CERTAIN OF the myths that were crucial to the Greek psyche came to be acted out in religious ritual and later in the drama. The tragic drama seems to have emerged out of a ritual in the worship of Dionysus—the acting out, in some simple way, of his myth. While watching the drama, the spectators became identified with the mythical happening being portrayed, which allowed them to participate briefly in the archetypal level of reality. We know from psychotherapeutic experience that an encounter with the archetypal dimension can have healing and transformative effects, and in this respect drama has many parallels to dreams, serving something of the same purpose for the collective psyche that dreams do for the individual. Aristotle described the effect of watching tragedy as a catharsis in which one has the opportunity to release the emotions of pity and fear.1 Just as a possessed person is calmed by the playing of frenzied music, so sad and anxious people are relieved by seeing the emotions that grip them acted out. Thus, the play functions as a mirror that provides an image to objectify the inner affect.
Modern psychology can add another aspect to our understanding of the significance of tragic drama. The tragic hero depicts the ego undergoing individuation, which in part is a tragic process. We can define individuation as the ego’s progressive awareness of and relation to the Self, but, as Jung has pointed out, “the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego,”2 and a defeat for the ego is experienced as tragedy.
Gilbert Murray has given us a valuable description of the origin and basic features of classical tragedy.3 It is his view that Greek tragedy originated as the ritual reenactment of the death and rebirth of the year-spirit (equated with Dionysus) and that this reenactment had four chief features. First came an agon, or contest, in which the protagonist, the representative of the year-spirit, finds himself in conflict with darkness or evil. There followed a pathos, or passion, in which the hero undergoes suffering and defeat, after which a threnos, or lamentation, for the defeated hero was enacted. And finally a theophany pictured a rebirth of life on another level with a reversal of emotion from sorrow to joy. This sequence compares closely with the ritual drama of Osiris and of Christ, each of which possesses the characteristic features of the death and rebirth of the year-spirit. In later Greek tragedy the theophany all but disappears, remaining only as a hint. In psychological terms we can say that the tragic process involves the overcoming of the ego, or the defeat of the conscious will, as preparation for the final epiphany, the appearance of the Self.
The Shakespearean scholar A. C. Bradley speaks of the tragic hero in terms of a fatal flaw. This corresponds to what Jungian psychology knows as the problem of the inferior function, a recognition of the fact that one side of the circle of the personality always remains undeveloped and open to the depths. The so-called “fatal flaw” is thus a typical feature of the individual psyche. Bradley also speaks of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes as having “a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of mind.”4 This, likewise, is a well-known psychological phenomenon in which the ego identifies with the superior function; but that identification with its greatest strength is ultimately followed by a descent into its greatest weakness.
Bradley has a description of tragedy that is relevant here. He writes:
[In Shakespearean tragedy, man] may be wretched and he may be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-rending and mysterious, but it is not contemptible. The most confirmed of cynics ceases to be a cynic while he reads these plays. And with this greatness of the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected, secondly, what I venture to describe as the center of the tragic impression. This central feeling is the impression of waste. With Shakespeare, at any rate, the pity and fear which are stirred by the tragic story seem to unite with, and even to merge in, a profound sense of sadness and mystery, which is due to this impression of waste. “What a piece of work is man,” we cry, “so much more beautiful and so much more terrible than we knew! Why should he be so if this beauty and greatness only tortures itself and throws itself away?” We seem to have before us a type of the mystery of the whole world, the tragic fact which extends far beyond the limits of tragedy. Everywhere, from the crushed rocks beneath our feet to the soul of man, we see power, intelligence, life and glory, which astound us and seem to call for our worship. And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another and destroying themselves, often with dreadful pain, as though they came into being for no other end. Tragedy is the typical form of this mystery, because the greatness of soul which it exhibits, oppressed, conflicting and destroyed, is the highest existence in our view. It forces the mystery upon us, and it makes us realize so vividly the worth of that which is wasted. . . . 5
Bradley expresses vividly how the fourth phase of the ritual drama of the year-spirit, the theophany, while no longer in the drama itself, is transferred to the experience of the spectators. In viewing the tragedy, the spectators become aware of the transpersonal worth of man; they become the ground, so to speak, on which the theophany is experienced.
