Zjawiska psychotyczne w Heraklesie Eurypidesa
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Date
2011
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Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk
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Psychotic phenomena in Euripides’ Heracles
Abstract
The article is an attempt of psychoanalytic interpretation of the Euripidean Heracles. The theory used to explain
psychological phenomena of the play is Melanie Klein’s concept of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive
position, as well as contributions to the understanding of psychotic thinking made by her followers: Hanna
Segal, Wilfred Bion, Herbert Rosenfeld and John Steiner. Characters in the play, in their speech and behavior,
as well as chorus’ songs, reveal significant number of primitive psychological mechanisms, such as splitting,
denial, idealization and projective identification. The analysis of those mechanisms expressed in literary material
allows to see the much argued continuity of Euripides’ extraordinary play.
Description
Euripides’ Heracles has drawn the attention of numerous scholars, since Willamowitz’s excellent
commentary on the play. The play has been seen as lacking unity, full of contradictions, incoherent,
bizzarre even. Later critics tried to show structural unity, especially by analyzing recurrent
motifs and ideas. The madness was being explained by Willamowitz, Verrall, Pohlenz, Grube and
others with reference to Heracles’ inner process, of a “megalomaniac” character. Such psychological
interpretations of madness were widely questioned in the second half of the 20th century, and
Heracles himself provoked extreme reactions and opinions of scholars. In the article Heracles’
madness is considered a central theme of the play, expressed both in the fragmented and split
structure of it and in the contradictions and bizzarre elements within the tragedy. I used Melanie Klein’s (especially, the concepts of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions as well as of
primitive defense mechanisms) and her followers’ (especially, Segal’s notes on symbol formation
and Bion’s theory of psychotic thinking) theory to show the essentially psychotic character of the
play. The dramatis personae, in their behavior and words manifest such psychotic mechanisms
as splitting, denial, idealization, projective identification, omnipotent control as well as primitive
envy. The gods can be seen as projections of Heracles and other characters, as well as of the common
unconscious space of the play (“the analytical third” of the tragedy, to use Thomas Ogden’s
concept). The climactic Heracles’ madness is understood as a breakdown of psychotic defense
mechanisms, cause by intense, yet split off, envy and by a powerful threat to dependent parts of
the self, symbolized in Heracles’ children and wife. The whole tragedy is a way from the world
of fantasy, gods, underworld towards more realist world of human beings and their relationships,
which in Kleinianism can be conceptualized as a movement from the paranoid-schizoid position
to the depressive one.
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Keywords
Greek tragedy, Euripides, Heracles, Kleinian psychoanalysis, Madness, Psychosis
Citation
Symbolae Philologorum Posnaniensium, 2011, nr XXI/2, s. 109-143
Seria
ISBN
978-83-7654-181-5
ISSN
0302-7384