THE MYTH OF OEDIPUS UNDER A
POSSIBLE JUNGIAN INTERPRETATION
By: Horacio Ejilevich Grimaldi
This work
constituted a Dr. Ejilevich Grimaldi's master class in the Jungian Thought's
Seminar carried out in the Faculty of Psychology of the
Good night.
I want you to thank to all you that for being here
again, in the old Faculty of Psychology to which so much effort takes sometimes
to arrive and especially at this hour. Well, in the past class I tried to
demonstrate you some analysis methods of symbols in dreams, Amplification and
especially, examples of artistic production of patients.
Today I have wanted to refer to the Symbolism in the
Classic Mythologeme and, in order to choose any known for all you, that have
Freud - Lacanian formation in your great majority, I considered convenient to
take the Myth of Oedipus.
As well as The Symbolism and its Hermeneutic, is
applied from the Jungian optic to the dreams, for example, we see it also in
the artistic part, however, how I mentioned, I today will take another topic.
In any moment, during 1992, if God wants, I will have
the opportunity to read you some stories and poems from patients of diverse
pathologies.
Today, I wanted to talk about the Applied Symbol's
Hermeneutic, this should have explained very well Dr.Teresita Faro de
Castaño , in Mitologemes.
By Mitologeme we understand the root of the Myth, and
we are going to take as example, although we could have used another, the Myth
of Oedipus, but not, obviously, from the Freudian conceptualisation
Would be then interesting that you could make this
previous exercise, who consist of remembering the myth as you know it but
removing any presumption on interpretation, at least for now, later you will
stay with what you judges more convenient, in order to avoid all interpretative
presumption, because it evidently will be influenced by our way of thinking and
what have been inculcated to us.
I found in this modality, the most not prejudiced
possible way to beginning the oedipal Myth .
Firstly it is convenient to review a little the
argument from which Freud takes the famous Complex. If I ask: Who is Oedipus,
Yocasta, or Layo? We will observe, that, although many of you know the names,
just a few are able to articulate them. Now we are going to approach slowly.
If I ask: Who is the origin of the Myth? I am aiming
the Mythologeme, or for example: Why the Sphinx arises? Could somebody respond
it?. Not interpretatively, but in epistemological level: Why this monstrous
being arise in the myth?
Perhaps, these queries is carried out seldom. A
certain tendency in us still exists to consider that the writing is proven and
therefore is good, however this fact has us to make think a thing, that there
is exactly one of the critics that Jung achieves to the Psychoanalysis, I refer
to the fact of taking a topic partially and develop it. In this way, this
observation doesn't is done only by Jung, but rather respond to other authors
like Erich Fromm, by mentioning just one more, and consist in a critic
that concretely is carried out toward the work of Freud.
I also have observed in other authors, the fact of
taking a topic and partialize it, then constitute a valid critic, and we are
going to try to not incurring in the error that the experience points out.
We will take the Oedipus's Myth in its entirety, its
meaning, the Beginning, the Development, although logically the End, it would
correspond to another part of the Drama, it is to say: Oedipus in Colonna.
We have to take in consideration the whole Myth, and
all its drifted elements, it is say, the symbols. Later we will put emphasis in
any part or in another, but the Myth, we know, the whole Myth is in fact
important.
I have brought you a book that is very interesting, I
founded it very curious, and we are going to make a reading of one or two pages
from it. The singular of this book is that it is made by a Spanish, Pilar
Pedraza, who doesn't have any relation with Psychology. She is an Art
historian. Her book is exciting, observe the cover that in fact it is interesting.
The Harpy and the Virgin, this book is called: "The Beauty, the Sphinx,
Jellyfish, Panther... Enigma and Nightmare," but separate any
Psychoanalytic vision or of Deep Psychology, because it doesn't have it, the
topics are contemplated from the History of Art, that it in fact, has to see
with the human Psyche.
Let's begin with this topic, and later we'll try to
apply the Jungian Hermeneutic to the Oedipal Mythologeme.
Basically we are going to find, in this of
Mythologeme's structure, the way to analyse, from where being rescued, in first
instance, four symbols. Who are these? Firstly, Oedipus, the figure of the
Hero, and we later are going to find another personage: The Sphinx, and
a third one that it is Yocasta, concluding by Layo.
In Analytic Psychology, it is not necessary us to
inventory the entirety of the present symbolism, stiller, this is practically
impossible, on the other hand, if the meaning that we obtain from the symbols
chain chosen is correct, the others will fit in the explanatory hermeneutic.
Returning to Layo, he is the personage that is enough
worryable, who initiates the problem and, in a certain measure finish it. So,
if I take again the question: Why does the sphinx arise?, We will be again sink
in the fog.
For what reason does the Sphinx arise?
Here we already have an idea, and this would be that
that in order to punish everyone who dare to penetrate into Tebas City.
If do I ask who is it the Genealogy of Oedipus?, will
Many know it and many not, and with regard to Yocasta many more, won't know
nothing and some will know something, in short we are enough in ignorance about
the Genesis of the Myth. Surely we are going to recognise the psychological
implications from the psychoanalytic area, but that I would request you to put it
now awaiting. Of course that you could not forget and separate it, but
have it in receptive wait.
Let's begin from the Sphinx and I before want you to
explain the methodology that I am applying. I took a mythological topic, I
later on extracted, I thought of take out four symbols, I could have taken out
more , as I said last week, as in order to start from any side, so then I want
to make a brief reading like in order us to go submerging into topic. Here
says:
"The havocs caused by the Sphinx consisted in
snatch the most florid thing of the youth before time, it could be think that
its scourge metaphorized one widespread sterility, a lack new blood."
We are going to stop a little at this point: The
Sphinx pointed basically to the masculine human being.
It was never known about the Oedipal Mythologema, that
it has expounded its famous enigma to a woman. It was pointed to the masculine
being, then this that its scourge metaphorized a widespread sterility, a lack
of new blood, could generate the view of this possibility.
On the other hand, the Primal Sin and for which
the Sphinx is sended by the Gods, is, psychologically speaking, unknown. Let's
see which it was.
This episode, which it gave place to the Drama, acted
like the tip of the iceberg of a bent and violent temperament, like that of the
Layo King, and it finished in the episode of the Crossing of Roads,
archetypal symbolism of the Relentless Change, causing his own death at the
hands of another victim of his violations, the young Oedipus.
Let's take parallely another symbol:
Oedipus is son of Layo and is also of Yocasta.
Something makes Layo a priori of the existence of Oedipus, that facilitates the
apparition of the Sphinx, in other words, the divine punishment; we are going
to see now who it was the diachronic - historical genesis of the Primal Sin
made by Layo.
He, in his times of youth, was a guest in a house that
in its tradition, it is disastrous, because there is concerning to the Kingdom
of the Tantalises dynasty; Tantalises comes from Tantalum, who was
condemned to the eternal penalty of thirst and hunger and to which prevented
him from satiating eternally, because he was surrounded of liquid, which it was
diminished every time that the thirsty Tantalum inclined his chin in order to
drink, in such form that he could never arrive, and have a horrendous hunger
that believed satiate upon lifting his head and try to take the hanging fruits
of the trees of the Hades that more and more always ascend symmetrically
jointly with the desperation of the victim. Tantalum, who had sought to deceive
to the Gods, boiling to his own son, he had served him in a entertain Banquet,
to the every Gods of the Olympia, because he had communication with them and
wanted to be more astute than the Gods. This is what we called the sin of "Hybris",
that it is the Arrogance. That of extra dimensionate the sense of the human
being making it believe that it is similar to the Gods.
However, the son of Tantalum, to which he serves
boiled and sliced in the banquet and, that later the Gods return to the life,
exception done from the left leg, eaten by Tetis, the Goddess of the
Ocean and later on replaced by one of ivory, he is precisely Pelope, the
King Layo's host.
Pelope son of Tantalum, receives Layo in his house, in
his Castle, in his Kingdom, and he give him all that he could give regarding
Hospitality, that is a very important habit for the old Greeks.
The duty of the hospitality was
tremendous, have this concept very clear, it could not refuse the hospitality
to an outsider, it was a divine command, and, Layo, youthful and possessed by
the Hybris, he find the son, one of Pelope's son, Prisipo, and he
maintains intimate relationships with him.
