Instilled in interdisciplinary cross-cultural perspectives of mythical, socio-economic, literary, pedagogic and psychoanalytic representations, two archetypal, creative inheritance laws interact as ‘twins’: Eros (fusion/containment/safety) and Thanatos (division/separation/risk). Hypothesising these ‘twin’ laws as matrilineal (Eros) and patrilineal (Thanatos), this book explores why cross-cultural forms, including gender traits, are not fixed but are instead influenced by earlier flexible matrilineal forms.

Through a study of ‘twins’ on macro and micro levels, Elizabeth Brodersen argues that a psychological ‘twin’ dilemma is implicit in inheritance laws and offers a unique forum to show how each law competes for primacy as the ‘first’ and ‘other’. Chapters begin by looking at ‘twins’ in creation myths and the historical background to the laws of inheritance, as well as literary representations. The book then moves on to the developmental structures imbued in twin research and educational systems to explore how past cultural forms have been re-defined to fit a modern landscape and the subsequent movement away from the importance of patrilineal primogeniture.

Laws of Inheritance will be of key value to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, archetypal theory, cross-cultural depth psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, gender studies and twin research. The book will also be of interest to practicing psychoanalysts and psychotherapists.