Oedipus the king: Quest for self‐knowledge – denial of reality. Sophocles’ vision of man and psychoanalytic concept formation

In the Oedipus myth we find a dramatic representation of the child’s passionate ties to its parents. In the play Oedipus the King, Sophocles relates the theme of the myth to the question of self‐knowledge. This was the predominant reading in German 19th century thinking, and even as a student Freud was fascinated by Oedipus’ character – not primarily as the protagonist of an oedipal drama, but as the solver of divine riddles and as an individual striving for self‐knowledge. Inspired by Vellacott, Steiner has proposed an alternative reading of Oedipus the King as a play about a cover‐up of the truth. The text supports both these arguments. The pivotal theme of the tragedy is Oedipus’ conflict between his desire to know himself and his opposing wish to cover up the truth that will bring disaster. It is this complex character of Oedipus and the intensity of his conflict‐ridden struggle for self‐knowledge that has made the tragedy to a rich source of inspiration for psychoanalytic concept formation and understanding both of emotional and cognitive development up to our own time.     

Understanding Jung: recent biographies and scholarship

The tendency to associate Jung with Freud has undergone a change and both are increasingly perceived as founders of depth psychological schools whose exact relationship is unclear. The separation of the two was largely due to Jung's rejection by the psychoanalytic community because of his perceived spiritual inclinations. Recent scholarship has emphasized these spiritual inclinations in both a positive and negative way and brought to light Jung's non-Freudian sources, while other Jungian practitioners are seeking a closer association with psychoanalysis. This conflicting development is related to tendencies in Jung himself that are evident in his own life and in research conducted into the writing and publication of Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Though the status of the latter as Jung's autobiography has been called into question there remains the necessity to explain the myth of Jung's life enshrined there and the impact this has had on a public looking for meaning in a time of considerable change.     

Jung and Pauli

In his early theories of the structure of the psyche, psychic energy and psychodynamics, Jung was influenced by William James's understanding of the complementary insights of depth psychology and the discoveries of subatomic physics, and his concept of field in physics and the study of the subconscious. In his relationship with Freud, Jung initially struggled with a sexually-based drive theory. But he gradually came to conceive libido as a quantitative concept, a psychic analogue of physical energy. In their own languages, both C. G. Jung and Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli explored the evolution of scientific thought from the naive insights about process in alchemy through Newtonian causality, space-time theories of relativity to quantum mechanics. Jung had access to thirteen hundred of Pauli's dreams. The first four hundred were basis for his research into alchemical symbolism in a modern psyche. In a later collaboration, Pauli supported Jung's synchronicity principle as scientific, and Jung fostered Pauli's understanding of the archetypal and collective factors in the psyche. They each explored the interconnections between the energies of psyche and matter, and the possibilities of acausal order and synchronicity. Pauli's ground-breaking discoveries gave scientific demonstration of alchemical intuitions. Through him, alchemical and archetypal insights entered the discourse of physics. Through Jung, the apprehensions of microphysics entered our psychological language and thought.     

The Alchemical Oedipus: Re-Visioning the Myth

The Oedipus myth is foundational to depth psychology due to Freud’s use of Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex in the creation of psychoanalysis. But analytical psychology’s engagement with the myth has been limited despite the importance Jung also places upon it. The absence of a developed Jungian response to Oedipus means the myth’s psychologically constructive elements have been overlooked in favour of reductive Freudian interpretations. I examine whether analytical psychology can fruitfully re-engage with Oedipus by reinterpreting his story as a paternal rebirth. This is achieved by reincorporating those parts of the myth that occur before and after the period portrayed in Oedipus Rex. Such a move reintegrates Oedipus’ father, King Laius, into the story and unveils important parallels with the alchemical trope of the king’s renewal by his son. Using Jung’s method of amplification, Oedipus is recast as Laius’ redeemer and identified with the archetype of psychological wholeness, the Self. The contention is that such an understanding of Oedipus supports a clearer recognition of the potentially generative quality of human suffering, restoring to the myth the quality of moral instruction it possessed in antiquity.     

Sándor Ferenczi und der Institutionskonflikt der Psychoanalyse

By the foundation of the International Psychoanalytical Association by Freud, Jung and Ferenczi the “psychoanalytic movement” joined into regulated tracks. Thus, the project “Psychoanalysis”, a project in the spirit of the “Aufklärung”, which had prescribed itself to individualistic autonomy, got into breach. In this contribution the reasons are reflected in regard to the establishment as non-university science and the threat of marginalization. They objected Freud’s pretension of influence and belonging. It is unclear why it was explicitly Sándor Ferenczi who was designated to be the precursor of that foundation. He was initially a critical opponent of Freud’s thoughts. His biography illustrates that the institutionalization of psychoanalysis happened too early and that this brought scientific isolation and personal distress over his life when, at the end of his life, he strived for emanzipation in his relationship to Freud.     