When Layo finds Pelope's son , Prisipo, he abducts and
sodomize it; now you observe, that this is a thing that we would have to put it
inside the context of a historical situation, I refer to the topic of the
Homosexuality, and we will already see why. Returning to the Myth, Pelope finds
out this, his Father, are notified that his son had been raped in fact for his
guest: The King of Tebas, kidnapped and raped, but he don't condemn, he don't
curse to Layo by having made homosexuality, which is so classical, how it was
in the imperial Rome, and more formerly also in the pharaonic Egypt, Pelope saw
this with another eyes of which we could have seen this fact for example in the
Victorian time, or at the moment, in our Western Culture, I refer to the
phenomenon of the homosexuality. And there is because of this reason that
Pelope, the host, says:
"- if you have wanted to love my son, I gladly
would have given it to you, Layo, I condemn you because you betrayed the
hospitality's rules of my Kingdom, that there is ultimately, betray Zeus-"
Exactly.
Now we are going to explain this, that is not another
thing that betray the Sacred. There is a kind of Commandment, in which
the guest; let's locate it in the context; it's performer like an emergent of
the God, of Zeus, and like such he should be considered; for that reason the
Command of the
Hospitality, and this, I understand, in Greece is
continue working at the moment, especially outside of the polluted and
transculturated towns. - it Is the same problem of Elena-, because in fact the
topic was not abduct Elena but rather Paris smashes the Law, the Hospitality's
Command of the Agamemnon’s house.
Here, already is beginning to desexualise the topic,
because we could think, that Pelope curses and sentence Layo because he steals
and violates his son, and nevertheless not, because Pelope itself says it; this
is the origin that in the Mythologeme normally; there is unknown and don't be
surprised if you didn't know it; because it generally is excluded, from where
may would be necessary to think the reason of this.
In the root of this invocation that Pelope makes,
about this condemns, that he carries out taking to the Gods like witnesses, who
listen to the lament of the hapless father and the host is particularly the Hera
Goddess, who is by the way the Home's Guardian, and to her sticks also Apollo.
This Goddess was the sister and wife of Zeus. We see
here the reason of the incest, so expensive to the Psychoanalysis, expressed
into the Greek Mythology and without needing to be covered by any pretended
symbolic robe.
One of this Goddess's attributions, how I mentioned
previously, is that of being Home's Guardian, exactly the Hospitality, this is
what had been violated, not only Crisipo, who was materially, and seemingly
pleasant of that, but the Hospitality. - I emphasise this point.-
QUESTION: " Don't I understand why Layo violated
the hospitality's commandment, in which sense?
ANSWER: "The guest kidnaps the son of whom he
gives him lodging, without communicating this to nobody,
he maintains sexual relationships with this son, he
rape it, he are violating through
Crisipo this Command, making the sin of Hybris, upon
leaving aside the Divine Command, in order to prove his instinct's command, his
desire,- that independently of the sexuality- Is the desire or, I would say,
the convincing of being more than God. In this position, the sexual fact it
would be a means for, and not a purpose for itself.
If I lead this to another terms, you will find it more
clear, there is completing the Pleasure's Principle, leaving aside and not
considering the Principle of Reality, there is carrying out the Desire, and
leaving, at the same time, absolutely the Duty, Layo could have raped any
another person of which they wouldn't lack in the Court, but it was the Act,
and the connotation of it the important thing, and, according to the answer
that the House's Boss gives, who is Pelope, the Anger, would bee exactly the
same:
"I condemn you and I curse, not for my son to who
I gladly would have given you.."
What happen are that Pelope had in fact, a special ill
will, to the Father/Son's problem; don't you forget that he had been boiled and
served to the gods by his own father, This extremely traumatic fact was
sensibilizing Pelope a lot; that just his own son have been kidnapped, abducted
and raped. I consider personally that there is not condemning the
Homosexuality, or in any event, the bisexuality of Layo in no way, but there is
judging his sin of Hybris.
Condemns Layo in first instance, by having ignored the
Fundamental Rules of Lodging, in second by having disobeyed the Divine Command
and in third instance for the sin of Hybris. And in the curse, Pelope invokes
to the Gods, and the one that it listen to him are exactly Hera, the Patron,
the Guardian of the Home and the Customs, the wife and the sister of Zeus, and
she consents to Pelope's request and sends the Sphinx as punishment to
Layo, that will be in the outskirts, of Tebas, symbolising the City's
Hospitality's, and here almost is registering what I have just read; I am going
to repeat so that it will be clearer:
"Its scourge
methaforises a widespread sterility, a lacking new blood"
Now it will remain more clear
"On the other hand, the sin of Layo, it was not a
mere juvenile error, but the tip of an iceberg of his bent temperament and that
it finished in the episode of the violation of the norms."
(Pilar Pedraza opportunely cite).
Here we stop again, I think that I didn't have
opportunity to detail too many what it is the Archetype of the Ford or the
Archetype of the Crossing.
There is an archetypal form is that is symbolising,
those momentous decisions in the life, those big Founded Crisis during and
after which them no longer is possible us to go back.
Normally, this Archetype appears symbolised already in
a water's crossing, like the Rubicund of Caesar, from where he throw his famous
sentence: "Allea jacta est" already in a crossroad.
Once we are reached for this Archetype, we could not
fall in the hesitate to or in the returning back.
The Crossing, that there is an important part in this
Myth, is the place of the election between the Wrong or the Good, there is the
field where make a mistake, but also where guess right, the invocations to the
Gods, and also to the Demons, they take place in crossings of roads or where it
is present the aquatic element, this is not casual, already the Romans made it,
and before them the Greeks and the Chinese.
The crossroad generally has a symbolic very strong
connotation because it refer not only to the crossing of roads, but also to the
cross form. There is whole symbolism around the cross, that I'm not
going to detail it now, but that it comes very opportunely to the story, in the
sense that if a similar thing it's occur, what we would describe like a numinous
living, we will arrive later on to a synthesis of that attitude, but it
will already be impossible us to make it as if nothing of this has happened.
Here there is not one point of return, or it continued or it die, I hope you to
understand.
This symbolises the Archetype of the Crossing,
and it is exactly in the Crossing, the crossroad of roads where is going to
happen the scene that catalyses, in the literal sense of making all this
Mythologeme to take place, that it is the following:
On one side of the road the coach thrown by horses
comes, that it symbolises don't only the instinctive but more than nothing the
TANATIKOS, the horrendous, the Death. From one of the infinities meanings that
the symbol possess.
Remember that in English the word- Nightmare means
literally "the Mare of the night," and inside the carriage Layo
comes.
From the other side goes riding Oedipus... here there
are two different but compatible versions of the same episode, one of them is
that in where Polifonte, who is one of the escorts of the King Layo's
Retinue, kill in a negligence the Oedipus's horse.
The other version is that the wheel of the car,
squashes Oedipus's feet. As a result of the happening, a discussion take place,
that it could have been a street fight, like which it could happen us today in
the city, but if it haven't brought harnessed that Oedipus, in a impulse, kill
Layo, that also was quite irascible.
I believe that the version about the horse is the more
guessed right, because if this animal is symbolising us the impulsive energy,
the instinctive thing, it is more logic to think as well, that on the other
hand is describing admirably in a dream analysed by the own C.G.Jung, to
consider that again Layo returns to hurt the feet of Oedipus, that it for
something is called Oedipus, it is say, swollen foot.
Apart from this, this had already been carried out
previously.
When Oedipus is born, Layo had passed over him with a
golden hook through his ankles, so it would already be like very redundant, and
I believe that the Mythology also, the same as the Collective Unconscious, from
which it are nourish, it possess what Freud, in his Unconscious's
definition defined like economic sense.
I consider that the first version is more coherent,
however, I give you also the other, that would be conjugated with the wheel or
the Eternal Return, that we will see also occurs in this Myth.
In the Crossing ways is founded the Old, and the New,
what it have been hurt by the Old, and that in turn pass from victim to
victimary, there is kind of a tragic uroboros, that is one of the
characteristics of the Myth of the Hero in fact called tragedian for
this reason, from there comes the death of Layo, but not the end of the Curse,
because:
"The sins of the parents will fall on the
children," how the biblical sentence says.
The physical disappearance of Layo is a death that is
not more than a part of the whole Mythologeme.
Layo had made the sin of Hybris, and he had already
had a sentence that was the appearance of the Sphinx, and also had tried to
erase the prints of the son, paying attention to the received Prediction.
When Oedipus is born, warned his father about the
outcome in which the end was been going to unavoidably produce, because this is
a characteristic of the Archetype, that consists of being a closed system
that has principle, development and end, then occur the Prediction, and in
the legend that generates that Oracle, that is not another that the Myth of
Oedipus, Layo was going to be killed at the hands of his own son. In front of
this like I told, Layo crosses the son with a hook, mark to Oedipus, and I want
to emphasise this, because this aspect constitutes a part of the Mythologeme to
which it should lend more attention than which normally is given to it.
