Fratricide occupies a remarkably persistent position across the depth-psychological corpus, appearing not merely as a biographical datum or historical curiosity but as a structurally significant symbol of primordial psychic division. Jung indexes it repeatedly in his late theological writings as an emblem of the metaphysical split attending Creation itself: the Cain-Abel narrative signals a disunity inscribed at the origin of consciousness, a dualism that monotheism could never fully absorb. In Answer to Job and Psychology and Religion: West and East, Jung catalogs fratricide alongside the 'hostile brothers' motif as one of the archetypal configurations through which the unconscious figures its own internal warfare. Rank, approaching the theme through literary morphology, identifies fraternal hatred as a standard dramatic requisite stretching from Greek tragedy through Schiller, arguing that the biographical absence of a literal brother is compensated by imaginative substitution. Konstan's classical scholarship, meanwhile, traces how the stigma of fratricide functions emotionally in Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes, displacing civic fear onto a specifically intrafamilial horror. Zimmer situates it within the amoral realpolitik of Indian statecraft as one of the routine instruments of political self-preservation. Taken together, these readings reveal fratricide as a psycho-mythological nexus where kinship solidarity, shadow projection, guilt, and the compulsion to destroy what is most proximate to the self converge.
In the library
10 passages
The ominous happenings that occur right at the beginning of a seemingly successful and satisfactory Creation—the Fall and the fratricide—catch our attention, and one is forced to admit that the initial situation... hardly permits us to expect an absolutely perfect result.
Jung reads the fratricide of Cain and Abel as a cosmogonic symptom of metaphysical disunity built into Creation, inseparable from the problem of evil and the inadequacy of monotheism.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
brothers, hostile, motif of, see Abel; Cain; fratricide
Jung formally catalogues fratricide as an archetypal motif under the 'hostile brothers' configuration, cross-referencing it with Cain, Abel, and Satan as psychic doubles.
brothers, hostile, 173n, 400 see also Abel; Cain; fratricide
Jung's index entry anchors fratricide within a network of hostile-brother archetypes, confirming its systematic status in his depth-psychological theology.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
the motif of fraternal hate which in Schiller lasts right up to the Braut von Messina... This same motif of fraternal hatred, which is one of the typical requisites of dramatic poetry from the time of Greek tragedy.
Rank argues that fraternal hatred and its literary embodiment in fratricide constitutes a structural constant of dramatic poetry, traceable from Greek tragedy through Schiller and Shakespeare.
Rank, Otto, Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, 1932thesis
their anxiety is now focused on the stigma of fratricide, which displaces the threat posed by the invading army.
Konstan demonstrates that in Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes the emotional weight of fratricide supersedes the fear of external military defeat, functioning as the play's deepest psychic horror.
David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, 2006thesis
Māyā, fratricide, poison, and the dagger constitute the order of the day.
Zimmer situates fratricide within the normative political violence of Indian Arthaśāstra statecraft, treating it as an unremarkable instrument of power among the amoral repertoire of dynastic survival.
Zimmer, Heinrich, Philosophies of India, 1951supporting
"Pro and Contra Fratricide—Aeschylus Septem 653-719."
Williams cites scholarly engagement with the ethical argumentation for and against fratricide in Aeschylus, placing the act within the classical discourse of necessity, shame, and moral conflict.
Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity, 1993supporting
the notion of a murderer within a family is extended to the case of a murderer within society itself. Homicide in general is not punished as such in the ancient law codes.
Benveniste's etymological analysis of parricida establishes the linguistic and juridical framework within which fratricidal killing was historically categorized as a pollution of the kinship group rather than a generic crime.
Benveniste, Émile, Indo European Language and Society, 1973supporting
the two brothers struggled for the throne of Mycenae; Atreus slaughtered Thyestes' infant sons and served them up for dinner, so that Thyestes unsuspectingly ate the flesh of his own children.
Burkert documents the Atreus-Thyestes myth as an extreme case of intrafamilial violence and pollution, contextualizing fratricide within the sacrificial logic of ancient Greek ritual killing.
Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, 1972aside
If brother wounds brother, then their parents and kindred, of both sexes, shall meet and judge the crime.
Plato's Laws treats intrafamilial violence including brother-against-brother assault as a special category requiring adjudication by the kinship network itself, anticipating the legal particularization of fratricide.