FREUD'S PRIVATE MINI-MONOGRAPH ON HIS OWN DREAMS: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENARY OF THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

A virtually unknown brief commentary by Freud on the characteristics of his own dreams is described and discussed. Freud's mini-monograph, discovered after some 80 years, has autobiographical, theoretical and organisational significance in the enigmatic context of the early development of psychoanalysis. Found among papers of Alfred Adler, this extraordinary document adds to our knowledge of psychoanalytic history, including the significance of dreams in the evolution of psychoanalytic thought. Freud's commentary permitted the identification of a particular dream as his own. This dream had been presented in anonymity to the fledgling Vienna Psychoanalytic Society for interpretation. The dream was later inserted, again anonymously, into The Interpretation of Dreams with Freud's own remarkable pre-oedipal interpretation. Freud's conflicted relationships with Adler and Jung are considered in historical context.     

Reading Loewald: Oedipus reconceived

Loewald's 'Waning of the Oedipus complex' is a watershed paper in the history of psychoanalytic thought. By means of a close reading of Loewald's paper, the author frames, discusses and clinically illustrates his understanding of Loewald's reconceptualization of the Oedipus complex. The principal elements of Loewald's reformulation include: 1) the idea that the tension between the pressures of parental infl uence and the child's innate need to establish his own capacities for originality lies at the core of the Oedipus complex; 2) the notion that oedipal parricide is driven, most fundamentally, by the child's 'urge for emancipation.' Parricide involves a revolt against, and an appropriation of, parental authority; 3) the idea that the child atones for the act of parricide by internalizing a transformed version of the child's experience of the oedipal parents. This results in an alteration of the very structure of the child's self (i.e. in the formation of the superego as the agency of autonomy and responsibility); 4) the notion that, in the child's appropriation of parental authority, he in reality 'kill[s] something vital in them [thus] contributing to their dying' and to the succession of generations; and 5) the idea that the incestuous component of the Oedipus complex involves, in health, the creation of a transitional incestuous object relationship which, over the course of one's life, mediates the interplay between undifferentiated and differentiated aspects of self and relatedness to others. The author concludes with a comparison of Freud's and Loewald's conceptions of the Oedipus complex.     

Response to John Beebe

This paper briefly describes the history of the professional interaction between psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists in the United States. There has been little public contact between the two groups since the personal feud between Freud and Jung has beer carried forth to the present generation of analysts. The relationship between Otto Rank and Freud and his circle demonstrated many of the same dynamics that were activated between Freud and Jung, who had broken off their relationship ten years earlier; this paper highlights the similarities between Jung's, then Rank's, exile from the psychoanalytic group, Jung's interest in spiritual matters, including his interest in the nature of religious experience, and his questionable dealing with the Nazis during the 1930s have been the stated reason for the taboo set against Jung's writings. Presently there seems to be a growing realization that there are large areas of mutual interest, and both the similarities and differences between the schools need further exploration.     

The empiricist as rebel: Jung,Freud, and the burdens of discipleship

However little they share in common, both Freudian and Jungian commentators have long agreed that Jung's theoretical development in the years following his psychoanalytic affiliation prompted an open “split” with Freud and the psychoanalytic movement. Careful examination of Jung's principal “rebel” works does not sustain this thesis, however, but rather indicates Jung's honest belief that his limited appropriation of certain psychoanalytic mechanisms and attendant theoretical modifications constituted full-fledged loyalty to psychoanalysis as he understood it. This perception receives significant support from the Freud-Jung correspondence which reveals Jung openly articulating the ground rules defining his loyalty to psychoanalysis as early as 1906, and Freud accepting, and even approving, his protégé's empirical reservations over the course of the next five years.     