The Hero of this Myth has a name: Oedipus, this means,
literally,- swollen feet,- how I already said, and that is the reason why
Oedipus was cripple, because of what his father did to him.
The topic of the feet, and also that about the
blindness is related with the archetypal image of the Wise old man
Archetype, Blind and cripple, like Apolonio of Tiana, or Melampo,
"that that knew the language of the birds." And Melampo, it means:
black feet, because he had burned them in a blaze, soon after which that divine
gift happened to him.
The reason why the Sphinx arises I think it is already
quite clear in the true Myth and in what it was said in this point in
particular.
We are going to analyse a little the archetypal figure
of Oedipus.
We are in front of an Archetype of the Hero, but an
Archetype of Hero, Tragedian, in Jungian Psychology there is several difference
about the different types of heroes, I simply mention you them; there is the
Hero called Trickster, that we could exemplify in the Lazarillo of
Tormes, from the brilliant Spanish Picaresque of its golden Century, the
Trickster, or cheat, it's refer to that who it is hero without seeking it, and
what is more, without having the characteristics for this. The Tragic Hero is
also, that we could exemplify in Hercules or in "Rick," the
unforgettable personage of Humphrey Bogart in "
Firstly it must have a dark origin, unknown, never a
hero that who its priced of being as well, should present a clear origin, so is
to say, to know who is the father, or the mother, it will have come in a
basket, like Moses, or like the King Arthur, or have been adoptive son with
parents of very diffuse aetiology, but always divine, and in Oedipus, if we are
going to search in his genealogy, we have us the divine origin to remount it
faraway, it is not a divine immediate descendant and above all we are in front
of a cripple Hero.
This is very curious if we keep in mind the concept of
the "Elenic Beauty," let's think about any effigy or statue, I am
thinking of Praxiteles, for example, it attracts attention, because the
old Greek was an individual that used to love the beauty and here we have a
Hero that is cripple, it is not casual, evidently, the Greek in general hates,
detests the ugliness, let us take the case of Esparta, for example, and don't
we forget the heavy jokes that the cripple God Hefaistos had to support
at the hands of the other Gods, especially Aphrodite and Ares. This is a
curious thing that we could not let it pass as well as simply. On the other
hand Oedipus, swollen feet, biped, tripod, all these words, have the same
etymological roots , and then the great surprise of this reading comes: The
question that is going to make the Sphinx it exactly will be about strolling
and locomotion and it is, without any doubt, referred to the feet, the inferior
extremities.
Does nobody be better than a cripple like in order to know
about the inferior extremities, because, what does the cripple have that
doesn't have the paralytic man neither the man that strolls well?
He is in the half of the road, it is say, he leans one
foot and it hurts him and he has to lift it in order to return he to lean it
again and always in this there is a loss of stability that brings harnessed a
decrease of optical vision, and obviously of balance, if we understand this in
a symbolical way, we are going to have the Organ Jargon, how Alfred Adler
in his doctoral thesis about the psychological implications of the organic
inferiorities, thesis that on the other hand never was approved it. In this
case, are the symbolisation of an individual that it hurt it to be in the
reality, it aim to fly and again it has to fall in the daility, it would be an
ambulatory cyclothimia if you permit me the use of the term, but observe that
there is three interesting elements in this, that they are usually not
considered:
The name of the Hero.
The problem of the physical inferiority and, exactly,
the question that will do the Sphinx, which is aiming actually to the inferior
extremities.
Continuing with the Myth, Oedipus kills Layo, without
knowing in that moment that he was his father, for which the Freudian
edification it dissipates, because upon not knowing the sin, it don't exist
neither the blame neither the desire to make it; he becomes The King of Tebas,
and he marry Yocasta, who is awarded like an accessory prize to the Reign and
she doesn't constitute the main inducement of the unknowing parricide in no
way.
I want to emphasise the above, Oedipus, don't aim to
possess his mother neither kill his father, simply because he didn't know who
they were, one could not talk about previous blame neither of incestuous
desires, if those desires don't exist, at least in the real Myth.
Later he see the truth. There is a version, I think
that it is the most coherent and logic, in which he take the pin, he empty the
basins of his eyes and he spend his time strolling and begging, the rest of the
Myth is quite well-known.
We are going to make some more inferences before
entering to the details.
It surely was not Layo's Homosexuality the punished by
Hera and Apollo upon sending the Sphinx to Tebas, but how Pedraza says:
"The senseless flare that blinded to who that
takes advantage of Pelope and of Crisipo, violenting the good customs."
This we have already seen it. Anyhow it exist an
evident parallelism between the Layo's homosexuality and the homosexual origin
of the Sphinx of Euripides, because the Sphinx is daughter of the Equidna
serpent and of Gea, the Earth, that is to say of two feminine elements par
excellence, it is say that the Sphinx would be feminine- feminine, so
absolutely feminine, this fact is important and will be reviews.
On the other hand, the punishment of Hera, Goddess
protector of the Family, could be conceive as a warning from the disastrous
consequences that could carry the demography of Tebas, the generalisation of
this type of love that the Principe seemed to institutionalise it with his
conduct.
You should not discard this hypothesis a priori, in
order to don't make the sin of partialisation of the myth to which I referred
at the beginning, but in front of this, Pelope itself clarifies that this was
not the reason of his blind anger, because if, in fact the havocs caused by the
Sphinx was consisted of snatch the most florid thing of the youth before time,
it could also think that its scourge metaphorised a widespread sterility, a
lacking new blood.
On the other hand, the sin of Layo was not a mere
juvenile error but, how Pilar Pedraza says:
"The tip of the iceberg of a bent and violent
temperament that finished in the episode of the crossing roads causing his own
death at the hands of another victim of his enslavements the young
Oedipus."
It are possible to also think that the Sphinx was the
visible manifestation of a wrong reign's consequences, this is another theory,
from the Economic Sociology, let we tell it so.
From the personage of Layo, or like in some popular
stories, "The Dark Father" , comes the "expiatory male
goat," of active and violent character, but finally sacrificed by the Hero
that it save the teban community from its vices. This would be the
confrontation of the Hero with its dark side, its own Shade symbolised in the "Patter
Terribilis".
However, all these conjectures suppose to the Sphinx
happened before Layo's death. Which it is not true and then it invalidate them.
Perhaps, finally the most suggestive of the
possibilities of this desk is the supposition of the unknown incest and at the
same time the personification of the reason of the perverse double of the own
Yocasta.
Yocasta, the woman- soul in any family circumstance,
the mother and the mother- wife and mother- grandmother, she has the Sphinx,
singer maiden like an opposite figure which is not only sterile but also
destroyer of the youth of which it abuse until consume them carrying them to a
premature death. But in essence, it is the two faces of the same coin of the
feared and wanted femininity whose anguish oppresses to the male 'cause he are
nurtured from her in order to penetrate in the outside world.
I think that here there is another new panorama, a
dichotomy, an esquizoide vision , divided between the supposed good woman:
Yocasta, the mother, and the sought bad woman, the seductive, the enigmatic,
the devouring of men, a dichotomy that is seen tremendously well in Jellyfish,
the most beautiful of the maidens but paralysing, terrifying of the men. I
believe that this in essence is expressing the problem that expounds to Oedipus
in front of the eternal feminine, to the entirety of the feminine, to the soul.
Sphinx-Yocasta; monster-beauty;
female vampire-virgin; wife-lover.
Oedipus, although he conquer to one of they, the
Sphinx, he finally falls in the claws of the other, Yocasta, is say, the
Prophecy takes place and consummates his marriage with his mother, of which he
was absolutely not responsible by ignoring the fact, and he only finds the
peace of his relationships with the world, I refer to the external, to the
reflection, when in an outburst of desperation, but also of lucidity realises
the reality and in front of this external vision he empty his eyes.
These are the main ownceptive systems in the mature
human being, as for contact with the environment, he takes off his view, but he
doesn’t castrates himself, if the problem would be the offence carried out in
the Freudian incest, high probably he would castrate. In Mythology and in
Religion, we have examples of this, I think now in Atis, Cibeles, the sect of
the Copts and without going farther, in Abelardo, it is say, it doesn’t exist
the necessity of looking for symbolic robes, that in their majority are
accommodating to a theory as much as they could be to another, but rather the truly
important is abide to the Symbol in fact and to the reason of the its
emergency.
Blinding himself Oedipus, he stay sunk like
Tiresias, Homero, Melampo, Mopsos, Apolonio of Tiana and others, in the
protective darkness of the illusory shine of the appearances, in the shadowy
lucidity of whom it are in direct communication with the Centre of itself
and with the guide and prophetic sources of the masculine, or like Borges said,
another blind:
"...In the
clarity of the night."
