Jump to first page

 RankCoworker of Freud, broke with him about 1922-4.

Jump to first page

Disagreements with Freud

Freud made too many deductions from working with patients who were sick and abnormal.

Freudianism belittled the role and character of women

Freud put too much emphasis on the sex drive

Freud did not put enough emphasis on human search for immortality

Freud blames too much of a child's actions on his parents

Freud fails to notice that children work to bring their parents together as well as to pull them apart

Jump to first page

The Family Romance

Prophecy or dream warns father (or father-figure) about his son

Hero born of noble parents Baby exposed in a river, or in the

wilderness Child brought out of the wilderness (=

birth) Child raised by other, often lowly parents Hero returns to his true parents Affection for real mother, hostility for real

father

Jump to first page

The Family Romance Applies to: Sargon Moses Karna Oedipus Paris Telephus Perseus Gilgamesh

Cyrus Tristan Romulus Hercules Jesus Siegfried Lohengrin

Jump to first page

Oedipus: the Relationship Between the Play and the Myth

Let's start with the play … Sophocles' Oedipus the King: Written between 429-425 BC Plot: Oedipus learns that he has

killed his father and married his mother

Knox: Oidipos means "swollen foot." Knox: Oidi- sounds like "oida," I know The play is a detective story Hero "finds himself"

Jump to first page

Outline of Sophocles' Oedipus the King

Pestilence at Thebes Oedipus sends to the oracle of Apollo

to learn source of pestilence Apollo says it results from pollution

on their state from murder of Laios Oedipus curses the murderer (no

matter who he is) Teiresias accuses Oedipus of being

the murderer

Jump to first page

Outline of Sophocles' Oedipus the King, 2

Oedipus accuses Kreon of conspiracy (because he suggested getting the advice of Teiresias)

A messenger comes from Corinth, saying Polybos has died

The messenger assures Oedipus that Polybos and Merope are not his real parents

Jump to first page

Outline of Sophocles' Oedipus the King, 3

Oedipus sends for the shepherd who is the survivor of the attack on Laios, who turns out to be the same man who was told to expose the baby Oedipus on the mountainside and didn't

Jocasta figures out that Oedipus is her son and hangs herself

Jump to first page

Outline of Sophocles' Oedipus the King, 4

Oedipus finds out that he is the son of Laios and Jocasta

Oedipus blinds himself Oedipus goes into exile and

leaves Kreon in charge

Jump to first page

Literary Views of Oedipus, 1Aristotle, 1

The plot of the finest tragedies must not be simple but complex, in which reversal and recognition are the whole drama.

Reversal is a change of the situation into its opposite, and this must accord with the probable or the inevitable. So in the Oedipus the man comes to cheer Oedipus and to rid him of his fears about his mother; then, by showing him who he is, he does the opposite.

Jump to first page

Literary Views of Oedipus, 1Aristotle, 2

Recognition is the change from ignorance to knowledge of a bond of love or hate between persons who are destined for good fortune or the reverse. The finest kind of recognition is accomplished by simultaneous reversals, as in the Oedipus.

Jump to first page

Literary Views of Oedipus, 1Aristotle, 3

Good men must not be seen suffering a change from prosperity to misfortune; this is not fearful and pitiful but shocking. Thus, a play must represent a man who is not outstanding in virtue and righteousness, who falls into misfortune not through wickedness and vice, but through some flaw … a serious flaw in character.

Jump to first page

Literary Views of Oedipus, 1Aristotle, 4

In such a play, we feel pity for a man who does not deserve his misfortune; we fear for someone like ourselves. The story should be so constructed that the events make anyone who hears the story shudder and feel pity even without seeing the play. The story of Oedipus has this effect … the recognition emerges from the events themselves … the amazement and surprise are caused by probable means.

Jump to first page

Literary Views of Oedipus, 2B. M. W. Knox, 1

The intellectual progress of Oedipus and Jocasta, which parallels the intellectual progress of the [Greek] age of enlightenment, has been carefully set in ironic dramatic framework where it is exposed as wrong from the start.

However, the play does not end with the defeat of Oedipus.

Jump to first page

Literary Views of Oedipus, 2B. M. W. Knox, 2

His resurgence in the last scene of the play …[is] a vision of man, superior to the tragic reversal of his action and the terrible success of his search for the truth, reasserting his greatness, not this time in defiance of the powers which shape human life but in harmony with those powers.

Jump to first page

Freud: Sophocles' Play

The Oedipus Rex is a tragedy of fate: its strong tragic effect depends on the conflict between the all-powerful will of the gods and the vain efforts of human beings threatened with disaster; resignation to the divine will, and the perception of one's own impotence is the lesson which the deeply moved spectator is supposed to learn from the tragedy.

