do not create illusions; they establish a divine-human relationship, culminating in a
participation mystique. In the mystical participation we can predicate neither being nor nonbeing, neither the existence nor the non-
existence of God (Szondi 1973, 26). Thus, in his study of Moses we realize that Szondi’s psychology of religion is informed by the via

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negativa, the negative theology of the mystic. With respect to Christianity Szondi’s psychology of religion coincides with the apophatic
theology of the Greek Orthodox Church, according to which selfhood becomes manifest by participation in the divine light. The Orthodox
legacy of relational selfhood is an elaboration of a famous saying by St. Maximus: Humankind becomes by participation what the
archetype is by nature (Oliver 1984, 156).
II. The Story of Moses
Szondi examines Moses as he is portrayed in the composite sources of Bible and sacred legend. The birth of Moses is announced in
dreams as a miraculous event. One dream comes from Miriam, the sister of Moses; she is commanded by God to inform her parents,
Amram and Jochebed, of the birth. The English translation of the dream is available in The
Legends of the Jews: “Tell thy father and thy mother...that he who
shall be born unto them, shall be cast into the waters, and through him the waters shall become dry, and wonders and miracles shall be
performed through him, and he shall save my people Israel, and be their leader forever” (Ginzberg 1980, 264).

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Another dream comes from Pharaoh, who, dreaming that he is sitting on his throne, sees an old man standing before him and holding a
balance
his hand. On one scale, the old man puts all the leaders of Egypt and, on the other, a child. The scale holding the child hangs below that
holding the Egyptians.
Pharaoh awakens from his sleep and summons his three advisors, Balaam the magician, Jethro, and Job the Uzite. Balaam explains that a
child will be born who will defeat the Egyptians and liberate the Hebrews. He recommends that Pharaoh kill all the Hebrew male babies,
because previously the Hebrews had been delivered from threats of fire, sword, and hard labor. Job suggests that Pharaoh do what he
thinks best. Jethro advises against destroying the Hebrews and either leave them alone or allow them to depart for Israel.
Pharaoh accepts Balaam’s counsel, accuses Jethro of disgrace, and banishes him. Jethro goes to Midian, where he will later become the
father-in-law of Moses. Meanwhile, Balaam will become the enemy of Moses in Egypt.
Szondi notes that this haggadic material presupposes knowledge of historical events and that it projects psychological content (1973, 37-
40). Specifically, the figures of Jethro and Balaam project the respective tendencies of good and evil or Abel and Cain. Following Carl
Jung, Szondi interprets the old man as an archetype of the spirit and the scale
that of justice. Thus, Pharaoh’s dream means that in the life of Moses the good will outweigh the evil and that the Hebrew people will par
ticipate in the divine realm of the spirit. The people will become by participation what the figure of Moses represents. The same meaning
appears in the dream of Miriam.
The Bible records the fact that Pharaoh condemns all Hebrew male babies to death (Ex. 1:22). Amram and Jochebed give birth to a baby
boy and, hoping he might be saved, place him in a basket and set it in the river. Bithiah, daughter of Pharaoh, finds the baby and decides
to keep and raise him, even though he is Hebrew. He is named Moses, which means: “I drew him Out of the water” (Ex.2:lOb). The
biblical text emphasizes the motifs of water, descent, and ascent. In light of our discussions of symbolism, in chapters three and six, these
three may be regarded as symbolic forms derived from paroxysmal-epileptiform familial

