Chapter 5 MYTH AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
The most celebrated use of a Greek myth in the modern world is Sigmund Freud’s use of the myth of Oedipus,giving birth to the psychoanalytic term“Oedipus complex.”The inventor of psychoanalysis saw Greek myth not as the stale inheritance of a past culture but as providing deep insight into the human condition.The story of Oedipus is most famously recounted in the play,Oedipus the King,by Sophocles.Writing in the 5th century B.C.,[1]a century of huge moral,intellectual,scientific and political awakening for Greece,Sophocles has a distinct message.It turns out to be a rather conservative one.Anxious that social order should not be undermined,Sophocles is expressing his reservations about the new free-thinking world of his day.He demonstrates that the will of the gods cannot be overturned,that no one can defy his fate,no one can achieve absolute security by his own efforts alone.The myth is being manipulated to make a political and moral point as well as to offer a perception about the human condition.
Central to the Oedipus myth is a horror of incest,which is very different from the Greek myths about the beginning of the world,when the gods themselves very readily and frequently indulge in incest.[2]This provides a further reminder that the Greek myths developed over a long period,during which attitudes changed significantly.
Oedipus was the son of King Laios and Queen Jocasta of Thebes.[3]An oracle had foretold that Laios would be killed by his son.This curse was a punishment because Laios,while the guest of King Pelops of Elis,had abused his hospitality by abducting and raping Pelops’ son,Chrysippus,who then committed suicide out of shame.In an attempt to avoid the curse,Laios pierced the Oedipus’ ankles[4]and gave the baby to a shepherd who was told to expose[5]it on the top of Mount Kithairon.However,the shepherd was too kind-hearted to carry out this task and gave the boy to another shepherd from the other side of the mountain.This other shepherd brought Oedipus to King Polybus of Corinth.Polybus had no children and so adopted Oedipus,pretending he was his own son.
As he grew up,Oedipus’ identity was questioned by those around him.On one convivial occasion,a drunk companion publicly expressed doubt whether he was the real son of Polybus.So Oedipus decided to go to the oracle at Delphi to find out.When he reached Delphi,all the oracle would tell him was that he would murder his father and marry his mother.Utterly horrified,Oedipus ceased to concern himself about who his real parents were and determined that he would protect Polybus and his wife by returning not to Corinth but to Thebes.
By chance,at the same time as Oedipus was returning from Delphi,Laios was journeying there from Thebes to ask how to free Thebes from the Sphinx,a terrible monster with the face of a woman,the body of a lion and the wings of a bird.[6]Laius’ chariot met Oedipus at a crossroads.The encounter was fatal.What happened was something like a modern case of road rage.Laius’ driver forced Oedipus off the road.Oedipus struck the driver.Laius himself then struck Oedipus on the head and finally Oedipus killed not only Laius but four of his five attendants.
Oedipus then continued his journey to Thebes,where Kreon,the brother of queen Jocasta,was regent after Laios’ death.Kreon offered the throne of Thebes and Jocasta’s hand in marriage to anyone who could rid Thebes of the Sphinx by solving the riddle she was posing,namely：“What is it that has sometimes two feet,sometimes three and sometimes four,and is weakest when it has the most?”Any traveler who tried and failed to solve the riddle was either eaten by the Sphinx or thrown off the rocks to their death.[7]
Oedipus solved the riddle.He explained that a baby crawls upon all fours,then as an adult walks on two feet but in old age needs the support of a third in the form of a stick.[8]The Sphinx was so angry when Oedipus gave the right answer that she flung herself over the precipice on which she was perched.Thus Thebes was released from the plague of the Sphinx and,not unnaturally,Oedipus was highly popular there.He married Jocasta.They lived together happily for many years,and Jocasta bore Oedipus two sons,Eteokles and Polyneikes,and two daughters,Antigone and Ismene.The oracle had been fulfilled：Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother,albeit unintentionally.
