Word: jacob
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Jacob, Joseph and More Severe Birthright Complexes...
...entrance into Harvard (in the eyes of his hometown admirers an increase in stature) is to him a diminishment, in the most immediate sense. He is anonymous, low man on the totem pole. Like Jacob, he must win the birthright through ploys. As Jacob tricked Isaac into bestowing his blessing by putting on the godly rainments of his brother, and the skins of the kids of goats upon his hands, so does many a freshman, with the voice of Jacob, display to the world the hands of Esau...
...Dream of Joseph: When tricks or ploys fail to win recognition, the Jacob complex goes underground. Another breed of undergraduate learns to content himself with imagined glories. The young Joseph, twelfth man in a line of brothers, dreams that the bound sheaves of his brothers stood round and made obeisance to his sheaf in the field...
Whale-Fodder: When the will to prominence is traumatically frustrated, or when pleasing fantasies of rank are shaken by unwitting confrontations with reality, the Jacob-Joseph complexes may become aggravated, most typically in the freshmen or senior year, into the more severe Jonah complex. Here the undergraduate feels himself engulfed in helplessness. He sleeps through breakfast, but goes to dinner early so he may watch T.V. afterwards in his house common room. Directionless, he rarely studies, but thinks about studying perpetually. If he is a senior, he lacks a thesis topic. Jonah arrived in his predicament through running away...
...brother Esau," Jacob said to his mother, "is a hairy man, and I am smooth-skinned! Suppose my father feels me? He will think me frivolous, and I shall bring on myself a curse instead of a blessing...