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The Self-Blinding of Oidipous in Sophokles: Oidipous Tyrannos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

G. Devereux
G. Devereux
Affiliation:
2 Sq. Gabriel Fauré, 92160 Antony, France
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Summary

(1) Oidipous' self-blinding appears to be an act of madness, linked primarily with his incest, rather than with his parricide.

(2) Blinding for sexual trespasses is so common in tradition that its appropriateness cannot be discussed in the abstract.

(3) Greek data confirm the clinical finding that the eyes tend to symbolise the male organs, and blinding castration.

(4) This inference is further confirmed by the finding that blinding and castration are mutually exclusive punishments.

(5) Oidipous' total crime was a ritually patterned sequence of two crimes: the killing of the King (Father) makes incest with the Queen (Mother) possible—as it does also in infantile oedipal fantasies. In the Oidipous myth a patrilineal succession model is (temporarily) disguised as a matrilineal method of royal succession.

(6) Though the blinding of the criminal is not required by the Delphic oracle, and though Oidipous' final exile does execute the oracle's command, this does not imply that the self-blinding does not punish (in part) also the parricide, for it can be shown that death, castration and blinding can, and do, symbolise each other. This means that Oidipous' self-blinding is a heavily overdetermined (multiply motivated) deed of frenzy.

(7) The manner in which Oidipous blinds himself has a very exact clinical parallel which, together with other data, seems to suggest an unconscious nexus between sexual problems, self-blinding and a woman's breasts (or nipples, or brooches).

(8) The ‘dramatische Technik’ explanation does not exclude the possibility of justifying a seemingly illogical detail in tragedy also by means of depth psychological considerations.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 93 , November 1973 , pp. 36 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1973

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References

1 Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational, 1951, pp. 7Google Scholar, 16, 30 ff., 51 (note 10).

2 Dodds, E. R., ‘On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex’ (in) The Ancient Concept of Progress (1973) 68Google Scholar.

3 von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Tycho, Die dramatische Technik des Sophokles, 1917Google Scholar.

4 Punitively or vengefully by Kreon, 's henchmen: sch. E. Ph. 26Google Scholar, or by those of Laios, : E. (Oed.) fr. 541Google Scholar N2; prophylactically by Polybos, (sch. E. Ph. 26Google Scholar). How Delcourt, M. (Oedipe ou la Légende du Conquérant, 1944, 215Google Scholar) extracted from sch. E. Ph. 26 the meaning that he was blinded by his mother is a mystery to me.

5 Freud, S., The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed. iv (1953), p. 398Google Scholar, note. Cp. Ferenczi, S., ‘On Eye Symbolism’, Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, 1916CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A girl recently told me one of her dreams: women with long, claw-like finger nails had blinded her fiancé. In reply to my immediate and direct question, she told me that her fiancé had had potency troubles with his previous girl friend.

6 I am not squeamish in so completing the utterance. ‘Coitizer’ will not do as a counter-part of ‘slayer’, for whereas coitus is often good and beautiful, a (private) killing is always bad. Hence, in this passage, the real counter-part of ‘slayer’ is ‘defiler’.

7 The vagueness of the Messenger's report is realistic: it is nearly impossible to repeat accurately a frenzied person's ravings.

8 Jebb, , Mazon, Vellacott, Ph. (Sophocles and Oedipus, 1971Google Scholar; prose and verse), Delcourt, M. (Oedipe ou la Légende du Conquérant, 1944, 215Google Scholar).

9 The man able to discern the changes time brings about in the appearance of a person (riddle of the Sphinx) and able to unravel obscure statements, when it suits him (440), did not recognise Laios and/or Iokaste. Though a man exposed shortly after being born, could not, many years later, recognise his parents, there is tragic irony in the expert Oidipous' inability to do so. Similarly, though young Lieutenant Bonaparte could not have foreseen the middle-aged Emperor Napoleon's exile, we perceive the tragic irony of the last entry in one of Lieutenant Bonaparte's notebooks: ‘Sainte Hélène, petite île.’ Nothing more is meant.

