Whale-Fodder: When the will to prominence is traumatically frustrated, or when pleasing fantasies of rank are shaken by unwitting confrontations with reality, the Jacob-Joseph complexes may become aggravated, most typically in the freshmen or senior year, into the more severe Jonah complex. Here the undergraduate feels himself engulfed in helplessness. He sleeps through breakfast, but goes to dinner early so he may watch T.V. afterwards in his house common room. Directionless, he rarely studies, but thinks about studying perpetually. If he is a senior, he lacks a thesis topic. Jonah arrived in his predicament through running away. So does his namesake. The whale of Harvard swallows him. (In its most critical form, the Jonah complex is transmuted into the Amos complex. In the Bible, Amos was the Herdsman of Tekoa crying in the wilderness.)

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The Cain Complex

The keynote of Harvard is competition. From the first days of comparing college board scores in the Freshman Union, the undergraduate is placed in opposition to his symbolic siblings. These rivalries are compounded by honest feelings of brotherhood that grow between classmates. One envies, like Cain. One must win the approval, over others, of House Masters, professors, and activity leaders. To win out, it pecomes perpetually necessary to do in one's brothers. Thus, while the primary emotion of the Cain complex is envy, its secondary emotion is guilt.

The A student commiserates with his friend's academic misfortune yet feels a secret glee. Then he is ashamed and guilty at his selfishness. The Fellowship Orientation Meeting recently, where each senior stole glances of stealthy ambivalence at his beloved rivals, was a transparent orgy of the Cain complex in action.

For the student who craves prominence in any of the major organizations, the experience of Cain becomes a pivotal, diurnal reality. All of these societies--the CRIMSON, WHRB, the Lampoon, the political clubs--have full-scale executive competitions, in which longtime friends must strive against one another, all seeking coveted offices. The same is true of varsity athletics, or of the struggles for Radcliffe girls at a one-to-five premium. Some students suggest that they take their cue in the Cain complex from observation of the Harvard Junior Faculty.

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These burdens of vague nostalgia, frustration, envy, and guilt merely represent preliminary speculations into the roots of Harvard's mal de universite. Further research is surely in order, and other, more simplistic responses to malaise will bear investigation. There is always the undergraduate with the Noah Complex, for example. He drifts through his four years here. Or the one with the Goliath complex. When he feels uneasy, he simply gets stoned.