Like Adam, the Freshman was king of the beasts back in Eden. Or, at any rate, all came easy. But then, to eat of the fruit of knowledge--recent Biblical study indicates--he entered a new realm. No longer the chosen son, he was forced, as undergraduates say, "to sweat it." As a consequence, the real ethos of the Expulsion Complex is nostalgia; embellished reminiscences in which one's pre-Harvard splendor may become, in retrospect near dazzling.

As a rule, boys from large, traditional preparatory schools, of the Exeter-Andover variety are rarely subject to this malaise. (Nor often, for that matter, to other unsettling yearning of the heart.) The complex finds its most severe expression in what may be termed The Putney Syndrome. The P.S. occurs in boys from relatively progressive, coeducational boarding schools with pastoral settings. These settings are rapidly fancified into veritable idylls.

The Putney-type graduate may often surround himself with high school friends (ideally, with a high school girl-friend), go back frequently, and with the slighest excuse, to his old school, and return to Harvard despondent, recalling his pleasant visit, the warmth of his welcome (he forgets the role his present Harvard status plays here) and looking forward to his next trip. He dresses quite as he did for the hayride back then.

One reason the Expulsion Complex functions so strongly in this sort of student is the easy going relationships the enjoyed with girls in high school. He misses the informal babbling of voices in the Union dining hall. Most important, he is frightened of mixers, tea-dances, Radcliffe jolly-ups. He hesitates to inject himself into the structured and fiercely competitive world of Harvard heterosex. In addition, he yearns for the hard-core communitas of his old school chums. Most often, his longing for pre-college status and situations skulks underground. When his friends tease about how much he talks of "the old days" he is genuinely suprised, or denies the preoccupation altogether.

A variant on the Expulsion theme is seen in the fellow who, in his first two years at Harvard severs the umbilical ties wiwth his teenage civilization with ostensible success. But sometime in his junior or senior year he develops an insatiable craving for high school culture. Oddly, he is most often one who despised that way of life as a high school senior. But suddenly, having always hated rock 'n' roll, he finds himself singing surf songs in the shower, going to drive-in movies, to Saturday night "Y" dances, bowling, and travelling out with the boys for a big hairy pizza afterwards. Graduation almost upon him, he undergoes a painful nostalgia for the days he racked up A's with short essays on "My Dog," "What I did last summer," and rewrites of 3 or 4 pages from the World Book Encyclopedia.

* * *

The Jacob, Joseph and More Severe Birthright Complexes

The Hands of Esau: Entering freshmen share an agreed conception of Harvard life. They see themselves as beings with the possibilities of success or failure. The essence of this principle is that one must emerge from the crowd or else one is nothing. On this basis the necessity of action is established, but it is a rare freshman who possesses the inner confidence that he has, at the start, all the stuff needed to make it.

His entrance into Harvard (in the eyes of his hometown admirers an increase in stature) is to him a diminishment, in the most immediate sense. He is anonymous, low man on the totem pole. Like Jacob, he must win the birthright through ploys. As Jacob tricked Isaac into bestowing his blessing by putting on the godly rainments of his brother, and the skins of the kids of goats upon his hands, so does many a freshman, with the voice of Jacob, display to the world the hands of Esau.

Selecting an image or posture for himself, sometimes radically different from his high school "personality," he tries to gain Harvard status by imitating the mannerisms of those he feels already possess it. So one middle-class boy, who learned of "good society" at Exeter affects an exaggerated prep school accent and dress, and cultivates an effete sneer and slightly effeminate mannerisms. By his senior year he has risen as high in the clubbie world as one may without actually coming from a "good family."

Another, a suave type, feeling grossly outclassed by Harvard sophistication, adopts an alien mid-western twang and cultivates a homespun humor and the slightly hayseed appearance of an endearing country lad. A third arrives sporting a youthful social idealism. Finding this stance unfashionable, he soon outdoes his classmates in pretending to the cynicism of a world-wise septagenarian. Sometimes one's entire undergraduate career may become an act. "The Snow-Man," of one sort or another, is a traditional Harvard phenomenon The ethos of this complex is ambition; its characteristic emotion is frustration.

The Dream of Joseph: When tricks or ploys fail to win recognition, the Jacob complex goes underground. Another breed of undergraduate learns to content himself with imagined glories. The young Joseph, twelfth man in a line of brothers, dreams that the bound sheaves of his brothers stood round and made obeisance to his sheaf in the field.

In effect, these students participate in the same sort of adolescent fantasy-power life. They are Harvard's Walter Mittys; many are also wonks of varying descriptions. Meek Milquetoasts in reality, they attend Albert Finney or Belmondo or James Bond movies on nights off from Lamont. Identifying powerfully with their heroes, they sneer at themselves in the men's room mirror of the Harvard Square Theatre during intermission.

Another variation on the status-through-fantasy theme surrounds himself with the earmarks of quiet fine taste without becoming a playboy. 3 piece suits, excellent cigars, brandy, expensive furniture, well-bound books, and perhaps an original painting or two, allow him to feel he is leading "the Good Life" without ever actually leaving his room.

Other Joseph-types fantasize that the essentially impotent positions they hold are repositories of actual power (sometimes called the HCUA Delusion), or fool themselves into thinking that making a great deal of term-time money--and cultivating a middle-aged brusqueness towards less affluent classmates--is an equivalent substitute for influence in the community, or for real-life tycoonery.