To this unending investigation, Thomas Mann brought his very important contribution: we think we act, we think we think, but it is another or others who think and act in us: that is to say, timeless habits, archetypes, which-having become myths passed on from one generation to the next-carry an enormous seductive power and control us (says Mann) from "the well of the past."

Thomas Mann: "Is man's 'self' narrowly limited and sealed tight within his fleshly ephemeral boundaries? Don't many of his constituent elements come from the universe outside and previous to him?… The distinction between mind in general and individual mind did not preoccupy people in the past nearly so powerfully as it does us today…" And again: "We may be seeing a phenomenon which we would be tempted to describe as imitation or continuation, a notion of life in which each persons role is to revive certain given forms, certain mythical schema established by forebears, and to allow them reincarnation."

The conflict between Jacob and his brother Esau is only a replay of the old rivalry between Abel and his brother Cain, between God's favorite and the neglected, jealous one. This conflict, this "mythical schema established by forebears," finds its new avatar in the destiny of Jacob's son Joseph, himself one of the favored. Impelled by the immemorial sense of the favored one as culpable, Jacob sends Joseph to reconcile with his jealous brothers (an ill-fated move: they will cast him into a well).

Even suffering, that seemingly ungovernable