ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. As Frank read over an earlier draft of this book, he recalled that the frightening dream that had preceded the emergence of the Devil obsession had, in fact, been one in which the Devil appeared. Geertz regards culture as consisting of historically transmitted patterns of meanings embodied in symbols. The Devil is such a symbol. There is reason to regard the symbol of the Devil and the cultural symbol "homosexuality" as signifying an important set of shared meanings, the one in a theological and the other in a psychological context. Both the Devil and "homosexuality" symbolize an aspect of the Oedipal relation. While some of the conscious meanings of the Devil symbol have changed since, the continuity in its unconscious meanings is remarkable, and is reflected in the common desire for the father in the seventeenth-century painter and in Frank, the twentieth-century professional.
