Myth and Psychoanalysis

The myths of Oedipus, Prometheus and Antigone are proof that without classical mythology there would be no psychoanalysis. Freud is one of the main psychoanalytic theorists of all time. He brought the analysis of the psyche and the analysis of the mind together to form psychoanalysis. Freud's analysis of Sophecles' Oedipus is his most prominent and famous piece of work because it has made the greatest impact on society. Freud seemed to be more fascinated by the context of the myth more than anything else which involved the main character, Oedipus, killing his father and marrying his mother. This lead Freud to famously claim that, '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.' This shows Freud using this myth as a tool to explain the working of man's psyche. The self blinding of Oedipus in the myth could symbolise our ignorance and blindness to our unconscious desires or maybe our deliberate refusal to acknowledge them.

 The myth of Prometheus was also analysed by Freud, in this myth there is also a resentment shown towards a father figure because Prometheus resents Zeus (the father of the gods). In the scholarly article 'Freud on Prometheus', the symbolic meanings of certain aspects of the myth are brought to light. The first is the fennel stalk that Prometheus keeps the fire in; according to Freud this represents a penis. His reasons for this connection with a penis are that by reversing what is kept in the fennel stalk (fire), you end up with water. The penis is the organ used to evacuate water from the body, therefore according to Freud the fennel stalk is a symbol for a penis. In my opinion this theory is not convincing enough, it seems as though he has relied on the idea of opposites in order to make his theory seem legitimate.

One of the key questions that arises from Freud’s invention of psychoanalysis is what if psychoanalysis had chosen another myth? If Freud has chosen for example the myth of Antigone then our understanding of psychoanalysis would be very different in more than one way. Firstly the key themes in Antigone differ to those in Oedipus. In Antigone we see women going against men, religion against law and individual against sate. These themes concentrate more on the politics of the developing psyche which contrast with the themes of Oedipus which concentrate on impulses and drives. Therefore if Freud had chosen Antigone, psychoanalysis would be more concerned with ethics and responsibility. The second way in which choosing this myth would have changed psychoanalysis would be that Freud would have paid closer attention to the female psyche. The reason for this is due to the fact the character of Antigone is such a strong character in the myth that Freud would have been forced to include her in his analysis. However as we can see from the way that he totally ignored Jocastas suicide when it came to analysing the Oedipus myth and in his subsequent Oedipus complex theory it was probably a deliberate decision not to choose the myth of Antigone. This may have been due to his old fashioned and sexist attitude, which would mean that he would not have wanted to promote female behaviour in a positive way.