Birth order counts. That’s what Austrian psychotherapist Alfred Adler told us. Firstborns are more depressed, middle children competitive and the youngest tends to get spoiled. Family dynamics are fascinating, but so is the family legacy. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis and one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, had a grandson named Lucian, who would become one of the greatest portrait artists of Great Britain.
Sir Francis Bacon, the great philosopher/statesman of the late 16th and early 17th centuries eventually led to the life of Francis Bacon, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. But why did it take generations for these family endowments to remerge? And why do some offspring grab the gold ring while others settle for bronze, silver or nickel?
Family talent can be suppressed for a generation or two or three. If a family has great talent, it can be a shining light and a beacon of hope for the offspring as it was for both the Freud family and the Bacon family, but this light may remain dormant for generations and will only re-emerge when circumstances are right.
The great American novelist Cormac McCarthy grappled with this issue in “No Country for Old Men” when he described the relationship between the Sheriff Ed Bell and his father, who was also a sheriff. In the last scene of this Oscar- winning film of the same name directed by the Coen brothers, Sheriff Bell has recently retired and is telling his wife about the dream he had the night before. In the dream, he was alone on a mountain pass in the dark of night with a cold snow blowing. His father passed him “on horseback carrying a fire in a horn like in the olden days…. It was under a blanket and shining like the color of the moon…..he rode on past and I knew he was going on ahead and fixing to make a fire in all that dark and all that cold…and I knew that whenever I got there, he’d be there.”
In this passage, McCarthy is exploring the idea of a family legacy of courage and righteous goodness, but to live up to this legacy presents Sheriff Bell with grave danger and even possible death. It is easy to understand how one may want to shy away from a family legacy out of fear it will cause too much pain.
Francis Bacon courageously tapped into the power of his family heritage and thus the spirit of Sir Francis Bacon came back to life. When we see a Lucian Freud painting look more real than the sitter he is painting, we can think of his genius ancestor’s ability to see into the souls of his patients and how Lucian was able to harness this same empathy but transformed it into the domain of art rather than the healing sciences.
I think the way therapy fits into all this is as follows. The analyst’s task is to intuit the hidden talents the patient has and nourish it and why psychoanalysis is concerned with your history.
Most of the progeny in great families run from their destiny. Not everyone answers the call. The Kohler plumbing family of Kohler, Wis., has four generations working in their 17 diversified companies, but the Kohler family is the exception. More frequently we see offspring blocked by a fear of success or a fear of failure or by numerous other circumstances. But the spark and the talent keep on calling.
In some ways we all shoulder the burden to carry on the best of our inheritance whether that is genetic, social, spiritual, intellectual or financial. And only the very bravest of the offspring will have the courage to go beyond all the fears and fulfill the best of what has been given to them.
Success is offered by our family heritage, but it’s another thing altogether to grab hold of these gifts given to us and do something with them. If we can somehow muster the courage, then our family legacy acts like a “fire in all that cold and all that dark,” providing us with hope and inspiration and direction.
Our forefathers are our role models waiting for us to reach them somewhere far off in the distance up high in the mountains. And when we finally arrive on the mountain top, we will have made them proud.