This ancient sequence of four stages—the contest, the defeat, the lamentation, and the theophany—is found in all important processes of psychological development and certainly in every psychotherapeutic process that delves at all deeply. At times a given phase may repeat itself; as long as the agon ends in success, for example, the process will not go any further, having been short-circuited, so to speak; the happy victor leaves the scene little knowing he has missed the main experience. But no one has perpetual success; sooner or later defeat does come, and that then leads to further development and to the possibility of completion of the sequence.
Let us examine the two Oedipus plays of Sophocles, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, as examples of the tragic process. These plays hold particular significance to depth psychology because Oedipus became the first archetype to be discovered when Freud made the important observation that this archetype can give rise to a complex, the Oedipus complex. Since then we have learned that any archetypal image can manifest itself as a personal complex in the individual psyche, showing that other tragic figures besides Oedipus can be at the root of psychic complexes.
Oedipus the King begins in the middle of the story and requires an introduction to bring the reader up to that moment. Because of an oracle’s prophecy that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother, Oedipus was abandoned at birth and left for dead, but unbeknownst to his parents, a shepherd rescued him and took him to the king of Corinth, who adopted him and reared him in his own house. Some fifteen years before the opening of the play, Oedipus learned from the oracle at Delphi that he was destined to murder his father and marry his mother. He determined never to return to Corinth, whose king and queen he believed to be his parents. His wanderings eventually brought him by chance to the city of Thebes, where his true father and mother reigned. On the way there, he had brawled over the right of way with an old man in a carriage and in a fit of temper killed him, and arriving at Thebes, he found the city in an uproar because the king, Laius, had gone on a journey and never returned. Meanwhile, a female monster, the Sphinx, had taken up a position on a rock outside Thebes and was strangling the inhabitants one by one when they were unable to answer her riddle. Oedipus answered it, and the Sphinx threw herself from the rock. The citizens in gratitude made Oedipus their king and he married Jocasta, their widowed queen. No one, least of all Oedipus, suspected that Jocasta was his real mother and that the old man he had killed on the road was Laius, his father, thus fulfilling the prophecy. There followed fifteen years of apparent prosperity, but then, because the gods were disgusted by the corrupt situation, Thebes was struck by a plague. The people, led by their priests and elders, flocked around the great Oedipus imploring him to save them. This is where the play begins.
FIG. 22. Young Oedipus ponders the sphinx’s riddle. (Detail of an Attic cup, c. 470 BC. Vatican Museum, Rome. Photo: Alinari/Art Resource, New York.)
As the drama opens Oedipus is in his prime. He signifies the successful, confident ego that thinks it has met life well, overcome its problems (represented by the Sphinx), and has nothing more to fear. Concerning this overconfidence, Jung writes,
[The] tragic consequences . . . could easily have been avoided if only Oedipus had been sufficiently intimidated by the frightening appearance of the “terrible” or “devouring” Mother whom the Sphinx personified. . . . Little did he know that the riddle of the Sphinx can never be solved merely by the wit of man. . . . A factor of such magnitude cannot be disposed of by solving a childish riddle. The riddle was, in fact, a trap which the Sphinx laid for the unwary wanderer. Overestimating his intellect in a typically masculine way, Oedipus walked right into it . . . 6
Oedipus’ illusory state of well-being is interrupted by an outbreak of the plague. He is told:
. . . look upon the city, see the storm
that batters down this city’s prow in waves of blood:
The crops diseased, disease among the herds.
The ineffectual womb rotting with its fruit.
A fever-demon wastes the town
and decimates with fire, stalking hated
through the emptied house where Cadmus dwelled:
While poverty-stricken night grows fat on groans and elegies in Hades’ Halls.7
The theme of the diseased or barren land, which also appears in the beginning of the Grail legend, has its psychological counterpart in a state of depression, a loss of energy, interest, and life-meaning, a neurotic condition requiring action, and Oedipus, the ego, is called upon to do something about it.
