Introduction

The myths of a relational system are the spaces of consensus of the individual narratives of its members. Within them one can distinguish cognitive, emotional and pragmatic elements, which refer respectively to the processes that reach consensus at the ideational, affective and behavioural levels. Ideational consensus is mainly represented by values and beliefs, whereas pragmatic consensus consists in the rituals associated with them. As for the affective resonances thus evoked – and likewise consented to – they constitute the emotional climate.

Systemic therapists are used to working with family mythologies: they lean on them when they are useful, and they set about modifying them when they turn out to be dysfunctional. A large part of the therapeutic work to be carried out with families that include symptomatic members consists precisely in this. The more serious the symptoms and the more dysfunctional the family proves to be, the more problematic the processes of consensus will be, and the more the mythologies will appear dissociated or rigidified. Moreover, the life cycle is of great importance in defining the validity of myths. The myth “we are one big united family” may be useful at the stage of raising young children and become an obstacle when those children reach adolescence.

Culture, for its part, can be defined as the mythology of the widest relational system in existence: society. And, from this point of view, cultural myths constitute the maximum expression of a society’s capacity to reach consensus. All cultures are rich in myths but, as in families, the most mature and best integrated societies possess more flexible and better consented mythologies. Religions, as cultural productions, constitute extraordinarily complex mythologies, which may be functional at certain historical moments and dysfunctional at others. Thus, for example, the dogmas of a religion of the “revealed” book may be integrating for a society that is colonised or threatened from outside and, conversely, prove disintegrating for a multi-ethnic society striving to incorporate its minorities harmoniously.

That is why it may be interesting to stop off for a while at the Western version of the human couple, by way of a few mythological approaches concerning it, such as, for example, those bearing on the founding couple, Adam and Eve.

Conjugality

It is true that modern science has established that pre-hominid primates were the inventors of couple relationships. Thanks to bipedalism, the way was cleared for humans to approach conjugal love from sexual relations morphologically apt to adopt the revolutionary ventro-ventral position. A posture, incidentally, unjustly discredited under the name of the missionary position, and which nonetheless allows a far richer communication and, above all, the individualised and unambiguous recognition of the sexual partner.

It is nevertheless our first parents, Adam and Eve, who best embody the role of the mythological couple. The story is well known: Jehovah, having created Adam, sensed that it was not good that the man should be alone, so that inmisit Dominus soporem in Adam et tulit una de costis eius… In other words, the Lord put Adam to sleep and took from him a rib, with which he then created Eve.

There they are in the earthly Paradise; but, as everyone knows, they are not alone there either: rather, they are in bad company. Eve’s privileged relationship with the serpent will create serious problems for both members of the young couple, to the point of ruining Adam’s no less privileged relationship with Jehovah. The harmful consequences will be fully shared: summary expulsion, the obligation to work, and the institution of mortality.

We can imagine Adam and Eve’s first conversation outside Paradise. There were surely any number of practical problems to attend to, any number of survival questions to solve; but, knowing the human condition, that first conversation must have been about the nature of their couple relationship, that is to say about conjugality.

Conjugality can be defined in various ways. One of them would refer to complex love or relational nurturing, applied to the relationship between the two members of the parental couple. It would include cognitive components (recognition and valuing, for instance), emotional components (affection, tenderness…) and pragmatic components (desire, sexuality and the management of everyday life, among others). More simply and more operationally, conjugality would amount to the capacity to resolve the conflicts that arise in the field of the couple.

If, then, we accept the basic foundations of the myth, Adam and Eve must have redefined their conjugality in the new circumstances born of their expulsion from paradise. And two hypotheses can be put forward as to the way they did so: by harmoniously negotiating the resolution of conflicts, or else by succumbing to resentment and disharmony.

1st hypothesis of conjugality: harmonious

Eve. – Adam, my love, I have done something foolish…

(Silence)

Eve. – Forgive me, my love, I know I have ruined everything. That cursed serpent talked me into it, but I should never have… (She weeps.)