This would be something as well as leaving the Samsara
in order to go to the search of the Selbst.
Oedipus, revealing trivially the Enigma of the Sphinx
moved by his desire of ascending socially and erase the prints of his unhappy
childhood, demonstrates not knowing about the masculine human being's
condition, more than the number of his legs, he must through the horror of
recognising itself parricide and incestuous in the course of a pathetic
analysis thoroughly, learn the bitter meaning of the delfic topic :
"gnosce te meme"
The confrontation of Oedipus and the Sphinx, and the
death of this, after the revelation of the enigma, that is to say the used
system, could it put in comparison with the confrontation of Oedipus and
Yocasta, according to Sofocles, and the suicide of her after revealing Oedipus,
an enigma still more tremendous than the first.
This mechanism is amazing, because Oedipus discloses
the mystery of the Sphinx and he later fall in the enigma of The Another, in
which we are going to see that the feminine in the first case, how we will see
in the second it also die, that is to say that it is transforming and
introspecting on in the interior wisdom, but this is a game of mirrors, a topic
that is amazingly included in the Literature is, it rouse me how work this
Kafka and Borges especially, I refer to the repetitionism.
This speculate movement it refer us to the most
vertiginous depths of the Myth where lies the true question that it is:
If in such confrontations in which the Principle of
Reality conquers and it incorporates to Principle of Pleasure, in which the
philosophical male annihilates to the trivial female, it won't be symbolising
the tragic confrontation of the Episteme symbolised in Oedipus and the
Doxa symbolised in the twin form: Sphinx and Yocasta?
I by understand by Episteme the analytic knowledge, of
where the Epistemology arises, the base of the scientist knowledge that is of
what Oedipus is nurtured when he reasons about the enigma. The Doxa is the
belief itself.
From the confrontation of the Episteme-Oedipus and of
the Doxa- Sphinx/ Yocasta-, it is find the only way in order to get out from
the stagnation. In the reality, from the Exercise of the Power and the joy of a
certain object whose origin and character are not questioned. It are chosen!
I will take the fourth symbol of this quartet now, I
mean, Yocasta.
In reference to this last, the feeling in front of the
investigating acting of Oedipus, that puts all his world in danger and that it
don't promise good results, is Panic. This is an excellent example of the
Doxa's working.
A world of beliefs, a fictitious world, illusory,
since it could come to know the reality openly, it is say, to be made conscious
that the foundations in which it sit down the home of the Real Family, the
Regal Power, is kneaded with the paternal blood and the maternal sex, and the
implacable logic of the Oedipal Episteme moves the veil that hides the most
intimate effects of the house's heart.
Everything, absolutely everything, hopelessly will
crumble. The feminine conservatism, expressed in Yocasta, it's shown here as a
fear to the truth and its consequences.
Finally, seeing her family ruined life, Yocasta, the
trivial, that the only lives in function of her family, she hung herself from a
rafter of the bedroom.
The first time in life in which she lifts the feet
from the floor it is in order to dance to the end of the rope.
The Sphinx neither wants, and this is the parallelism,
that the Mystery of the Human Condition could uncover, it is preferable that
some die before it being known, before it being recognised that the man is an
animal but an animal whose greatness consists of detach two of its paws from
the floor, so not like she, quadruped until the marrow of her bones and
monstrous when she insist in her obsession of the reason, being how it is Doxa,
the Sphinx is unable to stroll for itself, she don't know how to move, could
not make it because she are fixed to a place that never will belong her because
it have not been, it is not and it won't be that of her, she have been sent to
that place and she will never penetrate in Tebas.
The Sphinx falls in front the able man to recognise
the penury and the greatness of the human condition, in front of the young it
in spite of its few years knows that the life of the human being in the earth
is developed in the three big cycles of the childhood, the maturity and the age
.
The Sphinx loses the advantage that the hysterical
Enigma conferred her and she commit suicide advancing to the suicide of
Yocasta, her double twin, to which she indirectly wanted to destroy, without
understanding that acting this way she will destroy herself and reflecting the
quarrel of the Crossing of Roads perhaps, almost suicidal of Layo that is
unable to recognise his son in his rival and vice versa.
The Sphinxes dissipates like shreds of fog in the face
of the masculine sun of the high knowledge but this has a high cost.
Oedipus stays face to face with himself dedicated for
ever to the ascetic profession of the Philosophers, the Wanderings, the Wise
old men, whose compensation is and will always be their complementarity: the
Archetype of the hermit, or the Senex.
The Oracle predicts all this. I have not mentioned it
directly but the prophetic wisdom is implicit in all this. In what it concern
us, in the irreversibility that has the Archetype once it is shown. In the
close that it is. There is a prediction that always is completed.
QUESTION" : - "What would happened if
Oedipus would understood the prophetic message?, It couldn't transform the
history?
ANSWER: "Probably if he would discovered the
Symbology of this, he would answered any sews to the Sphinx and there be fact
kill. I want you to understand that the knowledge it bears a special and
sometimes unbearable solitude. Think of Tausk, in Van Gogh, in Cantor, in
Silbererg, Federn or in Horacio Quiroga, and Silvina Bulrich, think also in
Jacob Ficzman, the death or the madness, both acting like disconnection of the
daility of a world unidirectionated toward a sense perhaps sicker than the
pathology of the personages themselves mentioned.
Without a doubt are they pathological cases, but would
be interesting to know the reason why?
QUESTION: "there are not one parallelism between
the Legend of Adam and Eva as for that the Human knowledge have to be related
to the Sin?
ANSWER: "Yes, that is one of the theories that we
will try to demonstrate, it also happens in the Myth of Dedalo and Icarus,
but more in which you mention are glimmering the sin of Hybris.-"
Let us go back these lines of thought.
According to this reading, is expounding us that even
the Sphinx and Yocasta they are conforming,- and observe that we are already
quite far from the usual optic of the Oedipus's Complex,- the fact that even
one like another they are conforming the two polarities of the feminine.
Let to amplify that, why Pilar Pedraza says that:
"...both possess an enigma that should not be
discovered, in this case the enigma of the Sphinx, already known and that it is
discovered, in the other case, in the Yocasta's enigma so that once it
are discovered it takes her to detach her feet for the
first time, from the daility..."
It are observed that here are the topic of the feet
again, of that fictitious reality, falsely bloody upon noose from the beam of
the roof.
This second Enigma only an individual of dark
aetiology could answer it, of diffuse origin, that has armed or I would say
inherited the outline like in order to be a Tragic Hero and that it possess
that cyclotimia of flying and lower later on to the reality, somebody that it
didn't know how to love, that it could not make it, that it didn't have more
parents than fictions idealised in its mind, ghosts against which it owe, it
carry on his arms the duty of the Tragic Hero, of fighting, and die in the
intent, because it don't give it the opportunity to live. How he do it?, by
means of the Episteme, or would I already say the Gnosis, as for a
necessity of approaching to his interior being by means of the understanding
that gives the knowledge for raw that is this.
Then, as much as the Sphinx like Yocasta, they are
conforming the belief, something that should be so and that in no way deserve
or could it consent to be studied, analysed by no means knowing.
Oedipus on the contrary, motivated by two reasons, one
the Prophecy, it was going to execute an archetypal movement, or rather he was
going to be dominated for this, and the other reason, the motivation of that
desire to climb social positions, of be more and rise from his unknown origin,
on the condition that the end would be his own external failure.
He goes to the encounter of the Sphinx and later also
to the encounter of the Altar, of the sacrifices Altar, and from the
altar-mother and the Sacrificial will constitute his symbolic father and his
sacrifice while the Altar-Reign of Tebas will constitute his mother as annexed
prize, incorporated to the Kingdom.
Those would be the two basic motivations that has
Oedipus of which it would be very logical to suppose, how I mentioned the
Feeling of insecurity for his dark origins overcompensated with a limitless
desire of power, and to Alfred Adler this explanation would please him
very much, that he compensated the physical inferiority also. However, the
Adlerian logic deductive, is so guessed right how it could be the Freudian,
because both are fragmenting the Myth, one as for the feeling of power, and the
other as for the sexual-incestuous topic.
Unfortunately the Myth is wider, because it is
constituted of symbols and not of signs.
Returning to the Mythologeme, Oedipus is cripple, this
is a fact that only it could be appreciated in certain paintings that rescue
the original version. How I mentioned nobody better than a cripple, in order to
know the movement of the inferior extremities, to give the correct answer to
the Sphinx, and it also discover the tremendous Enigma that contained his
marriage, that is to say that Oedipus represents the Episteme, in front of
which, it are seen already, this individual has to be necessarily a Tragic Hero
because the knowledge necessarily has to bring harnessed the depressed
solitude, how I said of the Senex.