So, Oedipus, you most respected king,
we plead with you to find for us a cure:
Some answer breathed from heaven, perhaps,
or even enlightenment from man . . .
Mend the city, make her safe. . . .
Be equal to your stature now.
If king of men (as king you are),
then be it of a kingdom manned and not a desert.8
Oedipus resolutely sets out to discover what is wrong. In psychological terms, a distressing problem that needs attention has arisen, the first appearance of a symptom. Realizing he must act, the individual may enter psychotherapy. In the play Oedipus sends Creon to consult the oracle at Delphi. The message that comes back is, “Banish the murderer of Laius.” In psychotherapy, the unconscious is consulted, perhaps by examining dreams, and the answer that comes may be to bring the guilty one to justice, which is to say in other words, the shadow, the unknown dark side of the personality, must be made conscious. Oedipus readily agrees to this procedure; the evil is his own, but he still naively imagines himself innocent.
Teiresias the seer is called; that is, the unconscious is consulted again on another level. Replies to his questions are gradually forced out of Teiresias by Oedipus, but when the incriminating evidence first appears Oedipus accuses Teiresias and Creon of the crime—the first emerging awareness of the shadow leads to its projection. But that cannot be sustained, and Oedipus’ origin gradually unfolds as he seeks it out. The shepherd who rescued him as an infant is found and questioned and Oedipus learns that he is, in fact, Jocasta’s child. Hearing the dreadful truth, Jocasta disappears into the palace. Finally and cataclysmically insight bursts upon Oedipus. Awareness of his identity and his guilt conjoined rushes in on him and he cries:
Lost! Ah lost! At last it’s blazing clear.
Light of my days, go dark. I want to gaze no more.
My birth all sprung revealed from those it never should;
Myself entwined with those I never could;
And I the killer of those I never would.9
He rushes into the palace, sees Jocasta, who has hanged herself, and blinds himself with the pins of Jocasta’s brooches. The symbol of blindness plays an important role in the Oedipus dramas. It is paradoxical. At the moment that Oedipus sees himself as he really is, he blinds himself. Earlier Teiresias had said to him,
I’m blind, you say; you mock at that!
I say you see and still are blind—appallingly:
Blind to your origins and to a union in your house.
Yes, ask yourself where you are from?
You’d never guess what hate is dormant in your home
or buried with your dear ones dead,
or how a mother’s and a father’s curse
Will one day scourge you with its double thongs
and whip you staggering from the land.
It shall be night where now you boast the day.10
When Oedipus can see physically, he is blind psychologically; and as he comes to see psychologically, he becomes blind physically. Echoing this paradoxical symbolism is the fact that Teiresias the seer is blind, indicating that sight of one kind is deleterious to sight of another kind—as though inner and outer sight work reciprocally.
Let us consider the nature of Oedipus’ insight. He discovered literally that he had murdered his father and married his mother, probably the worst crimes of which ancient man could conceive. Psychologically, the precise content of the sinfulness is not essential; the content can vary in different circumstances and still the basic Oedipus experience is the same. In a single moment, Oedipus discovered both his identity and his guilt, thus experiencing for himself the teaching of traditional Christianity, that man is a miserable sinner. In psychological terms, Oedipus was overwhelmed by a sudden realization of the shadow, and the intensity of his reaction indicates that he had encountered not the personal shadow but the archetypal shadow. There is an echo of Oedipus’ self-horror in John Bunyan’s description of his own self-loathing:
But my original and inward pollution, that was my plague and my affliction. . . . By reason of that, I was more loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad; and I thought I was in God’s eyes too. Sin and corruption, I said, would as naturally bubble out of my heart as water would bubble out of a fountain. . . . I could have changed heart with anybody. I thought none but the Devil himself could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution of mind. . . . I was both a burden and a terror to myself; nor did I ever so know, as now, what it was to be weary of my life, and yet afraid to die. How gladly would I have been anything but myself! Anything but a man! And in any condition but my own.11