Adam (moved). – All right, all right, don’t torment yourself, the old man went too far as well… After all, one apple…

2nd hypothesis of conjugality: disharmonious

Eve. – Well, and now what?

Adam. – Now? That is exactly what I am wondering. Now, I suppose your friend the serpent is going to feed us, isn’t he?

Eve. – No, but perhaps your pal the old man will explain to us what it means to earn your bread by the sweat of your brow, since he knows everything…

Adam. – You know what? Go off with the serpent!

Eve. – And you with the old man!

(But, of course, they do not go.)

Since we have practically no reliable information about what happened next, both hypotheses are defensible, for either of them can lead to the terrible tragedy of Cain and Abel. Of which we know a few things, though not many.

Parentality

We know that Cain, the eldest son of Adam and Eve, became a farmer, and Abel, the younger, a herdsman. And that Abel’s sacrifices were pleasing to God, whereas Cain’s were not. The intervention of Jehovah, who triangulates the two brothers, is therefore decisive in their misfortune, as it had been in that of their parents. But these are events that bear on the outbreak of the misfortune, not on its origin or its gestation, which certainly go back many years and sink their roots in the family of origin, in the times that followed the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise.

What were the personalities of Cain and Abel like? We know that both embody the mythical characters of the wicked one and the good one, but what ways of being lay hidden behind those stereotypes? Genesis tells us that Abel’s death was a deliberate crime, the murder of an innocent man by a guilty one; but we have good reason to doubt the impartiality of a Bible written to the greater glory of Jehovah. It is therefore legitimate to speculate about the psychological profile of our first brothers, in an attempt to understand an act so terrible and one which, inevitably, concerns us as a disquieting precedent.

To that end, it is worth reflecting on what the boys’ relationship with their parents may have been, since common sense holds that it played a part in the development of their personalities. One could of course object that the true begetter was Jehovah, but the hypothesis hardly seems consistent. Jehovah certainly did not give up exerting a decisive influence on his creatures, but only at decisive moments, when he made one of his spectacular appearances… without knocking at the door, like an all-powerful grandfather who knows the house belongs to him. The rest of the time, he preferred to keep his distance, exercising an authority little involved in everyday decisions. It is therefore hard to imagine that it was He who established the educational criteria for Cain and Abel, or who recommended which nursery to entrust them to.

Parentality defines the way parental functions are exercised, that is to say complex love or relational nurturing on its parent-child side. Like conjugality, parentality has cognitive, emotional and pragmatic components; and while the first and the second do not differ much from those of conjugality (recognition and valuing on the one hand, affection and tenderness on the other), the third are radically distinct from them. Indeed, the pragmatic components of parentality consist mainly in socialisation, with its twofold side, protective and normative: protecting the child from the dangers present in the environment and teaching them to respect it in order to be, in turn, respected.

Finding themselves forced to leave paradise, Adam and Eve also found themselves with children, which very certainly required them to define their parentality. Did they give priority to the couple? Did they respond adequately to their children’s relational needs? Concerning the parentality of our “first parents”, three hypotheses can be put forward.

1st hypothesis of parentality: good with Cain and with Abel

Eve. – Ah, so that was what the old man meant with his “be fruitful and multiply”! Look, Adam, look how pretty he is, he looks like those playful little monkeys that live down there in the ravine.

Adam. – Well, it’s true! Look how he clings to your breast. Tell me, we’ll have more of them, won’t we?

Eve. – Well, it hurts a bit, but it is worth it.

2nd hypothesis of parentality: bad with Cain and with Abel

Eve. – Good grief, that was all we needed! When the first brat arrived, I had already told you that this circus was not for me. And now that I have this dribbling one hanging from my breasts again, well… here we go again.

Adam. – Shh, be quiet! If we manage to keep the old man from noticing, we can throw him into the goats’ ravine as soon as he is born…

(But the old man, of course, did notice.)