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heredity. By means of these symbols the text projects the need for restitution into the birth of Moses.
The same need is projected in the haggadic portrayal of Moses’ development. For example, when Moses is three, he is sitting on his
adoptive mother’s lap at dinner. Suddenly, he grabs the King’s crown and puts it on his own head. Pharaoh is startled and asks his advisors
what it means. Balaam reminds him of his earlier dream, pointing out that the boy is Hebrew and that he, like his ancestors, knows how to
deceive kings. Pharaoh wonders whether the boy should be put to death, lest he grab his throne.
The advisors decide to test Moses’ intentions; so they place two objects before the boy, one a precious jewel, the other a burning coal. If
the child should seize the jewel, then he would be plotting consciously against the King and should be put to death; but if he should take
the coal, he would be acting unconsciously and innocently. One of the King’s advisors is the angel Gabriel in disguise. He guides Moses’
hand toward the burning coal instead of the jewel. Thus, Moses “lifted it up and touched it to his mouth, and burnt part of his lips and part
of his tongue, and for all his life he became slow of speech and of a slow tongue” (Ginzberg 1980, 274).
In Szondi’s view, the destiny of Moses actually begins to take shape when, as a young man, he kills an Egyptian who is beating up a
Hebrew (Ex. 2:11). Despite his Egyptian upbringing, Moses feels the victim to be his brother. Moses only does what he sees being done,
namely, a beating to death. He repays an unjust act of killing with a just act because he will become a liberator and not a martyr. Since
Moses beats the man to death in rage, he is one who slays in passion (Affekt-Totschlager). The biblical text portrays Moses as a man of
emotional turbulence, one who has a passion against injustice.
On the next day, Moses sees two Hebrews fighting between themselves, and he intervenes. One says to Moses: “Who made you a ruler
and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” (Ex. 2:14a) Moses realizes that his crime is widely known. Even
Pharaoh learns of it and sentences Moses to death. Moses is seized with fear and flees to the desert, to the land of the Midianites.
Moses meets Jethro, priest of the Midianites, and tends sheep for him. Jethro has seven daughters, and he gives one of them, Zippora, to
Moses as his wife. She will bear Moses two sons named Gershom and Elieser.

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Both Haggadah and the Bible (Ex. 6:14-25) list the genealogy of Moses. The head of the paternal ancestry is Levi, and one son is Kohath.
Kohath fathers Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. Kohath has a sister Jochebed, who marries Amram. Thus, Amram, the father of Moses,
marries his aunt. Besides Moses, Amram and Jochebed give birth to Miriam and Aaron.

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Szondi states Moses’ genealogy but, curiously, does not amplit it too much. However, there are three aspects which, if developed, could
strengthen a Szondian interpretation. First, Moses’ father marries his own aunt. In light of his treatment of the Cainite genealogy, we
would expect Szondi to interpret this to mean the flexibility of the incest taboo in early societies. More precisely, marriages among
relatives did occur in ancient Israel, although usually between cousins, in order to keep the blessing within the family and transmit it to the
next generation (Segal 1976, 2).
Second, Szondi does not explain why Moses flees to the land of the Midianites in the desert. He merely suggests that the flight is
instrumental in placing Moses near Mt. Sinai, on which he receives the revelation (1973,50). The apparent reason why Szondi neglects
this point is that he depends on Buber, who rejects the Kenite hypothesis. Nevertheless, the Midianites were related historically to the
Kenites, the people who claimed the mythic Cain as their ancestor (de Vaux 1978, 332-333). Moses’ mother Jochebed had a Kenite name
due to the fact of intermarriage between Midianites and Kenites (Rowley 1950, 169). This fact is supported in the Judges tradition (1:16;
4:11).
Third, the father-in-law of Moses, Jethro, is also named Hobab in some texts (Num. 10:29; Jgs. 4:11). Hobab is a Kenite name. This
implies that both Moses’ wife and mother descend from Kenite stock and that his marriage is possibly a cross-cousin type. So when Moses
flees to the desert, he goes to his relatives. Hence, his flight is genotropic.
While tending sheep for Jethro, Moses receives a commission from God in the vision of the burning bush. An angel of the Lord appears to
Moses in a fire. Tne bush is burning but is not consumed (Ex. 3:2). God speaks out of the fire, declaring the ground to be holy and that
Moses should remove his sandals. God reveals himself as Yahwe/i: “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14). The vision of the fire arouses great dread
in Moses, so that he must hide his face.
In the Cain Szondi alludes to the mythic explanation as to why Moses
hides his face (1969, 10-11). In both Haggadah and Kabbalah Abel is