Integration versus conflict between schools of dream theory and dreamwork: integrating the psychological core qualities of dreams with the contemporary knowledge of the dreaming brain

The various ways schools of psychotherapy relate to dreams have been marked by isolationism and mutual conflict rather than self-examination and then integrating the discoveries and methods of other schools. Jung’s method was in opposition to Freud’s psychoanalysis. Existential psychology was dismissive of Freud’s and Jung’s discoveries, while cognitive dream interpretation and cognitive therapy sought other roads entirely. In addition, scientific and neuropsychological dream research has been only insignificantly tied to the psychotherapeutic dream theories. These conflicts and the lack of a comprehensive dream theory has made it convenient for the current rationalist collective consciousness and treatment systems to reject the often times challenging knowledge about ourselves that dreams can provide. This paper describes how contemporary theories of complex cybernetic information networks can create an overriding, constructive framework for uncovering common traits within the above-mentioned branches of dream research and dreamwork. Within this framework, ten core qualities are delineated, supported by both therapeutic knowledge as well as scientific research: 1) Dreams deal with matters important to us; 2) Dreams symbolize; 3) Dreams personify; 4) Dreams are trial runs in a safe place; 5) Dreams are online to unconscious intelligence; 6) Dreams are pattern recognition; 7) Dreams are high level communication; 8) Dreams are condensed information; 9) Dreams are experiences of wholeness; 10) Dreams are psychological energy landscapes. For each core quality I describe short dreamwork sequences from my own practice and a schematic image of how I perceive the overriding interaction between systems in the dreaming brain. For each core quality recommendations for practical dreamwork are provided. Finally, I draw attention to dreams as a huge psychological resource for humankind.     

Unconscious fantasy and the development of myths in psychoanalytic theories on the differences between the sexes

By transforming psychoanalytic theories about gender difference (Freud, Jung, Chodorow and others) into the category of unconscious fantasy, the dialectic enlightenment and remythologization within these theories can be made manifest. The conception of an intact primary relationship in the case of each gender is postulated as the common nucleus.     

Attitudes toward the unconscious

As a keynote to a conference bringing together psychoanalysts and analytical psychologists, this paper addresses different mythic attitudes toward the unconscious, Starting with the caricatures of Oedipus and Narcissus that the author feels Jung and Freud originally projected onto each Other in the course of their quarrel. He moves on to the fairytale-like stories of Perseus and Beauty and the Beast to discover mote complex images of the stance taken in relation to the unconscious by present-day analysts: working within both die Jungian and the Freudian traditions.     

On the need of fundaments in psychoanalytic thinking

The questions concerning the foundations of psychoanalytic knowledge have been pressing from the beginning. Beside as a therapeutic practice, Freud conceived psychoanalysis as a science, maintaining that like other sciences psychoanalysis should have sound empirical and conceptual fundaments. Freud claimed that there is an inseparable bond (ein Junktim) between cure and acquiring knowledge in psychoanalysis. One of his aims in developing a metapsychology (analogously to metaphysics) was to explicate the conceptual structure of psychoanalytic knowledge. After Freud psychoanalysts have not reached a consensus in the questions concerning the foundations. What kind of foundations does psychoanalytic knowledge need? Are they to be found from the psychoanalytic practice and research on the couch, or rather from metapsychological constructions? In what way should psychoanalysis rely on external scientific research? The article addresses these questions, arguing that even though psychoanalytic work and knowledge do gain justification from various external sources, in the end psychoanalysis stands on its own foundations. It is further argued that especially under the prevailing plurality of theoretical and clinical approaches, psychoanalysis does not have – and does not need – a foundation that could not be further questioned. Thus a coherentist picture of psychoanalysis is defended.     

MOURNING,DREAMING, AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

The author argues that the structure of mourning and the structure of the Oedipus complex are triadic, the latter being obvious and easy to conceptualize, while the former is quite subtle. When it is the father who is mourned, the son must repeatedly invoke the dead object so that libidinal cathexis can be reinvested in living objects. Such was the situation in which Freud found himself in 1896 when his father died—the triadic nature of the Oedipus complex ironically not yet discovered by him. In the author's belief, Freud's mourning and his attendant rich dream life occurring between 1896 and 1897 gave him access to the unconscious raw material that would eventually help him conceptualize the triadic structure at the instinctual core of the Oedipus complex.     

Book Reviews

L iliane F hey -R ohn : Von Freud zu Jung (From Freud to Jung)
W illiam W illeford : The fool and his scepter
M oreno , M. Psicodinamica della Contestazione (Psychodynamics of the Student revolt)
A nna F reud , H einz H artmann et al.: The psychoanalytic study of the child , Vol. XXIV
E rnst L. F reud (Ed.): The letters of Sigmund Freud and Arnold Zweig , translated by Professor and Mrs W. D. Robson-Scott
P aul R oazen : Brother animal: the story of Freud and Tausk
D. L. B urnham , A. I. G ladstone , R. W. G ibson : Schizophrenia and the need-fear dilemma
W illiam B itter : Der Verlust der Seele (Loss of Soul)
J. D. S utherland and H. S. G ill : Language and psychodynamic appraisal     