3rd hypothesis of parentality: bad with Cain and good with Abel

Eve. – Oh, look, Adam, this one at least smiles, not like that little brute who has done nothing but growl since he was born! I don’t even want to think about it again. There we were, barely expelled, with nothing to our name but the clothes on our backs, and he thought of nothing but stuffing himself and crying…

Adam. – How beautiful he is! We could call him Adam.

Eve. – Oh no, with two Adams I shall get muddled! At a pinch, a name beginning with A.

The relational atmosphere

Conjugality and parentality are the two most important relational dimensions present in any family of origin. Although independent of one another, they also influence each other, producing, through their various combinations, the relational atmospheres that children may encounter. The result will be of decisive importance for the construction of their personality.

Table no. 1 shows the four great combinatory modalities, three of which represent dysfunctional situations: triangulations, deprivations and chaotizations.

Among the many meanings of the term triangulation in the systemic literature, we propose here the one that defines it as the inclusion of the children, through various modalities of coalition, in the dysfunctional relational games of the parents. Parentality, primarily preserved, deteriorates secondarily under the impact of a disharmonious conjugality, which pushes the parents to look for allies in order to resolve their conflicts. Different types of triangulation underlie pathologies such as neurotic disorders or psychoses.

Deprivations have been described by the author in relation to major depression disorders, but they also underlie borderline pathologies. Parents reasonably well attuned on the conjugal level, who fail in the exercise of parental functions and end up wrapped in a vicious circle of disqualification and rejection of their children. The depressogenic pattern is made up of over-demandingness and absence of valuing, whereas the pattern that facilitates borderline developments consists essentially in a mixture of rejection and overprotection.

Chaotizations are the result of the simultaneous failure of conjugality and parentality in the family of origin, which generates basic conditions of great poverty in terms of relational nurturing, but which also stimulates the ecosystem to intervene by bringing in compensatory resources. Relational chaos is characteristic of multi-problem families, as well as of pathologies such as conduct disorder or antisocial personality disorder.

Table no. 2 shows some correlations between the hypotheses of conjugality and those of parentality, with the intention of understanding the relational atmosphere that prevailed in the home of Adam and Eve. We shall examine each combination by speculating on the repercussions it may have had on the personality of Cain and Abel. And we shall add to it vignettes drawn from therapeutic practice, in order to give the whole a clinical consistency.

Six combinations, six atmospheres

1st combination: harmonious conjugality and good parentality

Poor Adam and Eve manage to weather the storm of their expulsion from Paradise while preserving a good couple relationship and a good exercise of parental functions. In these relationally privileged circumstances, the brothers ought to grow up in good harmony, without serious disputes threatening their mutual understanding. However, the ecosystem, in its infinite complexity, may exert negative influences by way of other extra-familial factors. For example, Jehovah could short-circuit the parents and use his own resources to triangulate the boys, making one the wicked one and the other the good one, and favouring the sacrifice of the latter at the hands of the former.

Enrique and Margarita did what they could to take care of their children, without ceasing to get along reasonably well. Their forced absenteeism has, however, placed in Eloísa’s hands a large part of the family’s relational resources. Not that she is the wicked witch of the tale; but her historical frustration as a woman and as a mother she was unable to be has driven her to appropriate Luisa, creating between brother and sister a dynamic with unforeseeable consequences.

2nd combination: harmonious conjugality and bad parentality

Although they withstand the crisis as a couple, parentality collapses for them, at least during the years in which their first two children come into the world. The bond with these children is irremediably affected, though in different ways. Cain, whom they perceive as restless and troublesome, grows up under a pattern defined by rejection and overprotection. The child exhausts them, causing them intense displeasure, and they give him everything in their power mainly so that he will not bother them. In this relational context, Cain develops a socially unstable, impulsive personality, with depressive episodes and others of uncontrolled aggressiveness. Abel, on the other hand, is perceived by his parents as responsible and calm; and so they delegate to him, very early on, helping functions in the domestic chores. The message is that such is his destiny, and that he must therefore expect neither valuing nor gratitude. Subjected to such tensions, Abel’s personality takes on a depressive tinge, which makes him the natural recipient of the outbursts of violence of Cain, the borderline one.

