Cain's Act
On fratricidal hatred via Cain and Abel: envy, rivalry and the roots of violence.
A profound and highly original examination of this well-known biblical text.
Recalcati reads the Genesis account of Cain and Abel as a founding myth of the human bond, treating the first murder as a pattern that recurs wherever brothers become rivals. He argues that harming one's neighbour comes before loving one's neighbour, and that the commandment to love arrives precisely because fratricidal violence is already at work. Cain's crime springs from envy of the brother who seems favoured, and from the wound of going unrecognised before the Other.
Working in a Lacanian register, he locates violence in the fantasy of self-sufficiency, the wish to be master of one's own making and to owe nothing to anyone. Where that fantasy fails, the sibling's very existence turns unbearable, and destruction promises to restore an imagined wholeness.
For the clinician, the essay supplies a way of thinking about sibling envy, competition and narcissistic injury as they surface in family histories and in the consulting room, without reducing them to symptoms.
About the author
Massimo Recalcati
Massimo Recalcati (born 1959) is an Italian psychoanalyst and writer who works within the Lacanian tradition. He is known for his clinical and theoretical work on eating disorders, particularly anorexia and bulimia, and for books on love, contemporary subjectivity, and the reading of myth. In 2003 he founded Jonas Onlus, a network of centres for the psychoanalytic treatment of new symptoms, and he serves as scientific director of IRPA, the Institute for Applied Psychoanalysis Research. He teaches at IULM in Milan and writes regularly for the press.
Details
- 2020
- 2022
- Il gesto di Caino
- Italian
- Will Schutt
- Europa Editions
- Europa Editions
- 112
- 9781609458157