The life of Oedipus provided the material for two of the great Greek tragedies of the playwright Sophocles（496 B.C.–406 B.C.）.[9]The first of them,Oedipus Tyrannos[10]begins at this point in the story.Here is how the story develops.After a number of years,Thebes suffers another plague.The harvest fails,animals and babies die.Jocasta’s brother,Kreon,is sent by Oedipus to consult the oracle at Delphi.The oracle replies that the plague will not be lifted until the murderer of Laios is brought to justice.Unaware that it is he himself who has murdered Laios,Oedipus therefore energetically begins the search for the culprit.First he consults the blind prophet Tiresias.Tiresias is eventually provoked into suggesting to Oedipus that Oedipus himself has something to do with the murder.Oedipus cannot believe this.His reaction is to suspect that Tiresias and his brother-in-law Kreon are plotting to seize his throne.
Jocasta tries to reassure Oedipus,in the course of which she mentions that Laios was killed at the crossroads on the way to Delphi.Oedipus immediately remembers the incident at the crossroads and asks Jocasta for more details.Gradually he comes to realize that it is probably he who has killed Laios;but he is still unaware that Laios was his father.
At this point a messenger from Corinth brings news of Polybus’ death and Oedipus is relieved to think that one part of the oracle’s prophecy can now never be true.However,the messenger,thinking he is reassuring Oedipus that he can safely return to Corinth and meet with Polybus’ widow,goes on to reveal that Polybus was not his real father.For he,the messenger,is none other than the shepherd who had received Oedipus as a baby from one of Laios’ shepherds and brought him to Polybus.
Jocasta begins to see the full truth unravelling and tries to stop Oedipus asking more questions,but Oedipus persists.He summons the shepherd to whom Laios had given the infant Oedipus with instructions to expose him.The shepherd in question also turns out to be the only one of his attendants to have survived the killing of Laios.The evidence he gives on his arrival brings home to Oedipus the terrible truth that he has in fact killed his father and married his mother.The oracle is right after all.
As she realizes the awful truth,Jocasta retreats into the palace ahead of Oedipus and hangs herself.Oedipus then tears the golden brooches from her dress and,in the most disgusting and terrible of all scenes in Greek tragedy,blinds himself with them.“He cannot bear to look on the world now that he sees the truth.”[11]
In Greek tragedy the chorus often provides a commentary on the action,and here the chorus points out the moral of the play：no one,however rich and powerful,can be sure he will escape disaster.The human condition is one in which there is no such thing as absolute security.[12]
Sophocles insists on submission to the will of the gods.And there goes with this a warning against human arrogance.The man whose intelligence solved the riddle of the Sphinx and who was hailed as a just and good ruler of Thebes,should not presume that he can control his own fate.The notion that the gods might capriciously determine the fate of mortals is repugnant to most people today.In a post-industrial world we regard as silly the notion that we have no control over our own destiny.
No less incomprehensible to the modern mind is the blame that Oedipus shoulders for his parricide and incest.Oedipus did indeed kill Laios,but without knowing who Laios was.So he certainly did not intend to kill his father any more than he intended to commit incest with his mother.To the modern mind guilt cannot be divorced from intention;the lack of intention on Oedipus’ part should render him completely innocent.Sophocles does indeed address this question in Oedipus at Colonos,a play in which Oedipus emerges as a heroic figure whose moral support is highly valued by the participants in the Theban wars and who receives Athenian citizenship from Theseus,a sure sign of approval.[13]And it is surely significant that Oedipus settles at Colonos,the birthplace of Sophocles himself.Oedipus is also heroic because he confronts his situation rather than killing himself,like Jocasta.He looks into his own soul and reflects on his weaknesses.But more than once he defends himself on the grounds that he killed his father in self-defence and committed incest with his mother in ignorance.
The terrible tragedy of Oedipus has attracted widespread attention in western culture.Julius Caesar wrote a play about Oedipus which has not survived.In the first century A.D.Seneca wrote one too.Seneca’s play was adapted by the English poet John Dryden and staged very successfully in 1678.In 1659 the French playwright Corneille wrote his own Oedipe,which is also the title and subject of one of Voltaire’s very earliest works（1718）.In the 20th century the composer Igor Stravinsky wrote an opera,Oedipus Rex,first performed in 1927.The Oedipus legend was used by French playwright Jean Cocteau in La Machine Infernale（The Infernal Machine）（1936）and again by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini in a film of 1967.