Opicinus de Canistris: some notes from Jung's unpublished Eranos Seminar on the medieval Codex Palatinus Latinus 1993

Abstract: Jung held an informal seminar for a limited number of students after the end of the Eranos Conference in August, 1943. All traces of this seminar were lost until the notes taken on it by one of the students, Alwine von Keller, were found in 2006. Jung's talk consisted of a psychological commentary on a series of images in the medieval Codex Palatinus Latinus 1993, attributed to Opicinus de Canistris (1296‐c.1352), a fourteenth‐century Italian clergyman, mystic, miniaturist, and cartographer. Jung interpreted Opicinus’ images as a series of mandalas in which the Shadow, the dark principle, does not manage to be integrated into a balanced system. Opicinus tried to settle this division into opposites, which constitutes the main problem in modern times, while remaining inside the system of Christian doctrine. However, he did not succeed in his attempt to integrate the principle of the Shadow on the doctrinal level because he was not aware of the very same division in his own unconscious. Our article points out the features in the seminar where Jung seemed to show much more originality in his interpretation than other psychoanalytic studies on Opicinus or other analytical‐psychological readings of medieval Christian art.     

The story of an ambivalent relationship: Sigmund Freud and Eugen Bleuler

This paper examines the short-lived flirtation between psychoanalysis and academia and psychiatry in Europe and the reasons for, and consequences of, the fact that their paths diverged. It is argued that Bleuler's break with the psychoanalytic movement is a crucial and, until now, largely underestimated turning point. Bleuler's separation from the psychoanalytic movement was probably more important for the course it has since taken than those of Adler, Stekel, or even Jung. Bleuler's analysis by correspondence by Freud, and its failure, was of paramount importance for the future relationship between Freud and Bleuler, and for Bleuler's assessment of psychoanalysis.     

Treatment of families in conflict: Recurrent themes in literature and clinical practice

This article undertakes to demonstrate, through works of great literature throughout the ages, that our best writers have always understood the primacy and linkages between individual growth, character and destiny, and the context of the various living systems that impinge upon each individual, the primary context being the family of origin. Beginning with the immortal classic, theSophoclean Trilogy, which inspired Freud's use of the major character's name in these three dramas, Oedipus has been used to explain the psychological complex which Freud regarded as universal. The author in this article finds a rather different point of view borne out by these same dramas, as well as in the other literary works cited. It is the discovery that the identified patient is not Oedipus, but his natural and adoptive families.This often-quoted classic in family therapy literature is slightly revised and reprinted, with permission, fromNew Directions in Mental Health, NY: Grune & Stratton, 1968.     

Jung's Lament

This article has two premises. First, that depth psychology is more an art than a science, and second, that expanding imagination is the primary method of therapy. Both Jung and Freud considered themselves scientists, yet both had ambivalent relationships with artists and writers. Freud was given the Goethe award for literature and never the Nobel Prize for medicine, whereas Jung was confronted by both his anima and Herbert Read concerning his devaluation of his own artistic direction as well as of modern art generally. I am proposing through the article's fictional style, that in this age of evidenced-based medicine, we, as therapists, have much more to learn from writers and their fictional stories than from the abstract fantasies of science. I believe we have made an error in our field by turning so completely to developmental theories and object-relation theorists for our method. Jung hinted as early as 1916, in his paper “The Transcendent Function,” that there was a way of engaging the soul directly and allowing its voice and character to emerge. I am proposing that if we truly believe that the psyche is autonomous, then all therapy should be an encounter with “the other.” If this were the case, then active imagination could be developed as a wider and more inclusive method.

Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.

―Sigmund Freud     

Oedipus and Cain: Brothers in arms

Abstract

It is widely known that Freud gives Oedipus a central place in both his psychoanalytic theory and praxis. Freud introduces the Oedipus myth as the crucial key for understanding the tragedy of human life. One of the most problematic issues innate to the human condition is aggression. This paper argues: (1) that Freud's insights into human aggression can at the very least be viewed as one-sided and problematic; and (2) that the heuristic potential of the Oedipus myth is, correspondingly, limited. It considers how the Hungarian psychiatrist and analyst, Lipót Szondi, tries to bridge this gap using the myth of Cain and Abel. The aim of this paper is to explore how Szondi's interpretation of this myth offers a much more subtle approach to human aggression. Szondi's alternative and distinctive look at aggressive phenomena offers an exciting and fruitful addition to Freud's interpretation as exclusively referring to sadism and/or the death instinct. This contribution wants to highlight Szondi's amendment to Freud's Oedipus and aims to show that psychoanalysis can benefit from taking into account the mythical figures of Cain and Abel.