The Creation of Woman: A Psychoanalytic Enquiry into the Myth of Eve

By Theodor Reik

Theodor Rеіk attempts to unravel the mystery of the Eve myth he bet gins with the two conflicting versions of the creation of woman in Genesis. In one passage, Genesis states that “God created man in his own image...male and female created he them,” and in a subsequent passage that God made Adam first and then created Eve out of Adam’s rib. Various interpretations offered by the rabbis, the poets, theologians, and Biblical scholars are examined, and the author shows how the statement that Eve was fashioned from Adam’s rib is still unexplained despite the efforts of higher criticism, anthropology, and the comparative science of religion.

Dr. Reik offers a unique approach to the problem of the creation of woman, forming his own original and exciting assumptions. Using the findings of archaeology and anthropology as well as psychoanalysis, he explores the dark world of ritual, the tribal mysteries of primitive societies in which boys at puberty were supposed to die and be resurrected before they were permitted to marry Analytic comparison of the Eve myth with primitive ritual leads to the reconstruction of the primal form of the Biblical story and to the suggestion that it was not concerned with the birth of Eve but with the rebirth of the ancestral Adam. The author also suggests the possibility if a mother goddess in a still earlier phase: of the Hebrew religion.

The late Theodor Reik is the author of Listening with the Third Еar, The Secret Self, Myth and Guilt, and Mystery on the Mountain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: Apr 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839743726

Theodor Reik

Viennese-born psychoanalyst Theodor Reik became Sigmund Freud's pupil in 1910, completed the first doctor's dissertation on psychoanalysis in 1911, and received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Vienna in 1912. He lectured at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in Berlin and at The Hague. He came to the United States in 1938 and became an American citizen. Reik's lack of medical training led him to found the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis in 1948, which accepts lay analysts for membership and has programs for their training. His Listening with the Third Ear (1948) is a stimulating discussion of Freud's development of psychoanalysis and describes in great detail his own cases during 37 years of active practice. Reik's books show great erudition and are written with literary skill; they sparkle "with insights and with witty profundities." He may properly be regarded as "the founding father of archaeological psychoanalysis," a branch of depth psychology dedicated to the probing of archaeological data from psychoanalytic viewpoints.

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THE CREATION OF WOMAN

A PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY INTO THE MYTH OF EVE

BY

THEODOR REIK

Table of Contents

Contents

Table of Contents 5

DEDICATION 6

Introduction 7

PART ONE—THE MYTH AND THE MYSTERY OF EVE 9

CHAPTER I—THE TWO STORIES 9

CHAPTER II—THE FIRST HUMAN BEING A MAN-WOMAN? 13

CHAPTER III—ADAM AND THE ANIMALS 18

CHAPTER IV—THE RABBIS 23

CHAPTER V—BONE OF CONTENTION 26

CHAPTER VI—THE POETS 28

CHAPTER VII—TOO-SMOOTH SAILING 34

CHAPTER VIII—THE COMMENTATORS 38

CHAPTER IX—INTERMEZZO—OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES 44

CHAPTER X—THE PSYCHOANALYTIC INTERPRETATION 47

CHAPTER XI—A NEW APPROACH IS NEEDED 50

PART TWO—THE SOLUTION 53

CHAPTER XII—THE GREAT TRIBAL MYSTERY 54

CHAPTER XIII—NEW CLUES 59

CHAPTER XIV—ADAM’S CIRCUMCISION 64

CHAPTER XV—THERE’S THE RUB 71

CHAPTER XVI—A HOAX IN THE STONE AGE 76

CHAPTER XVII—ABSURDITY AND MOCKERY IN THE EVE MYTH 80

CHAPTER XVIII—TRADITION AND THE SECRETS OF THE PAST 84

CHAPTER XIX—PEEKING THROUGH CRACKS 90

POSTSCRIPT 95

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 96

DEDICATION

TO MY DAUGHTER THEODORA

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Genesis, I, 26, 27

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul....

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh...."

Genesis, II, 7, 21-24

Introduction

IF IT were possible to transplant a moment of the past into the present, a few moments from a court scene (which the New York Times called the most amazing in Anglo-Saxon history) would be the best introduction for this book. The scene is the little town of Dayton, Tennessee, on one of the hottest days of July 1925.{1} The numerous visitors to Dayton are greeted by banners which say: Read your Bible daily! and Where will you spend eternity? and Sweethearts, come to Jesus! It is the fourth day of the trial of John T. Scopes who dared to teach the theory of evolution in a school in Tennessee. The examination of the witnesses takes place in the yard outside the courtroom. Here, in the torrid heat, William Jennings Bryan, untiring preacher of fundamentalism, takes the stand as an expert on the Bible Coatless, his sleeves rolled up, he fans himself with a palm leaf. The attorney for the defense, Clarence Darrow, who has called him to the stand to testify, is also in his shirtsleeves. He asks:

Mr. Bryan, do you believe that the first woman was Eve?

Answer: Yes.

Question: Do you believe she was literally made out of Adam’s rib?

Answer: I do.

During those days Darrow asked his friend, Arthur Garfield Hayes, who had joined him in defending the teacher Scopes: Isn’t it difficult to realize that a trial of this kind is possible in the twentieth century in the United States? Actually, it is not difficult to imagine a similar trial today, only thirty-four years later, in this, our age of conformity, religious revival and bigotry.

This book, however, is not concerned with those contemporary problems. To call up the memory of that court scene from the recent past should serve only to raise the curtain on a performance that will take us back to the beginning of time, to the dawn of creation. Written without scholarly pretentions, this essay takes as its point of departure the myth—if myth is the appropriate word—of the creation of woman, the same myth which was a subject of testimony in that famous, or infamous, Scopes trial. We will, therefore, start from that Biblical narrative—from a few sentences of the second chapter of Genesis. But neither textual investigation nor higher criticism is our aim. Those few verses (Gen. II: 21-24) will be treated here in a manner similar to that of the archaeologist who deciphers a puzzling ancient inscription.