10 The ostentatiously omitted element is sometimes the crucial one. A dream about three fishes, named Mark, Matthew and Luke, turned out to concern a man named John.

11 Devereux, G., Dreams in Greek Tragedy, 1973Google Scholar (in press), chap. 3. Even the Aischylean αολοссοί are replicated by the Sophoklean ἀγάλμαθ' ἱϵρά.

12 S. El. 445; (Troilos) fr. 566 N2.

13 There is an ambiguity: execution by strangulation (Jebb, Vellacott), or suicide by hanging (Mazon, Delcourt). Oidipous, does try to hang himself in E. Phoin. 330Google Scholar f., after bungling a suicide by the sword.

14 Stoll, O., Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie, 1904Google Scholar.

15 Knox, B. M. W., Oedipus at Thebes, 1957Google Scholar, chap. 5 passim.

16 Robert, C., Oidipus, 1916, i 177Google Scholar f., 263, 438.

17 Devereux, G., Essais d'Ethnopsychiatrie Générale, 1970Google Scholar, chap. 2.

18 Esser, A., Das Antlitz der Blindheit in der Antike (2nd. edn.), 1961, 36Google Scholar ff.

19 Boios ap. Ant. Lib. 5; perhaps also: Ov. Met. vii 386 f., and Hyg.fab. 253.

20 In versions in which Thamyris is the son of a Muse, the prize he competes for is not a sexual one; where it is sexual, his mother is not a Muse.

21 Sch. Nic. Ther. 15 is so interpreted in Kerényi, C., The Gods of the Greeks, 1951, 202Google Scholar.

22 Philostr., V. Apoll. i 10Google Scholar. I note that in many cultures the stepdaughter fairly often becomes her mother's co-wife, cp. Kroeber, A. L., ‘Stepdaughter Marriage’, The Nature of Culture, 1952Google Scholar.

23 Temporary blinding by lightning: X. An. vii 4, etc.

24 G. Devereux, ‘Stesichoros’ Palinodes: Two Further Testimonia and Some Comments', RhM (in press).

25 Cp. A. Ag. 418 f. and Thomson ad. loc. Devereux, G., Dreams in Greek Tragedy, 1973Google Scholar (in press), chap. 3, ad A. Ag. 418; Esser, op. cit., p. 90; Malten, L., Die Sprache des menschlichen Antlitzes im frühen Griechentum, 1961Google Scholar, etc.

26 Devereux, G., Dreams in Greek Tragedy, 1973Google Scholar, chap. 2.

27 Whiting, J. W. M., Becoming a Kwoma, 1941, 49Google Scholar: a boy should not masturbate, for his penis belongs to his future wife. An American woman analysand claimed she ‘owned’ her lover's penis.

28 Saul, L., ‘Feminine Significance of the Nose’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly xvii (1948), 51–57Google Scholar.

29 Devereux, G., ‘A Note on the Feminine Significance of the Eyes’, Bulletin of the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis vi (1956) 21–24Google Scholar.

30 Devereux, G. (ed.), Psychoanalysis and the Occult, 1953 (= 1970), 406Google Scholar ff.

31 Ep. Ep. 1, p. 10 U., Nat. ii 1, al.; Cic. Fam. xv 16.1, etc.

32 Item 4: the husband is also partly blinded. Item 12: the procuress acts on behalf of a man. Item 14: Amphissa's lover is castrated; Hypermnestra, being a Danaid, had performed masculine feats: she had helped build a temple, construct and row a ship, etc.

