Exile and Return... from the Beginning

"His impressive commentary of the Bible starts with a question asked by a Rabbi Yitzhak: why does the Bible begin with the description of the genesis of the world rather than with the first law, which concerns the calendar? .... for some exegetes, this Rabbi Yitzhak is none other than the author’s father.

Wiesel, Elie (2009-08-06). Rashi (Jewish Encounters) (p. 11). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, Otto Rank 1914

The hero is the child of very distinguished parents, and usually the son of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as sexual abstinence, prolonged infertility, or secret intercourse of the parents due to external prohibition or obstacles. During or before the pregnancy, a prophecy, in the form of a dream or oracle, warns against his birth, usually threatening harm to the father. Therefore the newborn child, usually at the instigation of the father or his representative, is doomed to be killed or exposed. As a rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (herders), and suckled by a female animal or a lowly woman. After he has grown up, he finds his distinguished parents in a variety of ways. He takes revenge on his father, on the one hand, and is acknowledged, on the other, achieving greatness and fame.

"One other difference between The Trauma of Birth and The Myth of the Birth of the Hero is the link now drawn between the hero and the artist. Rank now proposes the substitution of the term "artist" for hero to identify the cultural hero the one who in religion, art, or philosophy creates "sublime wish compensations" for the lingering frustration of life outside the womb" From Intro

The Trauma of Birth, by Otto Rank 1924

To the same type of deliverance myths belongs also the biblical Legend of Paradise where, as a direct reversal of the real occurrence, the woman is cut out of the man, that is, the man is born “ like a hero, ” because there it is he who falls into the death - like sleep. ....the ensuing expulsion from Paradise , which has become for all of us the symbol of the unattainable blessed primal condition, represents once again a repetition of painful parturition , the separation from the mother by the father to which men and women are subjected in the same way . The curse following on the original sin of birth , “ In pain shalt thou bring forth thy children , ” clearly divulges the motive lying at the bottom of the entire myth formation , which is, namely , to make of no effect the primal trauma whose unavoidable continuous repetition is expressed in the fruit simile . The command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of Paradise shows the same unwillingness , in the sense of the birth trauma , to separate the ripe fruit from the maternal stem as , in the myth of the birth of the hero , the original hostility of the father to the hero’s coming into the world at all . Also the death punishment decreed for the breaking of this command clearly shows that the woman’s offence consists in the breaking off of the fruit , namely , giving birth , and here again in the meaning of the tendency to return death proves to be a wish - reaction to the birth trauma .

In the legends of Paradise and the Golden Age we have before us a description of this primal condition , with emphasis laid on the pleasurable side of it , whilst the great systems of religion , dualistic from the beginning in the meaning of the compulsion - neurotic ambivalence , represent the ethical reaction - formations against the breaking out of this fearful yearning to go back , and the attempts to sublimate it.

the Ego , in its retreat from the confines of anxiety , is constantly urged forwards to seek for Paradise in the world formed in the image of the mother , instead of seeking it in the past , and , in so far as this fails , to look for it in the sublime compensations of religion , art , and philosophy . In reality this enormous task of adaptation , in so far as it is a matter of the creation of genuine values , is successfully accomplished by only one type of human being , which the history of mind has handed down to us as the hero , but which we would like to designate as ” artist ” in the broadest sense of the word , in so far as it is a question of a creation of ideal values , of phantastic superstructure , created from the remains of primal libido unsatisfied in real creation .

This process is what biologically speaking we call “ life . ” If in the course of life the “ normal ” individual , detached by the birth trauma , amidst the difficulties of the child’s development and by the avoidance of neurotic relapses , succeeds in adjusting himself to the outer world as ” the best of all worlds , ” namely , as a mother substitute....

Times of great external distress , which remind the Unconscious too strongly of the individual’s first affliction in life , namely , the birth trauma , lead automatically to increased regressive attempts which must again be given up , not only because they never can achieve the real aim , but just because they have approached too near to it and have come up against the primal anxiety , which keeps watch in front of Paradise , like the Cherubim who hold the flashing sword before its gates . So the primal tendency to re - establish the first and most pleasurable experience is opposed not only by the primal repression , acting as a protection against the repetition of the most painful experience associated with it , but simultaneously also by the striving against the source of pleasure itself , of which one does not wish to be reminded because it must remain unattainable .

the civilized human being and still more the “ artist ” can reproduce this objectively in manifold , strictly determined forms , fixed by the primal trauma , whilst the neurotic is compelled again and again to produce it in a similar way only on his own body . The neurotic is thrown back again and again to the real birth trauma , whilst the normal and supernormal throw it , so to say , forwards and project it outwards , and are thus enabled to objectify it .