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identified with Moses. In the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Kabbalah had a doctrine of transmigration (gilgul), in which the soul
of Abel transmigrated into that of Moses (Scholem 1974, 345-348). In the haggadic version Abel dies because, when bringing his offering
to God, he tries to look into God’s face, which is forbidden. Thus, Abel must be struck down. This further implies that Abel’s soul must
transmigrate for the purpose of purification. Consequently, when Moses becomes afraid, he suddenly remembers what happened to Abel
for attempting to see God face to face. Szondi does not accept the medieval doctrine of transmigra tion but interprets the mythic
identification of Abel with Moses as a projective insight into latent recessivity by ancient peoples.
God tells Moses that his people, the Hebrews, still suffer oppression in Egypt. God selects Moses to return to Egypt and lead his people
out of slavery (Ex. 3:6). Liberation will take place by means of signs and wonders sent from God. However, Moses offers four objections
as to why he cannot be God’s agent. Of these, the most significant one psycholog ically is as follows: “0 my Lord, I have never been
eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Ex. 4:10).
The haggadic image of the infant Moses touching his lips with the burning coal amplifies this trait.
Moses’ objections trigger God’s anger. God says to Moses that his brother Aaron will speak for him. Out of the shock of God’s presence
Moses relents and agrees to go back to Egypt. His journey is interrupted, when God tries to slay Moses for not being circumcised. In
defense against the divine assault Zipporah circumcises Moses, declaring to him:
“Truly you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” (Ex. 4:26) Szondi interprets this interlude to mean that the demonic, homicidal character of
God is enhanced (1973, 56).
Altogether, the commissioning reveals four specific characteristics, which are originally stated by Buber (1958, 60): (1) murder committed
by Moses and flight into a foreign land; (2) acceptance by the Midianite kin and work as a shepherd; (3) visions and auditions of God by
Moses on a mountain; and (4) demonic experiences of God without a metaphysical dualism (Szondi 1973, 58-59).
Moses and Aaron return to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh release their people, but he refuses. Through Aaron’s rod, God sends the ten
plagues of water turned to blood, frogs, gnats, flies, diseased livestock,

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boils, thunder and hail, locusts, darkness, and after a warning death of the firstborn (Ex. 7:14-12:32). Szondi understands the plagues as
surcharged natural phenomena preserved by sacred legend, whose content obtains from a collective, projective-participation state and
whose purpose is to enhance faith.
Pharaoh’s resistance is not broken until the climax of the ten plagues, when at midnight the “Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land
of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh...to the firstborn of the prisoner...and all the firstborn of the livestock” (Ex. 12:29). Szondi could
have streng thened his interpretation by pointing to the act-fate structure of the drama, that the infanticide befalling Pharaoh had been
enacted by his original death sentence for Hebrew male babies and that Yahweh brought the dramatic power of destiny to a horrifying
consummation.
The ritual setting of the drama is the Passover, which includes the sacrifice of an unblemished one year old male animal, whose roasted
meat is eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. The Hebrews smear blood from the sacrificial victim onto the door posts and frames
of their houses, so that as God “passes over” Egypt their families are spared. As in Moses’ circumcision, blood is shed to withstand the
demonic cruelty of God, as Szondi recognizes.
The people leave Egypt, crossing the Sea of Reeds, ahead of Pharaoh’s pursuing army. The shallow waters are driven back by a wind,
while the Egyptian army gets stuck in the mud. The people enter the wilderness, led by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by
night. This great event known as the Exodus is regarded as a historical wonder, yet one that has been accomplished at the initiative of
Yahweh.