Jump to first page

Freud: Sophocles' Play, 2

If the Oedipus Rex is capable of moving a modern reader or playgoer no less powerfully than it moved the ancient Greeks, the only possible explanation is that the effect of the Greek tragedy does not depend upon the conflict between fate and human will, but upon the particular nature of the material by which this conflict is revealed. … [Oedipus'] fate moves us only because it might have been our own, because the oracle laid upon us before our birth the very curse which rested upon him.

Jump to first page

Freud: Sophocles' Play, 3

It may be that we are all destined to direct our first sexual impulses towards our mothers, and our first impulses of hatred and violence towards our fathers; our dreams convince us that we were.

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams,

quoted by B. M. W. Knox, Oedipus at Thebes, p. 4.

Jump to first page

Freud: Oedipus Complex and Oedipus Myth, 1

[The Oedipus complex is a ] rivalry of sexual affections. The son, when quite a little child, develops a peculiar tenderness toward his mother whom he looks upon as his own property, regarding his father in the light of a rival who disputes this sole possession of his; similarly the little daughter sees in her mother someone who disturbs her tender relation to her father and occupies a place which she feels she herself could very well fill.

Jump to first page

Freud: Oedipus Complex and Oedipus Myth, 2

… In the Oedipus myth the two extreme forms of the wishes arising from the two wishes of the son, the wish to kill the father and marry the mother, are realized in an only slightly modified form. … Closely connected with this [is] … the castration complex, the reaction to that intimidation in the field of sex or to that restraint of early infantile sexual activity.

Jump to first page

Freud: Oedipus Complex and Oedipus Myth, 3

Other people's ability to do this is very limited. The true artist has more at his disposal. … The artist opens out to others the way back to the comfort and consolation of their own unconscious sources of pleasure …

from Freud's The General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, tr. Joan Riviere, p.

184-5 (written 1909)

Jump to first page

Freud: Art as Expressing the Neuroses of Everyone

[Art ]… is a path back from fantasy to reality. The artist … has an introverted disposition and has not far to go to become neurotic. [He] is … urged on by instinctual needs which are too clamorous. He longs to attain to honor, power, riches, fame and the love of women.… like any other with an unsatisfied longing, he turns away from reality and transfers all his interest and libido onto the creation of his wishes in the life of fantasy from which the way might readily lead to neurosis.

Jump to first page

Freud: Art as Expressing the Neuroses of Everyone, 2

… The way back to reality is found by the artist. He is not the only one who has a life of fantasy. Every hungry soul looks to [the world of fantasy] for comfort and consolation.

from Freud's The General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, tr. Joan Riviere, p.

327-8 (written 1909)

Jump to first page

Freud and his followers

Oedipus represents all of us, he is ordinary

Oedipus is a neurotic Oedipus is a victim of his own

repressed knowledge The play is an allegory, reflecting the

human unconscious The right way to look at the story is

to combine various stages of the myth

Jump to first page

Sophocles

Oedipus is unique and singular Oedipus is a king Oedipus is a hero who stands up

against the gods The play is about intellectual

blindness. It expresses irony as a result of Sophocles' artistic decisions

Crafts a single version of the story that excludes all others

Jump to first page

Jung Looks for the fundamental properties of

human nature Seeks universal themes in literature Cultural differences between stories are not

important Process of individuation means coming to

terms with the elements of daily life as represented in your dreams.

In dreams, the concrete details of life are translated into general symbols and read as literary texts.

Jump to first page

Archetypes, p. 57-58 Mental forms whose presence cannot be

explained by anything in the individual’s own life and which seem to be aboriginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the human mind

The archetype is the tendency to form such representations of a motif

Does not mean definite mythological images or motifs

Jump to first page

Process of Individuation Conscious coming to

terms with one’s inner center

Three parts: Shadow Animus/Anima Self

Jump to first page

Shadow, p. 174-178

Same-sex figure Represents unknown or little-

known attributes or qualities of the ego

It contains values that are needed by consciousness but that exist in a form that makes it difficult to integrate them into one’s life

This figure often makes the dreamer uneasy or frightened

Jump to first page

Animus/Anima

Opposite-sex figure Guide to Self (if positive) Four stages:

Men: biological, romantic, spiritual, abstract (195)

Women: jungle hero, romantic man, bearer of the word, wise guide to spiritual truth (205-6)

Jump to first page

Self, p. 208

Same-sex figure Represents the inner nucleus

of the dreamer’s psyche Can appear as a child, a wise

old man or woman, a royal couple, a helpful animal, a circle, or a stone, or as “cosmic man”

Jump to first page

Claude Levi-StraussSyntagmatic Relationship

Paradigmatic Relationship

Jump to first page

Claude Levi-Strauss, applied to Gilgamesh

Humbaba died for our sins

Jump to first page

Claude Levi-Strauss, applied to Gilgamesh, 2

Jump to first page

Nature v Culture

Jump to first page

Gilgamesh Scale

Jump to first page

Gilgamesh Scale, 2