Something I noticed: Gendo nonchalantly watches Rei’s arm disintegrate and fall off by its tendrils with a bored, indifferent gaze. He is long past the point of concern. He sexually assaults Rei after her arm falls off, seeking a fusion between Lilith and Adam by forcing his hand through Rei’s breast and womb-vagina.
Rei retaliates by severing Gendo’s Adam-arm from him. He recoils as Rei “takes back” the thing she has lost - with Gendo’s arm inside her, Rei regenerates a fully functional arm as Gendo clutches the bleeding stump that remains of his sexual assault.
According to the Lilith & Adam tradition in Jewish folklore, tension plagued Adam and Lilith after Adam tried to sexually dominate Lilith. When Lilith refused to lay beneath Adam during sex, Lilith escaped the Garden of Eden seeking independence. In retaliation, Lilith stole the seed of Adam.
Laconian “symbolic castration” is a “decisive step” that represents the submission to the symbolic order represented by the Father, and second, the child’s acquisition to a new position, that of a fully-autonomous subject with the power of choice and desire.