However, it could not have been so so.
We are going to meditate more this.
Yes, one is in a naive state, primitive, paradisic, it
is not given consent to the knowledge, but actually to the innocence, this
implies to be in contact with the nature, with the nature naturanda of
the Jewish Philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
I don't know history in natural harmony with all that
it surround it, that it don't finish in the desire to transcend, it is say of
knowing more. Perhaps this is the destination of the human being. The Hybris.
When do I begin to know and to meditate, do I be using
the Episteme, using the analysis and still making, in some cases the sin of
Hybris, to which the Lacanians would call "arrogating" the place of
the knowledge, but Who does something know, any small thing on something
especially inherent to their Psyche?
Upon knowing, I am verifying that the reality is not
like it before came in the face of my eyes, again the topic of the eyes, and
here would fit the biblical sentence:
- If your eyes offends you
pull up them and throw them far from you-
Before some moments a student related the topic that
I'm developing with the Myth of Adam and Eva.
The aforementioned could be absolutely correct, this
is the sin of Adam and Eva, they eat from the fruit of the wisdom, from the
tree of the Good and the Wrong, of the Axis Mundi, then already
automatically should abandon the naive position that permitted the
non-differentiation with the animals, with the environment, with the
psychological habitat, with that Transpersonal Harmony.
But it are arrived to the knowledge, the sin of Hybris
is made by means of the knowledge, and they there are expelled of the
One could have taken a Myth so much like another, that
ultimately they neither constitutes Cosmogonic Myths, but the confrontation is
the old confrontation. I am going to repeat a sentence of Jung:
"Freud discovered the Archetype of Oedipus and,
it in fact was the only that he discovered."
It is not even correct that this Myth is a Foundant
Myth, the Mythology of all cultures, of all ages, the well-known passings or
not, and the by coming, they are plagued of Myths, many of which they are
Foundant. The world, the "Piccolo mondo" that surround us are a
kaleidoscope of symbols that they are always there and they are seen just for
that who it wants them to see, but not with the eyes, but with the inferiority
of their own Psyche.
We will take the concept of the Myth of Oedipus to the
present time.
Here the sexual in fact is not absentee in no way but
I don't see reason we have that to hypervalue it.
If we considered the Sphinx and Yocasta for example
and we led to the present time, locate you to the daily life of our Federal
Capital, because this at county or in other latitudes of the universe is
different, which it make doubt about the sought universality of the Oedipus,
how I aimed certainly in my point of view, Malinowsky, Mead and the Cultural
Anthropology. But this present time, that of this Federal Capital, could manage
it all those that we are here and, independently we like it or not, we are its
emergents, because the human being is emergent of a certain social environment
and to which at the same time determines it. We are going to find here the
stereotype of what we called the macho porteño* and * that of the women
porteñas*, then is not us going to cost nothing absolutely, locate the Sphinx
into this new Symbology of hysterical personality, that which seduce with her
enigma, with her secret charm that in the most of the cases fascinates the man
and later he stays in the seduction because there is no secret behind. The only
secret charm that has is the search of it, but later, he verifies that that
form is empty. And he was, fascinated, charmed, that it is the same etymology
of bewitched.- This is very well descripted by Jung in the report that the BBC
of London did to him, I refer to "Face to Face"- For the other side
we going to also find our figure of the female porteña that is the wife-mother,
mother-wife or mother-grandmother, our own Yocasta, like unsexualized because
culturally speaking would seem that the mothers have not procreated, that the
children come for parthenogenesis, that the sisters for example, are all
virgins. Observe it how we have, in the popular language even, divided, the
concept of the Anima. With the result that the word is archetypal,
remember that the Golem is mobilised by the Word.
What happen with Oedipus?
Oedipus also makes what it would be the sin of Hybris,
he realises what happen, but his solution is that of digitalize not only his
destination but that of the others. That is not worth. It is attribute of God.
One could not be going to see a movie knowing the end,
because one doesn't enter in the movie, one are always away from it, and the
movie, good or bad, it is the own life, that doesn't receive any Oscar of the
Academy of Hollywood often; but to which it is necessary to give it the
opportunity that Oedipus denies.
Because one of the two reasons or for both that I
described. Either in order to solve, complete the prophecy, or carry out the
destination of the Archetype, do Oedipus that is an Hero that has diffuse
origins, whose divine genealogy would be necessary to overcome it to the
great-great-grandfathers, that he are cripple, does he have to complete the
role that is commended to him and, how do he complete it?, By means of the
extreme Episteme, that is to say, realising it, and does here come the most sad
thing of the Myth that it is the essence of what I consider that does the Drama
is saying.
This myth indicates that it is not good to realise,
that it is not healthy realise, that many times is preferable to live in the
Heideggerian world of the ,"se" because if one realises the entirety,
it psychotises.
The psychotisation here moves to an internal fold,
like in the Psychosis, with a manifestation frankly autistic of the interior
reality. That is staying blind, blind itself, go mad, go die- in order to
avoid contacting with that external environment which is exascreable and
well-known, that is to say that it is an election of negative life.
In front of this external means that is already known,
I fall back to myself, this is a castration, if you want, but symbolic,
we should not stop keeping in mind that if truly in the Myth has been aimed to
make reference to the real castration, without a doubt Oedipus instead of taking
off the view, he would have made a self-castration, how it was commented in its
moment, about Victor Tausk, or like Zeus son, castrated to his father Chronos
with a scythe, in order to hold the maximum power and avoid being gobbled by
him.
Therefore, the Symbolic Castration leaves cracks, that
we could interpret, taking to the symbol of become blind, how it indicate Jung,
in his expressed form.
The view is that that contact with the external
environment, the unpleasant external environment of which the individual hopes
to transcend, and this way, how I explained, reach the interior vision, the
interior life.
The other meaning could be for example, that in front
of what it are represented like as the Anima and it atomised it, the only
possibility that has Oedipus, of subsisting, we say no longer to live because
he will always be party, that is to say, blind, will be of strolling
metaphorically speaking, to the search of his own Selbst that it would
be indicating the root of the masculine, that is to say, of his Animus.
I will elaborate this other possible interpretation,
which, of being correct it will indicate another significance of the Symbol.
The knowledge in the life leads Oedipus, Tragic Hero,
to falling back, but it takes it also to the interior life, to the search of
what it is one itself and it of course leads to the Asceticism, it is to
say, to polarised the Archetype of the Hermit. He retires to be alone and he is
going to be considered madman, the Eremite, oppositely to the Wise old man, it
leads it to leave of from the common of people. This doesn't seek to be
exhaustive but not for depressing it stop being true, it simply tries to give
them a different meaning and I believe that with so much or more logic than
could throw the same problem expounded from the famous point of view of the
taboo of the incest, or the Desire power.
The problem that I expound in this analysis is that of
the knowledge. Is this a question about the transcendence, is it say, Oedipus
confronts to know for what reason is he in the life?
And discover, 'cause he so consider it, why he have
been touched for the Archetypal Prediction and why he are captured, that he
lives in order to complete a tragic end, and he knows it, or what is still
worst, he know it.
Speaking in Jungian terms, the knowledge that Oedipus
possesses is an archetypal knowledge, deriving from the behaviour of some
Archetypes and he is going to be at the same time possessed, that is to say his
Complex of the I, his Person, that it is displaced for, the emergency of
an Archetype that in this case was an Archetype of search of the extreme truth,
by giving it a name.
However, in the same legend is also said that what he
makes ultimately is dive inside itself in order to try to find his Selbst, his
interior life, which leads us to the higher knowledge and the emerging of
which, Oedipus finishes as fortune-teller, like clairvoyant, thing that is
extremely common in the Greek Mythology, I refers to the topic of the blind
clairvoyant, how I already explained.
The way of the Hero, are coloured in a beginning of
Hybris and this is the test that should be transcended. Take for example to Tiresias,
another great fortune-teller of the Greek Mythology.
Also this had made another sin of Hybris since he had
alternated along different lives, his sex, he had been woman and man
alternately.
QUESTION: "-as soon as does the Oracle be
completed, not? And the oracle is completed, it don't take implicit the
consenting to another type of knowledge starting from that it are arrived to
the interior vision, let us say starting from this?