33 Xanth. FHG i 39.19: Hsch. Mil. FHG iv 171.47.

34 For the incestuousness of Io, cp. Devereux, Dreams in Greek Tragedy, chap. 2.

35 Esser, op. cit., 67, n. 193. Menninger, K. A., Man Against Himself, 1938, 214Google Scholar ff., 273 ff.

36 Phallos-shaped chariot (Museum of Mykenai); phallos-headed cock (kyathos, Berlin 2095); phallos on an Attic krater (by the ‘Pan painter’, Berlin 3206); baubon (olisbos) on an Attic amphora (by the ‘Flying Angel painter’, Paris, Petit Palais 307); and on an Attic cup (by the ‘Nikosthenes painter’, British Museum E. 815). In all these instances the phallos is detached from the body: it is the phantasmatic (autonomous) phallos encountered in psychoanalytical clinical practice. Why phalloi should have eyes is not easy to understand. It may be due to a misplaced ‘realism’, inspired by the fact that snakes (and cocks) have eyes. I also note that one sometimes finds on the dorsum of the glans penis two small, pigmented spots, which do look a little like ‘eyes.’ But the real explanation remains to be discovered.

37 Hom. Od. xxii 474 ff. This pattern seems fundamental, for the illiterate Peruvian rubber-gatherers, who brutalized in an absolutely identical way a Witoto Indian, whose genitals they, too, fed to dogs and whose wife they raped before his (unblinded) eyes, had hardly read the Odyssey. Hardenburg, W. E., The Putumayo: The Devil's Paradise, 1912Google Scholar (Cp. also Mart, ii 83.)

38 This passage seems suspect to me for, instead of leading all of his Dolopians, he leads only some of Achilleus' Myrmidons. On the version in which Phoinix is unmanned, cp. Devereux, G., ‘A Counter-oedipal Episode in Homer's Iliad’, Bulletin of the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis iv (1955) 90–97Google Scholar.

39 E. ap. Ar. Ach. 421 (= TGF p. 621); sch. Horn. Il. ix 448; Apollod. iii 13.8; AP iii 3; sch. Pl. Lg. 931b; Tzetz. Lyc. 421; Ov. A.A. 337; Ov. Ib. 261 f., Prop, ii 1.60.

40 Hermotimos: Hdt. viii 106; in a Norse myth (Draumr Thorsteins Sithuhallsonar) the slave Gilli.

41 This detail may have strayed into Seneca from some Dionysiac tragedy, which, I think, is E. Ba.- and, specifically, from the lacuna after 1300. Cp. Devereux, G., ‘The Psychotherapy Scene in Euripides' Bacchae’, JHS xc (1970) 35–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Other examples of ‘reciprocally symbolic’ (simultaneous) alternatives are easy to find. The Mohave Indians have two aetiological explanations of the ‘hikwῑ;r’ (amphisbaina) disease: the patient is attacked by aquatic two-headed snakes (hikwῑr) or else the illness is caused in women by coitus while bathing. Devereux, G., Mohave Ethnopsychiatry (2nd edn.), 1969, 117Google Scholar ff.

43 Róheim, G., ‘Teiresias and Other Seers’, Psychoanalytic Review xxxiii (1948) 277–291Google Scholar.

44 In ancient India the slaying of a copulating animal by a hunter was clearly felt to be an oedipal murder, for the penalty was either impotency or perpetual sexual abstinence, cp. Devereux, G., ‘The Oedipal Situation and its Consequences in the Epics of Ancient India’, Samῑksῑ, Journal of the Indian Psycho-Analytical Society v (1951) 5–13Google Scholar, with epitomes of sources.

45 Consider the symbolic equation: girl = phallus (Fenichel, O., ‘The Symbolic Equation: Girl = Phallus’, The Collected Papers of O. Fenichel ii, 1954Google Scholar). In one episode El-Kronos kills his son and decapitates his daughter. In ‘another’ episode he sacrifices his son and circumcises himself. The two episodes are variants of the same situation (Phil. Bybl. FHG iii 568.18; iii 569.24).

46 V. Aen. ii 647 ff. ; Hyg. fab. 94, cp. for the dangers of love affairs with goddesses, Hom. h. Ven. 187 ff. (Anchises); Hom. Od. x 281 ff. (Odysseus), etc.