Freud once remarked{2} that the Biblical story of Eve’s creation has something about it that is quite peculiar and singular. I am convinced that the hidden meaning of that Biblical account has not yet been discovered. The Genesis report of the creation of woman is still as bristling with mysteries as a porcupine with quills. Our first task will be the reconstruction of the primal tradition from which the Biblical narrative, often altered and distorted, evolved. New clues, emerging from an unexpected source, led me to a hidden path. The analytic exploration of this primeval hiding place enabled me to uncover the unknown original tradition of the myth. Its reconstruction provides us with new insights which could not have been reached in any other way. The discovery of the original meaning of the creation myth will serve, then, as a kind of peephole through which we may look into secret realms of prehistory. It is to be hoped that future research in the field of the ancient Near East and in comparative religion will excavate many hidden treasures of knowledge whose location is first pointed to in the attempt undertaken here.

This book belongs to the realm of archaeological psychoanalysis. I gave this name to a still undeveloped branch of psychoanalytic research which explores problems of prehistory.{3} It does so by applying the combined methods of comparative history and anthropology with the analytic observation and evaluation of details until now neglected. Following the great tradition of my master and friend, Sigmund Freud, I have shown in various books and papers that such problems which have been tackled in vain by other methods of research can be brought closer to solution with the help of the new tools which psychoanalysis provides. If I am not mistaken, the present adventure in psychoanalytic discovery will cast a new light not only on the earliest traditions of the Bible, but also on the origin of its people.

THEODOR REIK

New York, October 1959.

PART ONE—THE MYTH AND THE MYSTERY OF EVE

CHAPTER I—THE TWO STORIES

THE CREATION of man is a theme central to the myths of most primitive peoples and ancient civilizations. Yet it was at first no enigma. It became one only after a certain degree of self-awareness was reached, when man conceived of himself as a separate part of nature. Even then, the wish to know was not urgent, and curiosity about the origin of man was only casually expressed and easily satisfied. To a native of southern Australia it was sufficient to learn that Bunjil, the eagle hawk, made man and things. The Bushman was content with the information that Cagn, identified with the mantis insect, was the creator. Among the native tribes of America, the coyote, the crow, the raven or the hare played the chief role in the creation of man.

The first myths are, it seems to me, produced by, and meant for, men. They often become, it is true, old wives’ tales, but only long after they have been contemptuously dismissed by the men of the tribe. Women are more often occupied than preoccupied with the creation of man. Their imagination is not involved with the solution to the question of how the first human being was created. This is no problem for them: they know. It could not have been very different, they feel, from the manner in which their own children are born. The myths and legends of creation, including those of the Bible, presuppose an audience of men.

As long ago as 1683, C. Vitringa recognized a dual account of the creation of man in the opening chapters of Genesis. He recognized that the first and the second chapters present a striking discrepancy. In the first chapter the Lord is depicted as creating all living beings in the water and in the air, and forming all terrestrial animals. Then, last of all, on the sixth day He created man. Fashioned in God’s own image, man is the zenith of creation. Man and woman were produced simultaneously (male and female created He them.) When we turn to the second chapter, quite a different picture is presented: in contrast to and in contradiction with that first account we learn that God created man initially, then the lower animals and last of all—almost as an afterthought—woman, whom he fashioned from Adam’s rib.

The differences in order and content are obvious. The chronology in the two accounts is reversed. In the second narrative, mention is made of man having been created in the image of his Creator. He is formed of the dust of the ground and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Only then did man become a living soul. In the first version the Lord appears as a creator; in the second as a molder and mover of man.

Biblical commentators add to these differences several others: in the first version God is called Elohim, while the second version employs a combination of Yahweh and Elohim. Furthermore, palpable dissimilarities in style occur. The one account, from the first chapter to the third verse of the second, the critics assert,{4} is systematic and stereotyped, verbose and chronological. In the second chapter there is a complete change in style: it is free, poetical and picturesque.

Bible critics traced these discrepancies back to the fact that the two accounts are derived from two separate main sources: an older one belonging to the Yahwist document and a later narrative written for the Priestly report. It should be mentioned en passant that the Yahwist story itself is by no means uniform. Several contradictions and anomalies are contained in it: the Paradise is, according to 11:8, situated in the far East; according to II:20, in the West land, and according to II:16, in the North. The expulsion from the Garden of Eden is told twice, the curse upon man is repeated, and so on. The two strands from which the Yahwist draws are usually differentiated as Jj and Ye.

We shall not enter into the discussion of the definition and division of the material according to sources. Biblical scholars, quoting chapter and verse, do not yet agree about them. It is also beyond the scope of this investigation to trace the individual sources back to mythological patterns of the people of the ancient Orient. Suffice it to say that the first account was often compared to the Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony with which some striking similarities were discovered. Several attempts were made to trace the Yahwist narrative of the creation of man to one or another mythological tale of some ancient people, but to date no such comparable account has been found. There is a possibility that we may discover a common Semitic tradition from which the two cosmogonies were descended.

The German scholar Gerhard von Rade recently compared the whole biblical account of the creation to a structure based upon two powerful mythological columns which we call the Yahwistic and the Priestly. Yet the same scholar has warned us not to overemphasize the definiteness of the traditions as they have come down to us.{5} He says that however late one dates the Yahwist editor, measured by the tradition included in his narrative, his written report marks an end for that material which had already had a long history behind it.{6} It