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In the perspective of depth psychology Szondi understands wondrous events or miracles as examples of collective faith. The collective
psyche reacts with a startle to the objective actions of the Exodus. The startle includes pent-up emotion, precipitated by Egyptian
oppression, and an emotional discharge through the oral and written traditions. Primitive Cain affects are aroused and projected onto God
as attributes of providen tial activity. Thus, God’s cruelty in the Passover is not inherent in the divine nature but is the “consequence of a
collective, paroxysmal-projective psychic function” (Szondi 1973, 63).
What Szondi finds significant is the psychological content of the historical wonders. Some involve fire; for example, the call of Moses

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takes place at the burning bush. One of the plagues includes throwing ashes, “soot from the kiln” (Ex. 9:8). God leads the people by a
pillar of fire (Ex. 13:21). As we have already learned, fire is a central paroxysmal epileptiform element.
Water is a related paroxysmal element. The baby Moses is put into and taken out of water. In the Exodus the people cross the Reed Sea,
wherein the Egyptians drown. Resuming the story, the people arrive in Merah and discover that the water is bitter and cannot be drunk.
God shows Moses a tree, which he throws into the water, and it becomes sweet to drink. Receiving the water brings an affirmation of
divine redemption:
“for I am the Lord, who heals you” (Ex. 15:26b). Szondi argues that these references symbolize the healing properties of water, making
restitution of the Cain impulse of anger, hatred, and quarreling which the people feel toward one another while in the desert with Moses.
The story moves to a climax, which is the revelation of the Law on Mt. Sinai, The Law is a covenant, a reciprocal bonding between a
stronger party and a weaker one, or God and humankind. God promises care and has expectations, to which humankind responds in
loyalty and trust. Szondi follows Rabbinic theologians who argue that the Law of Moses is not the first but is the fulfillment of the
Genesis Covenant with Adam, Noah, and Abraham. This four-fold covenantal structure presupposes the chronology of the Priestly
writings, which is an ordering of four primeval ages into a great cycle (Johnson 1988, 30). Whereas tribal genealogies, as in the Cainite
lineage, deal with family interrelationships, the Priestly genealogy raises descent to a theological purpose, namely, the origin of the world
as the foundation of law.
The revelation is a theophany, the drama of which intrigues Szondi. The stage is Mt. Sinai, the sacred mountain, set apart by a mysterious
holiness. God descends to the mountain in a storm of fire and smoke, while the sounds of thunder, lightning, and trumpet reverberate.
Moses ascends the mountain to meet God. The people are filled with anxiety. Szondi points out that the motifs of fire, ascent, and descent
are symbolic forms projected from the collective paroxysmal psychic layer.
At the center of Law are the Ten Commandments, which describe human duties toward God and toward one another. Based upon the
ancient suzerainty type of treaty, the Ten Commandments are inscribed on stone tablets and publicly witnessed by the assembled
community.

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Blessings and curses are attached and applicable to those who keep or break the commandments. Keeping the commandments
presupposes a state of freedom, which God has actualized in the Exodus.
The sixth commandment reads: “You shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13). In Szondi’s view, it pertains to the Cain intent, which would be an act
of murder motivated by rage, hatred, greed, and so forth. That murder is prohibited means that one task of the law is to atone for the Cain
intent. The sixth commandment, in particular, satisfies the psychological need for restitution through the Abel phase.
Moses stays on the mountain forty days and forty nights, a phrase designating long, indefinite periods of time rather than specific days and
nights. Meanwhile, the people approach Aaron and conspire to make idols with their jewelry. They forge a golden calf, which is a fertility
symbol and which will lead the people through the wilderness (Ex. 32:1-8). Moses descends from the mountain and angrily breaks the
tablets, when he sees the golden calf and the people dancing (Ex. 32:19). Since Aaron, Moses’ brother, participates in the conspiracy, the
Cain complex is implicated.
Demanding obedience to the Law, God calls those who are on Moses’ side to go “back and forth from gate to gate throughout the camp,
and each of you kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor” (Ex. 32:27b). About three thousand men are killed at Moses’ command.
Here homicidal rage is released in service of God, so that it would not be classified as murder. Divinely sanctioned killing is the same as
obedience to God.
The commandments are re-inscribed on tablets and deposited in the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark serves as a sacred center, as the people
journey through the wilderness for forty years. The Ark evokes fear and hatred among the enemies of Israel (Num. 10:35-36). While in the
wilderness, the people begin to murmur about their misfortunes, and the “Lord heard it and his anger was kindled. Then the fire of the
Lord burned against them, and consumed some outlying parts of the camp” (Num. 11:1). Once again, the anger of God is symbolized by
fire.
The murmuring includes a complaint of Aaron and Miriam about the leadership of their brother Moses. The issue is whether Moses’ wife
is Hebrew or not (Num. 12:1). God calls them to the tent of meeting, which is the symbol of divine transcendence in the desert. God states
that he speaks directly to Moses but indirectly to the prophets through dreams and