47 Not being a Byzantinist, I could not verify this impression by consulting the sources. I did, however, question an expert on Byzantine church history, who thought that my impression was correct.

48 Ptol. Heph. 147a 14, 149a 24.

49 Ouranos, Kronos, Attis, etc., cp. Devereux, G., ‘La Naissance d'Aphrodite’ (in) Pouillon, J. and Maranda, P. (eds.), Echanges et Communications (Mélanges Lévi-Strauss), 1970Google Scholar (vol. ii).

50 Cp. the substitution of a ram's testicles for those of Indras, who is threatened with castration: Cook, A. B., Zeus i (1914) 395Google Scholar, n. 2.

51 The case of Nikodemos: Aesch. in Tim. 172; Athen. xiii 63, etc. Cp. Esser, op, cit., pp. 53 and 58, who cites also Dem. xxi 107; Schol. Dem. xxi 104; Deinarch. i 30.

52 Anderson, J. K., Ancient Greek Horsemanship, 1961, 38Google Scholar.

53 Devereux, G., ‘Mohave Zoophilia’, Samῑksῑ, J. of the Indian Psycho-Analytical Society ii (1948) 227–245Google Scholar.

54 Spencer, D. F., ‘The Cultural Aspects of Eunuchism’, Ciba Symposia viii (1946) 406–420Google Scholar. For Sporus, cp. Suet. Nero 28.

55 Extensive discussion and bibliography in: Devereux, G. ‘La Naissance d' Aphrodite’ (in) Pouillon, J. and Maranda, P. (eds.) Echanges et Communications (Mélanges Lévi-Strauss), 1970Google Scholar (vol. ii). Actually, though all those who discuss this Chinese illness call it imaginary, every good textbook of urology mentions the traumatic luxation of the penis, in which the organ does ‘retract’ and disappear inside the body.

56 Dodds, E. R., ad E. Ba. 1308Google Scholar, in his edition of that play.

57 Incidentally, had Oidipous been executed, he would still have been ‘exiled’ as well, for his corpse would probably have been thrown outside the territory of Thebes. (Pl. Lg. 873a). Cp., in S. OC 399 ff., Kreon's plan to keep and to bury Oidipous just outside Theban territory.

58 Devereux, G., ‘Sociopolitical Functions of the Oedipus Myth in Early Greece’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly xxxii (1963) 205–314Google Scholar. It is significant that, in some myth of royal father-daughter incest, it is the daughter who seduces her father … perhaps so as to protect her rights to the throne. In most such cases the King appears to be a widower.

59 Devereux, G., ‘Quelques Traces de la Succession par Ultimogeniture en Scythie’, Inter Nord xii (1972) 262–270Google Scholar.

60 The other examples I cite concern Herakles' Skythian sons, the accession of Xerxes to the throne, as the firstborn of Dareios princely sons, and the claims of Kyros the Younger. The rest of my data concern steppe nomads.

61 Menninger, K. A., Man Against Himself, 1938, 262Google Scholar.

62 A cartoon published, I think, in The New Yorker, shows a young woman, with nipples pointing in different directions (as in strabismus), being told by her physician to consult an ophthalmologist. That humour reflects the unconscious was proven in Freud, S., Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, Standard Ed. viii, 1960Google Scholar.

63 Mellaart, J., ‘Deities and Shrines in Neolithic Anatolia: Çatal Hüyük’, Archaeology xvi (1963) 29–38Google Scholar.

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65 Devereux, G. and Devereux, J. W., ‘Les Manifestations de l'Inconscient dans Sophokles, Trachiniai 923 sqq.’, Psychanalyse et Sociologie comme Méthodes d'Etude des Phénoménes Historiques et Culturels, 1971 (actually 1973), 121–152Google Scholar. In the same study it is also noted that the baring of a woman's breasts tends to be linked with death or danger of death, not only in Greece, but also amongst the Mongols.