ANSWER: Yes, the Oracle is definitely completed,
because Oedipus will survive here without the Enigmatic and seductive sphinx,
the Doxa, and without the conservative and disclaimer of the reality Yocasta,
Doxa also, which it is not another thing more than in front of the loss of that
reality will look for in her interior sources, from her Animus, what is her own
Anima, and there she will find the interior life. Don't you forget that Dante,
in order to arrive to the Sky, that is to say, to the Selbst, he must have a
feminine ideal, Beatriz, his Anima but act like his masculine guide, Virgilio.
This root of the Mythologeme, of the Divine Comedy,
for example, we are going to find in the Greek Mythology in infinities motives,
to which more beautiful, because there is a whole interior Woman's Psychology,
a whole Symbology of the interior life, exactly for lacks of the external life.
QUESTION: It is a little bitter vision, because
continuing this thinking way, the search of knowledge do finish with the
species?
ANSWER: It depend on what knowledge. I don't believe
that it is only bitter, it is depressing!, Wish would be only the incest, but
remember. That we are taking a Myth in which we reflected the position of the Tragic
Hero in front of the life because if all the Heroes they would the same, and
all of we are in our lives, the human species would disappear.
It is very logical, each generation has, I don't know
how many, people that are considered demented until that they die and, after
two or three generations they pass to the category of geniuses, it have always
been
so. Unfortunately for him, and many times for who
surround him, the Tragic Hero is absolutely necessary. The human being would
not know feelings like the idealism, the total delivery, the coexistence with
the incomprehension, of not being for this Archetype. But remember, and we
are going to develop it, that other types of Heroes
exists and not necessarily embodies the tragic. Not all are Lohengrins, or
Oedipuses, thanks God.
QUESTION: "Is this myth an individuation
process?"
ANSWER: Without a doubt. The execution of the Oracle
bears itself a process of individuation, carried out by Oedipus, that he is no
longer Oedipus, but the human being.
It is a process of individuation, without minor doubt,
and that it doesn't have to be the individuation process of each individual, it
in fact doesn't need to be so, what it happens, and there are
also the Freudian’s pessimism with regard to the human
being, pessimism justified largely by his personal experience. He was who
hyperdimensionated this Archetype above of the unnumerated
others that exist. Did you know that Freud had an
image of the Sphinx in front of his desk?
Each one has its own process of individuation,
Oedipus, contemplated from this optics unknown for many, it is a variant, Jung
said when was interviewed by the London BBC in 1957, at the age of 82, about
the pessimistic vision of the human being by the Psychoanalysis and he referred
to Oedipus like the only Archetype that Freud founded, the first and the only,
how I mentioned previously, but it is not this so, there exist countless
archetypes and all them are represented in the legends, the stories of fairies
and the myths. I had already said this previously. It would remain a reflection
that could be interesting as a question, from which we won't have answer.
Oedipus blinds himself by seeing the reality, or by
knowing that in his individuation process he have killed Layo, guilty, yes, but
also the innocents Sphinx and Yocasta, whose only sin was being on his way?
QUESTION: "But they are tragic all, the
personages. Every individuation Process should be so?"
ANSWER: Not necessarily. The individuation Process could
not always be tragic, painful in fact, without a doubt, but it doesn't need to
be necessarily tragic unless one is dominated by the Archetype of the Tragic
Hero, that how I said, it also is necessary.
If I talk about Odiseo or Ulysses, by
continuing in the Greek Mythology, we are going to see another individuation
Process a quite happy end in the Adventure of the Hero, of course of different
type of hero.
Ulysses is separated and taken toward a war that he
didn't want, where he don't want to participate.
At this time we are going to speak the reason it
refused.
Ulysses or Odiseo are forced exactly because it had
been predicted, and here is observed again the archetypal expressed in the
terminology of the Greek Mythology. The Oracle is relentless. As I said, if
this didn't participate, the Argives would not obtain the victory on
When one talks about Ulysses, it is talking about an
extremely sagacious individual. He was so astute that knowing that they were
going to come to look for him in order to participate in the War of Troy, he
was yoked to a plow instead of the habitual oxen and he began to plow in
serpentine lines, but Palamedes, who was more intelligent, and for this
was destroyed by the own Ulysses later on, soon after this episode, in order to
demonstrate the false madness of Odiseo, he putted in the way of the plow that
it threw Ulysses by acting as demented, to the own son of the Hero, Telemaco.
In front of the possibility of murdering to somebody of his own blood, Ulysses
stops faking, knowing that with this, it was carried out the Archetype of the
Crossing. Here the crossroad was the lines of the plow and the boy, it was
symbolised the waters, jointly with the reign of Ulysses, the rocky
Ulysses should combat in a war that was not his, like
so much and so much men were and they will be sent to fight other people's
wars. He goes, he participates. In the combat a heap of changes happens that
they are described very well in The Iliad, firstly and hindly in the Odyssey,
because Ulysses also was a Hero that should not envy anything neither to
Achilles,
From the Odyssey, that means, the voyage of Ulysses
toward Ithaca, it is say, the traffic of the Hero toward his interior self, are
derived later on the word Odyssey and that have remained in order to express
something like the great feat, product of the setbacks and vicissitudes, that
they are not another thing that the life itself.
The steps the Hero has to carry out.
With Hercules also one could also speak about Odyssey.
All the obstacles that he founded, the
QUESTION: I don't know as much as in order to put in
the Myths what I thought, and it is that when one is noticed that one is not
but was been for the desire of the parents, a little more from the
psychoanalytic slope would be completed the same inexorability...
ANSWER: I Consider that this is many more archaic,
that it goes many further on, and therefore it is
less simplist, because I would say that then the
parents are the desire of the grandparents.
STUDENT: "Yes, for the vital and embryological
law, of course, but, it is tragic, because in fact one already comes, like
determined"
ANSWER: But it however is not that the idea.
STUDENT:" I thought of the Tragic sense because
the Individuation would imply, like a
decentralisation of one, or one knows what it is and
what it know, in order to realise that know is don't know, or, know that one doesn't
know. Then one could begin to learn in this way.
I in that sense consider that it is as tragic as the
Myth of Oedipus because it absolutely decentralise us from our I alienated in
all those things that we saw, of the illusion. The subject is lived
teleologically through a pre-existent.
ANSWER: I understand the position but I consider that
the truly tragic is to live and not the knowledge that has been lived, because
this life is like grains of sand that escape from the fingers.
STUDENT: "But the one that it are not do the
question it lives happier."
ANSWER: If probably Oedipus has known all this perhaps
he have responded that the being that walked on four paws in the morning, on
two in the afternoon and on three at night was another and not the Human Being,
I invite you to don't live it like tragic. It is not that my desire, see it
like a sign of individuation, on the other hand, are not come to obtain at
least an intent of individuation if one not suffered and it are confronted from
inside and with ownself. That always hurts and constitutes the base of the
psychotherapeutic experience, but it are also corroborated with the alchemist
process of the mortification, however the mortification is necessary in
order to achieve later on the bleachment of the substance, the purification
and, to arrive to that it is necessary a suffering, because the experience, in
the life, like in the Psychotherapy or in the limits situations, is bearable,
and painful because it is also not- transmissible. But the thing would truly be
tragic if after suffering one it don't emerge, then yes, it would be worthy
become torn the vestments like the Hebrews for the loss in uselessness of the
life. But on the other hand if one emerges, an Archetype it will be completed,
that it are symbolised in the Selbst and it is not another thing that the Sense
of our Own Existence, and this sense often, escapes us to ourselves,
it is something that Jung defines with the concepts of
synchronism and synchronicity and, often it exceed to the causal hypothetical deductive Logic, for
consenting to the logic of God.
The resurgence will be different, with more force and
with a novel recombination, result of the confrontation of Saint George and the
Dragon, it is say, of the Hero and the Shade that we have inside, and that not
necessarily is bad, but lived in disregarded form.
The depressed position is inherent to the
intellectual, this is proven, but I request you to see the transcendence and
the Sense of the Life otherwise you are going to never understand Jung.
The Jungian Psychology is an answer to the pessimistic
existential reductionism and if you find tragic Oedipus, is because he is it,
but it is not more than one of the so much Archetypes of our human Psyche. Jung
speaks about the Transcendence and the entirety of the life and that could
not be pessimist in no way.
QUESTION: What would happen if Oedipus...from a
different view, would not behaved
as he behaved.?
ANSWER: If Oedipus has not been Oedipus we would not
have Myth of Oedipus. The Archetype, is determinist and here is acting and it
is not compensated. It is as if you put a diskette into the computer and in the
diskette is recorded that program. The computer will read that program and not
another, what could one make in front of this?