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visions (Num. 12:6-8). This declaration is followed by an outburst of God’s anger against Miriam.
The people murmur because they believe their wandering in the desert to be punishment and death. In response to the murmuring God
announces that “your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and
shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness” (Num. 14:32-33). We read in this passage the
theme of the earth as a symbol for a shock event. These chapters that deal with rebellion (Ex. 34: Num. 14) belong to the J strand, and

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they record the imposition of divine punishment upon the children and upon their children’s children. The epic quality of the J is congenial
to Szondi’s analysis of destiny.
The struggle in the wilderness does not cease. The Levites who revolt under Korah are swallowed by the earth and by fire (Num. 16: 31-
35). Some give in to the prostitution of the Baal cult and fall away from God; they are punished by hanging in the sun (Num. 25: 1-6).
Moses leads the people in a holy war against the Midianites, and his command to kill correlates with the divine command of purification
by fire and water (Num. 31:23). The frequent references to air, earth, water, and fire, as the content of shock events, project paroxysmal-
epileptiform psychic content.
Finally, Moses is instructed to ascend Mt. Nebo and “die there on the mountain...and be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died
on Mount Hor....” (Deut. 32:50). Moses is permitted to glimpse the land which God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but he is
not allowed to enter it. So Moses dies and is buried in an unknown grave (Deut. 34:1-6).
III. The Destiny of Moses
After sketching the story, it is appropriate to ask who Moses is in light of the analysis of destiny. Is his destiny primarily that of a religious
or political leader? Following Buber, Szondi views Moses as a political figure who accomplished the unification of the people. Moses did
not so much found a new religion as establish a theopolitical kingdom and an ethical principle. The idea of a theopolitical kingdom means
an inseparable unity

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of religion and politics (Buber 1958, 186). Thus, Moses is a law-giver and neither a priest nor a prophet exclusively.
The destiny of Moses unfolds through the stages of (1) prince, (2) shepherd, (3) miracle-worker, (4) leader of the people, and (5) politician
(Szondi 1973, 105). The princely phase is elaborated mainly by legends, which project onto Moses unconscious content from the
collective psyche. Moses is a heroic figure, who as a three year old seizes the king’s crown and then burns his lips with a coal. Taking the
crown indicates an inflative claim common to religious leaders. The burning of the lips and the characteristic “slow of speech and slow of
tongue” attest to stuttering. Both inflation and stuttering belong to persons afflicted by shock suffering (Anfallsrnensch).
The heroic princely phase ends when Moses slays the Egyptian in a fit of rage. “He looked this way and that, and seeing no one he killed
the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Ex. 2:12) and later became afraid. The entire sequence projects a hysteriform vigilance before the
epileptoid killing and a hysteriform anxiety and hiding one’s face afterward. The flight into the desert expresses the agitated, restless, and
fearful wandering of the Cain personality. Szondi points out that the murder is the pivotal event in Moses’ destiny, the fundamental event
that demands restitution. There is no more profound experience than the taking of another’s life. One is never the same again. So it is with
the inflated Moses, whom the quarreling Hebrews perceive as a judge and a leader.
The calling of Moses takes place in the second stage, that of the shepherd, and it exhibits three crucial characteristics: (1) God’s selection
of an affect killer; (2) the man chosen suffers the attack sickness of stuttering; and (3) he has visions and auditions of God in the context of
fire (Szondi 1973, 107). These paroxysmal-epileptiform characteristics constitute the psychological profile of the Mosaic figure. The
visionary and auditory capability comes Out of trance states, and these are facilitated by epileptiform pathologies.
The third phase is that of the miracle-worker and is most prominent in the events surrounding the Exodus, The miracles manifest a
participa tion mystique as projections of the divine-human covenant. Miracle-work ing exemplifies the drive for participation, and the
symbolic content shows that the realization of participation is conditioned by the tribal paroxysmal heritage.