Most famous of all,however,is the use made of the Oedipus story by Sigmund Freud（1856–1939）,the founder of psychoanalysis.Freud used the term“Oedipus complex”to explain what he believed to be a childhood neurosis,namely that a male child has an unconscious desire for the exclusive love of his mother and is jealous of his father to the extent that he unconsciously wishes for the father’s death.[14]By insisting on the existence of an unconscious intention,this analysis overcomes the modern objection to Oedipus being punished for crimes which he did not intend.Freud universalizes the myth,making it revelatory of the human condition.He writes about Oedipus:
His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours — because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him.It is the fate of all of us,perhaps,to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father.Our dreams convince us that this is so.[15]
The neurosis occurs mainly between the ages of three and five.It is repressed by the ego,which seeks to maintain a balance between the id,which is the impulsive quest for pleasure,and the superego,which is the moral idealism which people adopt in response to authority and social pressures.
Freudian analysis based on the Oedipus myth has had an impact on literary criticism.For example,in the understanding of Hamlet.Early in the play,Hamlet is told by his father’s ghost that Hamlet’s uncle has murdered his father and that it is Hamlet’s duty to avenge his father’s murder.Hamlet is determined to do so,and yet he delays.Why? Because,according to this analysis,Hamlet subconsciously feels that he is himself guilty of an Oedipal desire to do exactly what his uncle has done — to kill Hamlet’s father and marry his mother.
There are,of course,many other interpretations of Hamlet’s indecision,and Freud’s interpretation of Hamlet’s motives and of the myth itself have been widely questioned.However,Greek myth often provides a means of exploring the human condition and it does this because many myths are not simply fantastic stories but seek to express truths about human nature.
注释
[1]The earliest written references to Oedipus are in the 8th century B.C.but most of the writing about him comes from the 5th century B.C..
[2]Incest seems to have been encouraged in some cultures（ancient Egypt,for example）as a way of keeping wealth within the family.Over time presumably the taboo arose as people observed the dangers of inbreeding.The Jews had a clear prohibition on incest — Leviticus 18：6-17.
[3]Laios was drunk when he fathered Oedipus.Because the oracle had foretold that he would be killed by his son,Laios had tried to avoid fathering a son.
[4]This is the origin of the name,Oedipus,which means“swollen foot.”
[5]The Greeks disapproved of the actual killing of unwanted children but did not object to their exposure.Aristotle recommends the expose of infants with deformities.
[6]“Sphinx”means“strangler.”In one version the sphinx had been sent by Hera as punishment for the Thebans not having punished Laios for the abduction and rape of Chrysippus.
[7]The most notable artistic representations of the Sphinx are those by Ingres（1802）,Gustave Moreau（1864）and Francis Bacon（1983）.
[8]Some versions add that Oedipus also solved a second riddle,namely：There are two sisters.The first gives birth to the second,and then the second gives birth to the first.Who are they? The answer is day and night.In Greek,day and night are both feminine nouns.
[9]Sophocles wrote 123 plays in his lifetime but only six of these have survived in full.Two of them deal with the story of Oedipus.
[10]Oedipus Tyrannos is also known by the names Oedipus Rex and Oedipus the King.
[11]Lucilla Burn,Greek Myths,p.71.
[12]Oedipus’ immediate reaction to the disaster that has befallen him is to ask Kreon that he be banished from Thebes.By the time Kreon agrees to this（after consulting the oracle）,Oedipus is less keen to go.But go he does,with his daughters Antigone and Ismene.Together they wander until they come to Colonos on the outskirts of Athens.Here begins the next play in Sophocles’“Theban cycle,”Oedipus at Colonos.
[13]In Oedipus at Colonos the roles of Oedipus and Kreon are almost the opposite of what they are in Oedipus Rex.In the earlier play Kreon is a rational and wise ruler,in the latter a duplicitous bully,while Oedipus is transformed from a polluted criminal worthy of banishment to a respected and godlike figure.This should remind us of how very flexibly myths can be interpreted and manipulated.
[14]In 1913 Carl Jung gave the name“Electra complex”to the equivalent female desires.Electra was the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra.After Agamemnon had sacrificed Electra’s sister,Iphigenia,in order to promote the start of the expedition against Troy,his wife and her lover assassinated him.Electra and her brother Orestes then avenged their father’s murder by killing Clytemnestra.
[15]The quotation comes from The Interpretation of Dreams（1899）,in which Freud advances the idea that unconscious desires are revealed in dreams,which are all in some way a form of wish fulfilment.