In this column, we examine the question of why Freud, a Jewish man, employed Oedipus rather than a Biblical story as a basis for psychoanalysis (cf. Kaplan and Algom, 1997). A widespread misconception not withstanding, Yerushalmi’s (1991) work makes abundantly clear that Freud was no stranger to the Hebrew tradition. Freud’s obsessive attempts to keep psychoanalysis from being seen as a "Jewish National Affair" does not satisfactorily answer the question either, Finally, Freud claimed to observe the oedipal configuration in his patients. But this too provides an incomplete explanation as his preoccupation with the Oedipus complex undoubtedly predisposed him to see it. Freud’s fascination with the Greek Oedipus must have deeper roots.

We have discussed previously the Olympian story of creation. In the Greek theogony, nature exists before the gods and Mother Earth colludes with he son to castrate her husband Sky. The Oedipal conflict is born and indeed, ingrained through the Furies into the fabric of the natural world (Apollodorus 1:4). Indeed, it seems to be an unchanging law of nature, foretold by Earth and Sky with regard to Uranus, Cronus and Zeus (Apollodorus 1: 5, 2: 1)

In the Biblical account of creation, God exists prior to nature and in fact creates the heaven and the earth. There is no sign of an oedipal conflict here nor the antagonism between man and woman such as exists in the Greek story of creation. So the question must be again asked why Freud was not influenced by this Biblical view of creation rather than its Greek counterpart.

The radical Biblical conception that God created nature and is thus able to change what seems to be immutable natural laws is incompatible with that much more deterministic Greek view that nature creates the gods and in fact governs them (Shestov, 1966; Snell, 1982/1935). Freud correctly understood that the latter, deterministic, alternative was immutably tied to an Oedipal conflict. Freud had no ultimate faith in the transformative powers of the Biblical God and thus was not able to use the Akedah as a model for resolving father-son conflict. In Yerushalmi's terms "Like Sisyphus pushing his rock, Oedipus and Laius must contend forever. At one point in the cycle the father must be slain by the son, at another, that of the return of the repressed, the father returns, the return is only illusion, for the cycle will begin again." (Yerushalmi, p. 95) This ever-repeating cycle represents Freud’s tragic understanding of the psychological processes intrinsic to a deterministic universe.

This is in marked contrast to the ringing and hopeful Biblical proclamation of an unambivalent resolution of the Oedipus complex.

And He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children,

And the heart of the children to their fathers... (Malachi 3: 22-24