Irving Harris’ The Promised Seed

Irving D. Harris was a psychoanalyst and medical doctor in Chicago when he extensively compared two categories of eminent men: first and later sons. His book, The Promised Seed: A Comparative Study of Eminent First and

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Later Sons (1964), is one of the most important contributions to our understanding of psychological differences between the first or only son and a subsequent son of the mother. He found first or only sons to be more connected to their parents, and thereby more theoretical and heroic, while later sons to be disconnected from the parents, and thereby more practical and realistic. As a first son, I imitate the self-reliant behavior of my father, who was also a first son. I am deficient in the thorough bibliographical research typical of later sons.

The two categories of eminent men were compared in diverse fields. Examples of a typical first son and typical later son are: U.S. presidents Wilson, an idealistic reformer, and clever competitor Kennedy; heroic leader Hitler and militant leader Napoleon; revolutionary theorist Marx and revolutionary leader Lenin; charismatic Mormon founder Joseph Smith and subsequent Mormon leader Brigham Young; theoretical physicist Einstein and meticulous biologist Darwin; Milton’s heroic poetry and Wordsworth’s descriptive poetry; Mozart’s beautifully controlled music and Wagner’s passionate operas; the ancient Stoics and Epicureans.

I initially became aware of The Promised Seed in 1977. Between 1963 and 1975 I coauthored several articles on birth order of schizophrenic and alcoholic patients. The principal finding was that the incidence of both psychiatric illnesses was higher for the last child in a large family. The “baby of the family” was interpreted as being vulnerable to self-destructive conflict when adult independence was needed.

The Promised Seed helped me to read and write about famous men instead of psychiatric patients. My subsequent research on the presidents of the United States, in addition to birth order, has analyzed effects of being given the same first name as the father, or a middle name reproducing the premarital surname of the mother.

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In 1993, when I was planning to write about first son and father’s namesake President Clinton, Lloyd deMause sent me a copy of the Harris article, “The Psychologies of Presidents” (Journal of Psychohistory, 1976, Vol. 3, pp. 337-350), of which I was previously unaware. The principal theme is that major warfare was initiated by seven of the 20 first sons (Madison, Polk, Lincoln, Wilson, F. D. Roosevelt, Truman, L. B. Johnson) but by only one of the 16 later sons (McKinley). Subsequent presidents show a similar difference between first and later sons. Among four first sons, major warfare was initiated by George W. Bush, and perhaps Obama in Afghanistan, but not by Clinton and Carter. Major warfare can be interpreted as avoided by the two later sons because the invasion of Granada by Reagan and the Gulf war by George H. W. Bush (41^st president) were brief and against a much weaker enemy.

Birth sequence is an objective measure, usually available in biographies of famous men. Irving D. Harris thereby was able to include this information on many men, including some in ancient civilizations more than two thousand years ago. His 1964 book demonstrated impressively consistent differences between first and later sons. His sample of several hundred eminent men excluded women because very few were equivalently eminent. He excluded sisters from the birth order mainly because the information on them is often unavailable.

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