medea

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Hi,

I am dutch so my spelling may be a bit of. But my question is. Is there any psychologie analysment of medea. And do you know were it is.

Greatings Bart

-- bart (hja8@hotmail.com), October 26, 2003

Answers

If you can find a copy, you might look at a book by Bennett Simon called _Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece_. It has analyses of many of the Greek tragedies. It was published inthe 1970s. Note that Simon's tendencies are psychoanlaytic.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), October 26, 2003.

PsycInfo turns up 13 articles: Maratos, J. (1998). Siblings in ancient Greek mythology. Group Analysis, 31, 341-349.

Carloni, G., & Nobili, D. (1972). /Filicide: II. Filicide in myth and art. Rivista Sperimentale di Freniatria e Medicina Legale delle Alienazioni Mentali, 96, 1337-1380.

Balter, L. (1969). The mother as a source of power: A psychoanalytic study of three Greek myths. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 38, 217-274.

Orgel, S., & Shengold, L. L. (1968). The fatal gifts of Medea. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 49, 379-385.

Milani Tavares, I. (1991). Perseu--o mito e o complexo: Uma variante do complexo de Edipo. /Perseus--the myth and the complex: A variation of the Oedipus complex. Revista Brasileira de Psicanalise, 25, 303-316.

McReynolds, R. W. (1984). Role reversal as a key to literary interpretation. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 5, 182-185.

Datan, N. (1982). After Oedipus: Laius, Medea, and other parental myths. Journal of Mind & Behavior, 3, 17-26.

Marcano, S. (2001). El enigma de los celos a traves de Medea de Euripides. /The enigma of jealousy as seen through Euripides Medea. Tropicos: Revista de Psicoanalisis, 9, 72-78.

Leuzinger-Bohleber, M., & Slotkin, P.(Trans) (2001). The 'Medea fantasy': An unconscious determinant of psychogenic sterility. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 82, 323-345.

Rosenstein, B. L., & Alperin, R. M. (2001). The medea complex in psychoanalytic thought. Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, 18, 261-285.

Gold, L. H. (2001). Clinical and forensic aspects of postpartum disorders. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry & the Law, 29, 344-347.

Charles, M. (2001). Stealing beauty: An exploration of maternal narcissism. Psychoanalytic Review, 88, 549-570.

McCloskey, L. A. (2001). The "Medea complex" among men: The instrumental abuse of children to injure wives. Violence & Victims, 16, 19-37.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), October 27, 2003.


I have a very basic analysis of Medea, which is of my own. Despite everything, she had no right to murder her children, Creon's daughter, or Creon himself. The fact that she may be suffering from temporary insanity, etc, is merely an excuse, for yes, her suffering is great no doubt, but revenge should be equal, not threefold. The world suffers from many Medeas today. It would be unfair to justify her revenge, for how can you justify the slaying of two children? What made it worse is, how she uses Aegeus to save herself, even though he is married, and she decides to save herself after murdering her children. It is admirable how we try to psychoanalyse a person's motives or action, but when the deed is done, we can't hear the victims' cry.

-- Sara (saranaqwi@hotmail.com), April 14, 2004.

Sara,
You seem to be making the common historical error of "anachronism" -- applying standards that are common in your own time and culture to a quite different time and culture. There is no issue of "rights" here. Nor is "temporary insanity" a relevant measure.

If you would like to understand the matter more as the ancient Greeks themselves saw it, I would recommend (especially the first three chapters of) E. R. Dodds' classic _The Greeks and the Irrational_ (U. California Press, 1951). Medea is only mentioned in a couple of places, but questions of madness and, more importantly, of the difference between a "shame culture" (theirs) and a "guilt culture" (ours), are discussed in some detail.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), April 14, 2004.


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