Deprivation can follow the two paths taken by the lives of Gemma and María. Gemma was subjected to a relational pattern of over-demandingness and absence of valuing, which shaped her personality by predisposing her to depression (Linares and Campo, 2000). Social norms are then transmitted with complete success, giving rise to the development of hypernormative and, in the end, hypersocial dynamics. The pressure to give the very best of herself, beyond her real possibilities, engendered in Gemma an enormous sense of responsibility, mingled with a great guilt at not being equal to the circumstances. But underneath, an intense hostility was seething, the product of the awareness of being unjustly treated. Suicide, the supreme expression of depression, would have relieved both tensions: self-punishment against guilt, and a hostile, guilt-inducing legacy for the survivors.

The pattern to which María was subjected combined rejection and overprotection, a cocktail in no way conducive to the transmission of social norms, and conducive, on the contrary, to their defiance (Linares, 2006). The borderline personality disorder generated in such circumstances brings together transgressive hyponormative dynamics and hyposocial tendencies, expressive of a deep distrust of interpersonal relationships. Let us not lose sight of the fact that to the obvious destabilising consequences of rejection are added those of an overprotection that barely conceals its status as deception: excess protection is false protection, since it is exercised more in accordance with the needs of the supposed protectors than with those of the supposedly protected.

3rd combination: harmonious conjugality and parentality bad with Cain, good with Abel

Cain arrived at a bad moment, when the trauma of the expulsion had his parents up against the wall. The couple being miraculously unharmed, parentality proved too much for them and the bond suffered from it. The child grew up feeling rejected and badly brought up, without the slightest receptiveness to social norms and, consequently, a candidate for a diagnosis of borderline personality. Conversely, Abel, born when his parents’ recovery, by then adapted to adversity, was under way, met with far more favourable circumstances and grew up healthy and mature. Unfortunately, his attempts to improve the relationship with his brother only increased the latter’s rage, as he was progressively cornered into the role of the wicked one. Until, after one of these many appeasing gestures (Abel may, for example, have proposed to Cain that he present his sacrifices himself), the tragedy occurred.

A bad relationship between siblings does not always end in biblical tragedy, but it is very often generated out of relatively banal situations such as the one this example reflects. The deteriorated bond with one child, owing to biographical circumstances of the parents that are part of their everyday life, is felt all the more keenly because of the comparative injustice represented by the good relationship with another child, the beneficiary of a more favourable historical juncture.

4th combination: disharmonious conjugality and good parentality

The bad couple relationship, joined to Adam and Eve’s sincere interest in their children, meant that the parents wanted to have them as allies. Given their isolation and the non-existence of an extended family, the boys found it hard to resist the triangulating proposals. The mother, having more relational resources at her disposal and initially more motivated, captured the first one, while the father had his chance with the second. Both grew up worried and anxious in the midst of continual family battles and conflicts of loyalty, even if the alliance with Eve gave Cain greater strength. Faced with Adam’s frequent absences, Abel sought in Jehovah a reinforcement for his coalition, but even so he did not manage to counterbalance the power of the one formed by his mother and his brother. The latter, having lost control during yet another quarrel, struck Abel with the first object that came to hand… something as absurd as the jawbone of an ass.

The stormy couple relationship of Berta and Antonio, practically from the time they met, favoured the triangulation of their sons. Alfredo, as the elder, had the opportunity to establish a privileged relationship with his mother, whom he consoled for the sorrows caused by her conflict-ridden married life. Roberto occupied a less defined position, tempted both to ally himself with his father and to draw closer to the more positive value his mother represented. He ended up leaning towards the father, driven above all by the rage inspired in him by Alfredo’s arrogant attitude. But his father was the losing horse, and he himself felt increasingly frustrated and furious.

