The Real Oedipos Complex
"Wherever I go, a poet has gone before me."
-Sigmund Freud
Freud's sensational theories of sex and aggression have focused an intense but narrow attention on Oedipos' tragic relations with his father and mother. Certainly, this myth has something to tell us about that crucial organism, the family, and no therapist can really ignore it. But there are things of even greater value in Sophocles' word hoard, and the Oedipos' story neither begins or ends with parricide and incest. Shall we have a look and see?
Oedipos' name means "swollen foot", and refers to the fact that he was hung out to die in the wild as an infant. His swollen foot is the mark of early abandonment by his parents, and we should know Oedipos as a wounded person from then on. He is adopted by a royal family, and is told by a prophet that he will commit heinous deeds upon his parents. It is in fleeing evil that he is set on a collision course with his real parents. He kills his father because he was being a roadhog; as the highways back then admitted of great viciousness, this deed is seen as a mark of his manly virtue.
He comes to Thebes, and rids it of the nuisance of the sphinx, not though might but through his knowledge of human development. The answer to the sphinx's riddle "What animal first has four legs, then two, and finally three?" is "A man, in his incarnations as a crawling baby, walking adult, and old man with cane." This is at one level an innocent exchange, but at another level it is darkly portentous. The Oedipos myth discusses the stresses that human development puts on the family, and this riddle is the perfect figure for it. While the baby is going from four legs to two, his father is going from two legs to three. The rise of the son is accompanied by the decline of the father, and so in this way it is
always true that the son is a parricide.
Wowed by his virtue, and no longer mourning for her disappearing husband, Jocasta takes Oedipos as her husband and king. He rules in great virtue, but a plague settles over the land. He swears he will find and kill whatever villain has brought the curse upon Thebes. He does not question his virtue. He is proudly indignant, a hero vowing to stamp out injustice wherever he finds it. It is closer than he thinks.
The blind Tiresias, the prophet/therapist, leads Oedipos through a path of questioning towards the horrifying realization that he himself is responsible for the plague. In this process, Tiresias is patient, compassionate, and relentless. He is asking Oedipos to examine himself, something which his haughty, extroverted style of leadership makes him loathe to do. Tiresias' discretion lies in the fact that he realizes that the truth he presents is too much for Oedipos to bear all at once, and he allows the pieces to come together as organically as possible.
When it does, Oedipos inflicts a violence upon himself, poking out his own eyes. This violence, however, has a symbolic and ritual value. Oedipos will not be an extrovert anymore, will never throw his haughty glance upon people in suspicion or contempt. His vision, like Tiresias', is forever forced inward. Inner realities become apparent to him as the world of unreflected action disappears.
We are the cause of the world's suffering, and so we must be part of the cure. Exactly to the extent that we do not know ourselves, we bring plagues upon those we love. Seeking for evil agents in the outside world only adds insult to injury. Becoming conscious of our dark and wounded nature is painful and unflattering, but there are guides available to make the truth bearable. In committing ourselves to a course of painful self-reflection, we lift the curse from the outer world, and we become capable of guiding and healing others.
Oedipos is ultimately buried in a garden cherished by the gods. His memory is committed to the sacred. Weirdly, there is no headstone or other marker to show just where he is. Once you enter the sacred garden, he could be anywhere. Maybe, just maybe, he's right under your feet.
