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The Oedipus story in both its ancient and psychoanalytic forms is only the most obvious version of the family drama. Both mother and father are key archetypes of any culture and sibling love and rivalry have also played key roles in many ancient stories. The web of family drama is today unavoidably set against pervasive psychoanalytic self-awareness. Classic myths meet dysfunctional families and royal successions are played out in the corporate corridors of multinational organisations.

The numerous genealogical tables in the Jewish Torah (for example Genesis 46:8-27; Exodus 5:14-27) show the structural importance of family in the Jewish tradition. Many key biblical stories: the battle of the brothers Cain and Abel; Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac; Joseph sold into slavery by his brothers are illustrative of particular religious truths as well as presenting basic stories of familial relations.

The story of Abraham’s two son’s Ishmael and Isaac – the first a surrogate born by his slave girl Hagar, the second born to his wife Sarah (Genesis 16-21) – presents both a strikingly modern story and an ancient story embraced by both Judaism and Islam. Jews trace their descent to Abraham through Isaac while Muslim’s trace their descent to Abraham through Ishmael.

Rabbi and Jewish theologian Burton Visotzky commented on the contemporary resonance of this mythic story in a PBS documentary:

The story of this family is so distressing…It is so immediate, partly because I have this sinking feeling that it is not just about my ancestors, but about the mixed family so many of us experience now – first wife, second wife, surrogate parenthood, children, conflict. Everybody in this room knows someone who has gone through something like this…when I was young and happily married, this was a much easier story to hear. Now I’m older, fatter, and divorced, and my own life intrudes into my listening of the story. (Moyers 1996:187)

If the human genealogy of the race plays a key role in monotheistic Judaism the familial relations of the pantheon of gods is key in the Greek tradition. In Hesiod’s Theogony, the creation of the cosmos is conceived in familial terms with Chaos giving birth to nether darkness (Erubus) and night (Nyx) and Gaea giving birth to sky (Uranus) and Sea (Pontus). But what begins as a creation myth quickly turns into a myth of family drama, treachery and the fight for dynastic succession. The type of familial conflict we are familiar with from later Greek tragedies is implicit in these early stories of the gods.

Similar dramatic scenarios have been played out not only in Greek tragedy but also in Shakespeare and many of the key works of world literature. The family drama plays out in diverse figures from the ghost of Hamlet’s father to Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman, from Naomi Wolf’s (2001) reconsideration of feminism and motherhood to Robert Bly’s (1993) reconsideration of the men’s movement and fatherhood. In a modern context, particularly through the influence of Freud’s use of the Oedipus myth, family drama and family mythology is now seen most often in psychological terms.

John Gillis (1997) study of the myth of “family values” argues that the “family” has replaced religion as a primary sacred value in secular American society. This can be seen in the ritual practice surrounding family birthdays and anniversaries and in ‘shrines’ of family photographs on the mantle. Gillis argues that the family we live “by” is very different from the family we live “with”.