There are techniques that are used in Jungian
Analysis, it is say, in Analytic Psychology for example, decatectising the
Archetype overcatexiated, give it energy, if it is lacking, make to emerge the
contrary polarity of the same Archetype, but if occur that Archetype, it could
not be changed externally.
Don't you forget, that for Jung, the concept of the
Neurosis is an intent, failed yes, but an intent so,
to restoring the psychic balance, for that reason it
is necessary to be extremely careful with the treatments
and not to fall in the sin of Hybris seeking to cure
everything absolutely. With determination, the therapist it is not God.
QUESTION: "Layo... tries to avoid, let saying, to
death giving or killing his son and Oedipus leaves from his adoptive house of
his parents in order to don't kill his parents, so but with a literal
understanding
of the message. He tried to avoid the Command, but he
didn't achieve it.
QUESTION: "Now, in that past this was what it
happened.
Of having been treated, that Archetype maybe it would
decatectised ..., that of the Hero, and it would
become a not tragic one, in the therapeutic that do I
say to the contemporary Oedipus?
ANSWER: ... in front of that, the Analytic Psychology
gives options, I mentioned them but we say that
it decatectise it, so is say, to be able to remove the
charge that mobilises to the Archetype or the Constellation of Dominants
archetypes, for which should arrive previously through the Complex and for this
it is necessary to work in therapy by using techniques that we will go already
seeing, or alter the modality of the archetype since an archetype has two
opposed and complementary polarities always sometimes, for a balance, I would
say homeostatic, by decatectizing one, it appears the vital libido loading
another Archetype or Archetypes that they will do an Archetypal
Constellation, because here also like in Physics the Energy is not created
neither it are destroyed, it is transform, this is very well developed by Jung in
Symbols and Transformations of the Libido that is to say, that this, in
therapy, of course it is treatable, there are other techniques like the Game,
the Sand Play, the Receptive Wait, the active imagination, etc., but this bears
the election of a Career and, inside it, the deepening of a School that it is
not simple at all and are often more comfortable to deny it, although not for
this it stops to exist.
You will know that I am referring to the ostracism
that Jung suffers in our means. But returning your question, Oedipus is a Greek
drama, here the Myth is closed... it is a Mythologeme and it therefore is
symbolic, it is say, that it are used for the knowledge of what could happen if
certain things are not solved on time. The Myth is illustrative, how Jung says,
about the things that are due or not to make in some circumstances, what it
happen is that the individual cannot carry out them when it is possessed by
that Archetype, that it could behave like a Demon to which it should exorcise.
QUESTION: "Then if we led it to the Mythology
also in the case of Ulysses or Odiseo, that we were speaking, Odiseo could have
stayed with the Sirens, that they would be the equivalent of the Sphinx. But he
didn't do that because, knowing himself and knowing that he was going to stay,
he looked for the resources, like in order to complete the journey right to the
end. Is this alright?
ANSWER: That is perfect. Odiseo’s trip, would be the
Analytic trip, with a different road, because all are different roads, and
taken from another point of view, it even passes through Circe, through
Calypso, so for the different positions of the feminine until arrive to the
Anima's concretion that it would be Penelope. He could change the Archetypal
energies that emanated from him.
But I would like to enlarge the answer by one of my
favourite authors, Franz Kafka.
He will have the opportunity to appreciate the
intelligence of Odiseo, that not in vain it was the favourite of Atenea.
Kafka with his peculiar talent for the Kafkians
situations proposes the following:
He think that Odiseo plugged with wax his hearings,
like his companions, and that the Sirens in that occasion abstained from sing,
perhaps by thinking that to such opponent, only it could affect the silence, or
perhaps because the aspect of happiness of Ulysses’ face would make forget they
any chant.
Ulysses, with his covered hearings believe that they
are singing and that he is able to support the chant because of the plug of
wax. The sirens, for so say it, they it allow to pass deceiving him with the
illusion of a fictitious victory in order to tempt his arrogance.
But Kafka ends up his brief meditation on the topic
suggesting that probably Ulysses knew that they were not singing and he
permitted they to believe that he believed that they sang, with which the
vertiginous wisdom of this Hero is proven which it was protected him from men
and gods. So, the solution of Ulysses evidently is different because knowing
the deceit to which he will be subjected, at the same time he deceives, allowing
to be deceived, with which he deceive again. This would be the solution in
order confront with the Doxa, with the Sirens, the Sphinx, with the feminine in
this sense. I would say, the correct use of the Episteme.
The making see that is living in the world of the
DASSEINN, but in the background not."
QUESTION: "-There is another thing, this Palas
Atenea would not be the figure of the analyst, that goes
protecting, that goes guiding, that it is channelling
the energy?
ANSWER: Well I would say that it is a possibility of a
symbolic and very logical interpretation, right, I could consider, whenever you
accept your Analyst like your Alter Ego, your Psychopompos or your Chaman.
Remember that the word therapist comes from the Esenic Jewish Sect and it
literally means healers of the Soul.
QUESTION: "I don't know anything about Psychology
of life, I am not Psychologist but I see it in a more literary way, all that
has been said about Oedipus it teach me that looking for the knowledge,
deviated from any sensation, only for the side of the knowledge it leads to a
tragic situation."
ANSWER: -A more realistic posture would be accept the
things how they are still knowing them continuing the game how one makes. Like
the turn of Ulysses, where he knows that it is a lie and he accepts it like
such and he are not taken out his eyes...
Notice how they differ from a same Mythologeme, from a
concrete Mythologeme different listeners, this is because, how I said, the Myth
is the possibility of understanding our personal dramas abbreviated, with
beginning, development and end, and obviously the form that each human being
experiences the mythological makes reference to the own archetypal component.
Today I have expounded you a version that, I wouldn't
say is diametrically opposed to the classical well-known, but rather taking
other elements, that it has a logic.
They may coincide or not but the expounds is coherent
and it takes in it a different metaphor, different conclusion, that from my
personal optics is many more able to embrace, than reduce this tremendous
problem, that is, in fact, a Being's problem, the Essence of the human being.
The Problem of the Knowledge, and the form of living and accept it. That it is
a problem of Doxa and Episteme, to the sexual plane of the incest, the one that
is taken also in the Myth, but I consider that giving extra importance to this
single aspect, is take a symbol and use it like sign, then observe what it
happen when they truly are taken the symbols like such and one amplify them.
The wealth of the Amplification many more, it
continue...and it continue... For example: where are the sphinxes?
They appear like guardians of the hermetic knowledge,
that is the Gnostic Sphinx.
Then if it are observed attentively the whole
sincretization that has suffered the image of the Sphinx, will be find that are
not aiming to the sexual plane, but rather she are symbolising the necessity of
preserving secrets that should be occult strictly; is also calling the Sphinx Arcane,
in the sense that she keep the occult secrets.
In the Libraries, for example, is been going to find
that in many of its decorations, their furniture for example, or finishing off
capitals is found image of the Sphinx.
The cold and intellectual Sphinx, an Episteme that
hides the true Doxa, but also there is other meanings.
In many Cathedrals, funeral
What are in front of the tomb?
-The image of the Sphinx-
If somebody thinks that the Pyramids are chance or
geographical accidents, it then won't understand more than the sign, and one of
the connotations of the Sphinx, taken like Symbol itself, it is that of being
the "guardian of the mystery", and not the repressive of the
sex, neither similar thing. But if we are going to look for this connotation
we'll find it, without the minor doubt. In this last case, the mystery to keep
is that of the Death.
Without a doubt that it is feasible to find sexual
connotations, we in fact have them clearly in the Sphinxes- Lamias or,
going to another exponent of the gallery of feminine form's monsters, but we
are talking about another thing, if a symbol is meant, doesn't fit the minor
doubt of that, we are already in front of a sign, where the connotative drains
the denoted, and we are not talking about a sign. We are talking about the
Sphinx.
QUESTION: Then Freud didn't punctured his eyes?
ANSWER: I believe that yes, Because all this has
arisen, thanks to the History that Freud began, jointly with Jung, Adler and many
others.
What it happens are that sometimes somebody arrives to
certain point of the knowledge and it keeps with only that; that wasn't the
case of Freud because he developed. And many, in spite of personal problems, in
the Jungian sense, notice specially in his last writings.
In that sense as for dichotomise, unvalued other
Schools etc. I fit many of the blame to certain pupils, Freudian Psychoanalysts
and to the bad followers.
But I would say that, in last instance, it would be
important to see why was worried so much to Freud the Archetype of Oedipus?
This is valid if is accepted the sentence that one
tries to understand its lacking -I believe that Freud was a
sort of Tragic Hero-
QUESTION: There is quite more in Freud of what is
teaching us, when one begins to read really the work without prejudices, there
is quite more than what one sees.