5th combination: disharmonious conjugality and bad parentality

Our first family was not a model of relational nurturing. The continual quarrels between the parents, the abandonments of the home by one and the other (and yet they did not have many alternatives!) and the intense neglect in which the children were plunged created a chaotic atmosphere. The children witnessed their parents’ sexual games, and sometimes took part in them; these games, without transition, usually degenerated into violent confrontations. Systematically abandoned and unpredictably abused and mistreated, Cain and Abel grew up without respect for, or even much knowledge of, any norm, regarding others, like good predators, as a mere occasional relief for their infinite needs and shortfalls. Abel’s death was almost random, because Cain was faster. And Abel was sanctified after the fact, through a process of idealisation of the dead.

In the chaos engendered by the combination of a disharmonious conjugality and a deteriorated parentality, without the intervention of compensatory mechanisms bringing nurturing resources from the ecosystem (since, in this case, social services and child protection institutions do nothing but control), children grow up in free fall. They have neither a solid experience of what love is nor, of course, any internalisation of social norms. The result is what comes closest to the idea of evil: antisocial personality disorder.

6th combination: disharmonious conjugality and parentality bad with Cain, good with Abel

Adam and Eve always got along badly, but their relationship with their children, by contrast, changed over time. If, when Cain arrived, the overwhelming burden caused by the expulsion made them lose their footing with the child, some time later Abel met with more favourable circumstances. As a consequence, Cain belonged to no one, and the absence of bonds marked his existence with an antisocial bias. Abel, for his part, was the object of a dispute between Adam and Eve and ended up leaning towards the latter. The anxious profile of his personality took on dysthymic touches, which did not tarnish his status as the prestigious brother but made him more vulnerable in the face of Cain. We know what followed.

In this case too, relational chaos plays an important part, even if it directly affects Lucas. Ahmed, triangulated by his parents, finds himself an indirect victim of the chaos by being savagely assaulted by his elder brother.

Other possible combinations

These are the most plausible combinations, but one could also speculate about others, such as, for example:

• Harmonious conjugality and parentality good with Cain and bad with Abel. In that case, it would be the healthy one (Cain) who killed the borderline one (Abel).
• Disharmonious conjugality and parentality good with Cain and bad with Abel. Here again, the healthier one (a triangulated and neurotic Cain) would have finished off the antisocial one (Abel).
• Harmonious conjugality at Cain’s birth and disharmonious at Abel’s, combined with various modalities of parentality.
• Disharmonious conjugality at Cain’s birth and harmonious at Abel’s, combined with various modalities of parentality.
• And so on…

Conclusions

It is obviously not a matter of exhausting all the combinatory possibilities. Those we have reviewed amply suffice to illustrate what is the fundamental aim of these reflections: at the crossroads of parentality and conjugality, where the relational atmosphere of the family of origin is generated, lie elements that make it possible to define the future personality of the children. And, possibly, to understand some of the events liable to exert a decisive influence on their lives.

At the same time, these ideas make it possible to revisit the old systemic concept of equifinality from the angle of complexity. One may indeed reach the same situation from very diverse starting points, but neither the relational meaning of the outcome nor the process that leads to it will be the same. It is not the same thing for Abel’s death at Cain’s hand to have been the result of a confrontation between psychopaths, the impulsive aggression of a borderline subject out of control, or an act of legitimate self-defence… even if, in every case, it has been presented by official history as the murder of an innocent man perpetrated by a wicked one. And we have seen that behind each of these options, and behind many others still possible, there exists a coherent and distinct relational substratum.

Be that as it may, and since myths are an inexhaustible source of relationally sensitive material, let us return for a moment to Genesis to note that Adam and Eve had a third son, whom they called Seth. And that his mission was to replace Abel, since the lineage of Cain was in some way cursed. To replace one dead brother and another condemned one! What a heavy burden poor Seth must have carried! And what an inheritance it fell to him to pass on to his descendants!

But that, of course, is another story.