This must reflect quite closely what Oedipus felt when the shattering truth dawned on him. It is the experience of extreme shadow awareness that potentially can lead into its opposite, as Meister Eckhart insisted, saying that if I find myself completely empty, totally devoid of worth, God has to flow in and fill me up; He doesn’t have any choice. Martin Luther expresses a similar idea when he says:
God works by contraries. So that a man feels himself to be lost in the very moment when he is on the point of being saved. When God is about to justify a man, he damns him. Whom he would make alive he must first kill. God’s favor is so communicated in the form of wrath that it seems furthest when it is at hand. Man must first cry out that there is no health in him. He must be consumed with horror. This is the pain of purgatory. . . . In this disturbance salvation begins. When a man believes himself to be utterly lost, light breaks.12
Oedipus the King ends with the total defeat of Oedipus. There is no theophany, which is reserved for Oedipus at Colonus, the second part of the drama and remarkably similar to part two of Faust. As the second play opens, Oedipus has long been banished from Thebes and is wandering from place to place, guided by his daughter. Characteristic of one stage of individuation, the theme of the wanderer is widely found. Cain was condemned to wander. According to legend, Elijah and the Wandering Jew were both required to wander homelessly until the Messiah appeared, and in Gnostic thought the whole earthly life of man is considered to be a banishment from his heavenly home. Psychologically, the state of banishment and wandering is a necessary intermediate condition in the process of individuation: one cannot find a durable relation to the inner center, the Self, until one has been deprived of comfortable outer containments and identifications.
After his own long wanderings, Oedipus came at last to a sacred spot close to Athens. He was now a sage and holy man, a precious sacred entity. His two sons, battling one another for Thebes, both sought his approval because an oracle had pronounced that whoever gained it would prevail. The oracle had also declared that the tomb of Oedipus would bless the land it was on. He had become a sacred object, a living theophany. In this passage blind Oedipus describes the holy power of his tomb:
Come, listen, son of Aegeus,
I lay before you now a city’s lasting treasure.
There is a place where I must die,
And I myself unhelped shall walk before you there.
That place you must not tell to any living being:
not where it lurks, nor where the region lies,
if you would have a shield like a thousand shields
and a more perpetual pact than the spears of allies.
No chart of words shall mark that mystery.
Alone you’ll go, alone your memory
shall frame the spot.
For not to any person here,
not even to my daughters so beloved,
am I allowed to utter it.
You yourself must guard it always.
And when your life is drawing to its close,
divulge it to your heir alone
and he in turn to his, and so forever.
This way you will keep your city safe
against the Dragon’s seed, the men of Thebes,
though many a state attack a peaceful home,
though sure be the help from heaven (but exceeding slow)
against earth’s godless men and men gone mad.
Be far from you such fate, good son of Aegeus!
But all this you know without my telling you.
Now to that spot. The god within me calls.13
The life of Oedipus, as it is revealed in these two plays, parallels the alchemical process. Like the prima materia with which the alchemists began their work, Oedipus is subjected to fiery ordeals and sufferings until he is transformed into a holy object that benefits all who touch him. Here is the theophany that redeems the suffering of the first play.
Taken together, the two Oedipus plays reveal explicitly the four stages of Greek tragedy. The agon is represented by Oedipus’ encounter with the Sphinx, followed later by the struggle to discover the hidden crime that was causing the plague; the pathos comes with the blinding insight and the ego defeat that it caused; the threnos is expressed by the chorus, which bemoans the downfall of the mighty Oedipus, and by Oedipus’ prolonged wanderings; and the theophany arrives at the end of Oedipus at Colonus, when his tomb becomes a sacred sanctuary and a perpetual blessing. These four stages portray quite precisely the steps in every major increase of consciousness. In each case a suffering, deflating ordeal for the ego must precede the epiphany of the Self. This is necessary because the ego starts out in a state of identification with the Self. It can only realize its separate and dependent condition by a tragic ordeal that enforces the separation. Sophocles describes this process in the final lines of Antigone:
Where wisdom is, there happiness will crown
A piety that nothing will corrode.
But high and mighty words and ways
Are flogged to humbleness, till age,
Beaten to its knees, at last is wise.14