ANSWER: It is very possible, because if we are us
going to enclosed in an explanation, we don't go to never finding ours.
I would say that this explanation is valid and that it
could coexist with the other, what it happen is that they are two different
planes of interpretation of a same symbolic fact, that as they are two
different planes, not they have necessarily to coincide, they in fact don't
make it.
The problem is that each group thinks that the only
valid expound is the one that they sustain and this exactly is the missed, what
Jung was condemned: the Dogma.
QUESTION: Who they would be the followers of Freud
that somehow plugged the knowledge?
ANSWER: I have an author that doesn't like me at all
because it have distorted deliberately the positions of Jung.
STUDENT: Who is it... Jones?
ANSWER: Yes, Ernst Jones, and I would also mention to
Glover, but there are other authors that approach
much to the position of the Jungian Symbol, as the
case of Lacan.
Winnicott also makes contributions describes
previously by Jung. I could mention you many more.
QUESTION: "And in the case of Adler, the problem
of the Power, it would not have to see exactly with the
Hybris, so it wouldn't be about the development of the
topic of power's desire?
ANSWER: I Coincide, he would expounded the problem for
the Compensation, in this case would be a Feeling of insecurity, accompanied by
a Complex of Inferiority and an Organic Disability. His physical defect.
Adler would expound the problem for the
overcompensation.
It in this case would be a double compensation and a
feeling of insecurity, Oedipus was anything, neither
though he had divine near descendant and, as for
little, he was bastard and cripple over-compensated with the
will or Desire of Power, a term taken specifically
from Nietzsche... and there would be made the sin of Hybris, absolutely.
In front of that he has been obliged to leave of what
Adler has called the Social Sense and we would have had, we in fact have it, a
third explanation equally translationable on a same Mythologeme, because Adler
would take another meaning of the Symbol.
We as Jungians the only that we are saying are that it
is not that an interpretation is valid and the other isn't it, we invited to
avoid the monopolising selfishness of the pretended knowledge, not let us think
that this is lineal because we then will be reducing the Symbol to a Sign and
this is what you are going to see in your analytic experience.
I tried to show it in another class in the dreams for
example, if we are going to think that any Symbol is phallus we then will
decode mechanically.
Unfortunately there are not in Psychology done
formulas, the theoretical alignment is extremely relative.
Returning to Adler, it would be left without explain
the reason why an organic diminished that bases all his Style of life in
overcompensate his organic flaw, having triumphed later on, because he in fact
obtained
what he wanted, he mutilated himself remaining still
more diminished.
I believe that he would say was lacked him the Social
Feeling.
What I today have tried to show you is how in a
Mythologeme that is extremely expensive to the orthodox Psychoanalysis, also
one could change of sidewalk and it is not convenient to get scared if in the
other side are seeing different and more things, all are reachable.
STUDENT: "In that sense I referred to the
blindness of Freud."
ANSWER: "Right, in that sense yes, but we would
owe also keep in mind the historical context in which Freud handling and the
difficulties he had. But, if I say that this is the only truth I'm also making
the sin of Hybris.
Last week I demonstrated the applicability of the use
of the symbol under the Jungian concept. What I did here, today, was
application of Methodology.
Firstly I took a complete Mythologeme, that of
Oedipus, to which I then added or balanced, in order to avoid a pessimistic
confusion about the Archetype's function of the Hero, the Myth of Ulysses.
The Mythologeme is complex and complete, partialize
it, is to take what more suits to a theory, for support latterly a theory, I
however could not have referred to the second part of the tragedy of Oedipus,
it is say, to Oedipus in Colonna, where reached already his interior
vision, he pass to behave as the Archetype of the Wise old man and his
compensation, the hermit or Senex.
Later on the symbols are extracted... we could have
taken other symbols, have taken leaving Yocasta, the city of
If any Symbol is taken and this is understand well,
the road will lead to the same sense.
Later on the technique of Amplification was used from
where it are hoped to arrive to the acting Archetype or Archetypes, which will
expound us the Drama, or better still, the Myth that lives the patient.
From here one could sketch conclusions, surely, any of
you that begins to think these will do. The taken Myth, avoided us on one hand
looking for the Symbology in excess, but by being so well-known, it could have
confused to many and, without a doubt, you are going to find things that
escaped us and more than one. You may think that the facts are different,
although they will tend to indicate the same.
This is the wealth of the Myth.
For this the Myth is alive and omnipresent.
Returning to Oedipus... all the women are mothers and
all the children are sons. This is only one of the meanings. This is not only
the boy, the father and the mother, this is a joint, a human being in front of
its opposed complementary, external and interior or the human being in front of
the problem of the knowledge. But also the woman in front of the man because to
the woman, it happens exactly the same, what it happen are that are talked
about the Myth of Oedipus because the Psychoanalysis, according to my way of
seeing, sustain a machoist position.
However, to the woman occurs exactly the same, the
seductive man, almighty and the man that evidences with little masculine
characteristic because it is more grasped to be a kind of a Yocasta in
masculine, a whole problematic Doxa that happen triangularly to similar
conclusions.
QUESTION: "Didn't I see so clear this last?"
ANSWER: I was saying that the oedipal problem, if it
wouldn't be oedipal and that it are referred to the masculine in his
confrontation with the feminine it could be taken in the inverse form, like the
feminine in her confrontation with the masculine, what it happen are that the
Myth that we took is that of Oedipus specifically, then it are making
reference to the first problematic.
Meanwhile I was thinking of Antigona. We in this could
explain what it would be the inverse problem but symmetrical with Oedipus, and
then there another more critic arises that unfortunately is necessary to make:
-the not consideration of the feminine point of view in the Psychoanalysis.
Jung did it when he defined and explained the Complex
of Electra, we In Psychoanalysis fall in a machoist reductionism, for
example:
Why are considered only the phallus phase, or other
concepts like the castration or the envy of the penis?
However it has an effect more than casual the fact
that most of the staunch defenders of the orthodox Psychoanalysis are women.
This is very curious and it would be necessary to analyse it in any moment, it
is a very serious problem mainly now that is flourishing a stage of
economic-partner-cultural changes, but I believe that woman would have to
rethink a little more which they will be the sources of the thought's
formation, alternative sources. One of the critics about this, carried out in
the famous Wednesday's meetings on to which the first members followers of the
Psychoanalysis was assisting was that from Alfred Adler, who said that:
"The
Humanity could not gives it the luxury of having sub-ordinates to the half of
its population during much time"...
He in that moment was not successful.
It was necessary to come to come later figures like M.
Klein or H. Deutsch in order to page and more or less put it legible something
that was the theoretical structure and that it was put the woman in a lacking
situation, but the paging sounds me as patches, at least to my, because... we
then accepted the problem of the castration, but we prefix it that of the
jagged vagina, or the envy of the pregnancy to that of the penis.
I believe that woman, as human being, would have to
have clearer which is the levelling Psychology and, at the same time
recognitive of the differences but not submissive.
The Psychoanalysis, at least with it presented us in
its first times, is a Psychology that lack to the woman, there is a very
interesting sentence of Freud about the inscrutability of the feminine
Psycho-logy, for which he was put her outside of the of his object's studies.
QUESTION -"There is a book of any Argentinean
Psychology, that is called the sons of Yocasta, that it is
a little the answer to Freud and didn't I read it?,
but saw that is it something as well as the feminine answer to Freud. It was
speaking something about the mark of the mother instead of the mark of the
father. The concrete in Psychoanalysis is that of the Father, the problem of
the father."
ANSWER: That is the concrete. The Psychoanalysis talks
about the function of the father, even Freud, recognises that woman's
psychology is extremely complex, how he said.
QUESTION: Now taking the Jungian Psychology, there are
differences between man and woman?
ANSWER: "Of course... Basic differences, but also
it is necessary to see the differences inside of a sole one and complementary
unit. So much it is one indispensable and necessary in order to give purpose to
the other, it is not possible to differentiate and understand the Ying without
the Yang, or the day without the night, neither the
Animus without the Anima and vice versa. That is why
it should not prioritise an aspect for on the other, both are an intimate monad,
in order to use a term of Leibnitz.
In general features, the Animus acts while the Anima
feels, and seek to privilege some of these aspects for on the other is simply
absurdity.
In order to finish wants to reiterate you my
gratefulness by having stayed until this hour to listening to me.
I don't want to say goodbye without mentioning that
this is the first time in the University of Buenos Aires, in the School of
Psychology that are dedicated a space to the Jungian Thought completely, and
this is without a doubt a sign.
It indicates that the winds of change are in the air…
Thanks.