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The fourth and fifth phases, those of leader and politician, display an unbroken relationship between God and Moses. His conducting holy
wars projects his own Cain nature (Kainitische Ungrund) onto God. Normally, the function of projection is to establish relatedness in
reality, but when the “object” is God, the projection exalts participation to the highest level. The result is transpersonal integration and
transcendence. Moses becomes one with God and transfers his power onto the divine reality. It is the transfer of power that opens up the
transcendent horizon. The participa tion is so strong that all other gods are excluded. The gods are projec tions that do not create real
relatedness. They are illusions.
Rejection of the gods involves a spiritual aggression made possible by the sublimation of the Cain intent. The violence committed by
Moses after the revelation of the Law on Mt. Sinai means that the projective participation satisfies the need for restitution. The Law is
both covenant and the structure of atonement. This truth is presupposed in the Sherna, the great commandment: “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deut. 6:5). The same truth is summarized and refined in an
old Hasidic saying, attributed to Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav: “One can serve God with the evil drive, when one directs one’s violent and
covetous passion to God, and without the evil drive there is no perfect service” (Szondi 1973, 120).
IV. Cain-Moses Polarity
Szondi uses the names of Cain and Moses to symbolize specific destinies. The names comprise a complementarity, because they represent
polar potentialities in human nature. The names also have a personal sig nificance to Szondi, as he explained in a letter to me (Dec. 8,
1978): “The Cain-Moses polarity with respect to religion has been my favorite theme for a long time. (No wonder: I have two nephews
and one niece who are epileptic.)”
Szondi lists the respective characteristics of the Cain-Moses polarity as follows. The Cain are unscrupulousness; power of having, drive
toward having, knowing and being all; intolerance; malevolence; insidiousness; malicious happiness; inclination to hurt others; killing
intent; godlessness; law-breaking; and the primal image of evil. The Moses qualities are conscientiousness; capacity for renunciation;
tolerance; willingness;

openness; helpfulness; inclination to heal; just intent; godliness; law-giving; and primal image of justice.

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The human task is to unite the Cain and Moses impulses, to lay down a bridge between them, so that evil may be atoned. This is
admittedly not easy to do, and, as Szondi points out, not even the Bible synthesizes the two patterns. For example, Moses kills in one
moment and makes restitution in another, thus exhibiting an alternating or turn-about style. Similarly, members of the helping professions,
such as clergy, may suffer the Cain complex or preach the love of God with intense personal hatred.
In civilized society the execution of justice in the court system carries out the Mosaic intent. The difference is that the law is a rational
instrument of public policy; whereas the biblical Moses is a figure of irrational seizure symptoms. On the other hand, many who live in
society are like neither Cain nor Moses, neither purely good nor purely evil, spending their days in moral ambivalence or obsessional
neurosis. Some are able to sublimate the Cain intent in work that requires killing, as in law-enforcement and the military.
V. Origin of Conscience
Toward the end of the Moses Szondi raises the question of the origin of conscience. The question is posed with respect to the history of
religions, specifically to the older literature of Egyptology, which provides evidence of moral insights existing in the fourth millennium in
Egypt. Szondi notes the classic phrase of James Breasted, “the dawn of con science,” which implies the existence of conscience in the
fourth millen nium in Egypt and that it is the primary source of Jewish ethics in Israel. The older Egyptian scholars like Breasted
employed an evolutionary framework for religious ideas, a method which has since been discredited by comparative religions research.
While conceding the originality of the Egyptian materials, Szondi claims that they do not confront the problems of killing and guilt. These
issues are taken up in the Hebrew Bible. Szondi acknowledges correctly that biblical Hebrew lacks an explicit term for conscience but
that, nevertheless, the Bible is acutely aware of conscience in the penitential experience. In Szondi’s view as a psychiatrist, conscience is
embodied in
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the biblical symbol of the heart, including both an acknowledgment of unconscious evil impulses and a rational defense against evil (e.g.,
Ps. 39). We could go further and state that the Bible institutionalizes conscience in a liturgical form, namely, in the Day of Atonement
festival (Jaeger 1959, 212).
Rabbinic Judaism affirms the existence of two innate inclinations, the one toward the good (yetzer toy) and the other toward the evil
(yetzer ham). The Hebrew term yetzer is normally translated as “formation” or “imagination.” In the Septuagint or Greek translation of the
Old Testament yetzer is usually translated as dianoia, which means “understand ing,” “mind,” or “disposition.” In Hebrew yetzer means to
form or transform a thing into something else. The evil impulse (yetzer hara) is basically or potentially good, and the good impulse (yerzer
toy) is what blocks the evil. Whether evil or good, the impulse is the same; there is no dualism of inclinations. The biblical narrative posits
the origin of the evil impulse in primeval history: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every
inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Gen 6:5).
Rabbinic Judaism also maintains that the evil inclination dominates childhood; as the Bible states “the inclination of the human heart is
evil from youth....” (Gen. 8:21) The good inclination awakens at puberty and is represented by the Law. Children take the mitzvah at about
age thirteen in order to assimilate the Law and actualize conscience. Since the Law or Torah represents the inner being of humankind, to
know it is to know conscience. Consequently, the people can develop and educate themselves. Humankind may grow in the knowledge of
good and evil.
Szondi’s moral psychology conforms to that of Rabbinic Judaism, The Cain tendency is the evil yetzer and the Abel the good yezzer. Both
are rooted in the innate paroxysmal-epileptiform factor; both are aspects of the need for restitution. To say that evil dominates childhood is
to agree with Szondi’s clinical findings that 45-50% of children act out the Cain impulses, as reported in chapter six. When Judaism
requires the examination of evil deeds and repentance, as on the Day of Atonement, this practice conforms to Szondi’s interpretation of
conscience as the restitution of the Cain intent. To affirm that the task of the Jew is to love God with both tendencies is to develop
projectively a mystical participation in the realm of spirit.

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The origin of conscience is, therefore, the atonement of evil. Because evil has a biological root and is subject to the human imagination, it
may be confronted, conquered, and redeemed. Since conscience arises out of the same root as does killing, it cannot be located precisely
in a historical origin. Szondi speculates that conscience arose when the first murderer atoned for his act. When that occurred is
unknowable. Consequently, the origin of conscience, of good and evil, is best represented by myth, as in the Creation Narrative in the
Bible. Only stories about our mythic ancestors like Cain and Abel point to the primeval mystery of good and evil.
Psychologically, conscience is a complex function that takes shape in the lives of persons and communities. Conscience is a function of
knowledge comprising both social or cultural conditioning and the directives of religious faith. Szondi analyzes conscience as a synthetic
censor system, which includes the following functions: (1) a hysteriform based morality representing value and a capacity for
renunciation; (2) an epileptiform-based ethic manifesting a prohibition of murder, acknowledg ment of guilt, and capability of confession;
(3) critical reality testing in the perspectival ego as a moral agent; and (4) high spiritual life in the pontifical ego (1973, 152-153).
VI. Welcoming the Stranger
As a psychiatrist, Szondi has worked out a psychology of religion largely within the heritage of Rabbinic and Hasidic Judaism. While his
sources need to be updated, he accurately penetrates a fundamental level of religious experience, particularly that of the three great
monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. He emphasizes that the founders of these religions, namely, Moses, Paul, and
Muhammad, share paroxysmal-epileptiform characteristics. Their respective destinies show a transformation of the Cain intent into a
structure of atonement.

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Although Szondi’s theory awaits further validation within the history of religions, he offers a particularly helpful insight into the nature of
monotheism as such. Let us recall that the essence of monotheism is not so much the affirmation of a single, transcendent God as it is the
rejection of other gods (Pettazzoni 1923). Rejection of other gods presupposes psychologically the sublimation of the Cain intent onto
God. Through the

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projective-participation of faith the Cain intent is transformed into a principle of restitution. The resolution of evil through the highest
level of selfhood becomes the driving force behind monotheism.
Monotheism came out of the desert, particularly the Sinai Peninsula and the Edomite territory east of Egypt. Monotheism cannot be
regarded as an Egyptian product, a fact proven by recently discovered archeological evidence. King lists found at the Temple of Amon
(1417-1379 B.C.E.) and at Amarah West (1304-1237 B.C.E.) identify “the land of nomads [ Yahweh” in the desert areas east of Egypt
(Weinfeld 1989, 100). The documentary evidence points to the worship of Yahweh among the Hebrews, Kenites, and Midianites. The
patriarchal tradition confirms that the Midianites were relatives of the Hebrews (Gen. 25:2) and also validates the evidence pertaining to
the Kenites, as presented above and in chapter six.
The nomadic peoples, who were the historic bearers of monotheism, regarded themselves as the descendants of Abraham. Abraham is
both the principal ancestor as well as the model of faith in the monotheistic reli gions. Inherent in the story of Abraham is the ethos of the
desert, the culture which originates monotheism. The essence of the desert ethos is spiritual, and it may be summarized by the phrase
“welcoming the stranger” (Gen. 18:2-8). Why must the stranger be welcomed? Hospitality must be given, so that the stranger will not
become like Cain, a wanderer and a fugitive upon the earth (Patai 1983, 85). Behind this norm lies the fact that the descendants of
Abraham are also strangers in an alien land (Gen. 23:4). The Hebrews had been strangers in Egypt, and God granted them hospitality in
the form of the Covenant. For as it is stated in the Law of Moses: “You shall not oppress a resident alien; you know the heart of an alien;
for you were aliens in the land of Egypt” (Ex. 23:9).
Welcoming the stranger is both an ethical command and a descriptive moral value. Integrating the stranger in the community prohibits
violence, because the desert is a place of danger and being alone in the desert means to be essentially condemned to death. Killing is one
way to cope with the terror of the desert. The nomadic personality corresponds to the extremes of the desert. Raphael Patai has provided
an astute portrayal of the desert personality, one which, from time to time, is seized by pent-up emotions, driven to release intense
hostility, and possessed by a passive or remorseful phase (1983, 160-161). This is the same as Szondi’s

family tree must have persons who bear attack sickness or shock suffering (1969, 78).

paroxysmal-epileptiform pattern; but Patai does not use this phrase because he relies too heavily on psychoanalysis.
Welcoming the stranger resolves the Cain complex. Hospitality creates a brotherhood or sisterhood. The psychological need for
restitution, as identified by Szondi informs the biblical love command which grounds the structure of atonement in the Law: “You shall
love your neighbor as yourself’ (Lev. 19:18b). The neighbor also includes the stranger (Lev. 19:33-34). The same ethical command is
restated in the New Testament (Matt. 6:38-48; Lk. 6:27-36; Rom. 12:14, 17, 19-21). In early Christianity the resolution of the Cain
complex occurs in the experience of the Apostle Paul, when he became a missionary following his career as a persecutor of the Church
(Hughes 1982a). Paul’s autobiographical passages give evidence of a paroxysmal-epileptiform personality like that of Moses.
Thus, monotheism retained elements of a nomadic culture within its spiritual essence. It was borne by intense paroxysmal personalities
and gave rise to fluid reformist traditions. In as much as religious experience is conditioned by heredity, we should conclude this chapter
by considering the biological implications of hospitality. When we welcome the stranger, we assimilate diverse gene pools and promote
genetic variety. Such diversity serves the needs of survival by facilitating adaptability. Even when a group becomes settled and acquires a
sedentary culture, the principle of hospitality remains as a dynamic force, promoting love and justice. As Szondi knew so long ago, the
biblical love command is not a superficial idea but represents the fundamental truth of human existence. Resolution of the Cain complex
brings freedom and dignity and lays the foundation for a Just and responsible society.

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