"Though royalty herself, Antigone is not someone who can have children under any and all conditions. For her to procreate, society must be at least relatively just. If she cannot make it so, then at least she'll die trying."

In an effort to validate his psycho-sexual theory of the unconscious, and to demonstrate its universal application, Freud uses Oedipus, the tragic hero of Greek literature and myth, as the poster child for his theory. [1] Making him the eponym of the complex leads millions to believe that he was its first and most famous sufferer, and that the complex must be the meaning of the myth. Using Oedipus in this way is deceitful and dishonest: a correct reading of the myth does not support an interpretation of his killing his father and marrying his mother in terms of Freud's complex. If you enter the myth, working forward through the elements of the story, you arrive at an inescapable conclusion: the complex does not explain why Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother; nor is it the meaning of the myth.

It's unlikely that Freud even bothered to psychoanalyze Oedipus. The patricide and incest of the myth have a blinding effect. But details are important in the art of psychoanalysis. [2] If Oedipus suffers from the unconscious psycho-sexual dysfunction, which Freud claims to have diagnosed in his patients and himself, then the condition is operative with Polybus and Merope, the king and queen of Corinth, who adopted him from the day he was born and raised him to adulthood. The elements of the story allow no room for a reading which makes the condition operative with Laius and Jocasta, the king and queen of Thebes, his father- and mother-in-DNA only, from whom he is separated at birth, meets for the first time as a young man, and then quickly kills and marries in separate encounters. What about transference? His killing Laius almost immediately upon meeting him, and then marrying Jocasta soon after meeting her, argue strongly against it. Even if we suppose there is time enough for the process to happen, twin episodes of impulsive murder and matrimony, because Laius and Jocasta remind him of Polybus and Merope, is an absurd interpretation to be sure (which even runs the risk of reducing transference to a meaningless phenomenon – being forced to explain everything, it comes to explain nothing).

The elements of the story clearly indicate why Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother (parents-in-DNA only). And his reasons for doing so have nothing to do with transferring onto them psychological baggage, which his adoptive parents may or may not have saddled him with. If the myth has any point of convergence with Freud's theory, the disastrous personality of Laius is significant. This drunken, misogynistic pedophile is the only person in the myth who could have created a family environment in which Oedipus might have developed the complex. But thanks to the secret disobedience of a shepherd slave, Oedipus on the day of his birth is saved from the savage cruelty of his father, who injures his feet and then calls for infanticide by exposure. Instead of leaving him for dead in the wilderness, the shepherd charged with that task arranges for his safe arrival at a home that will love and care for him: the king and queen of Corinth, who have no children of their own but desperately want one. Paradoxically, if Laius is a walking oedipal contagion, his desire to kill the baby ensures that it will be spared the burden of the complex, while a slave's insubordination ensures that it will live to enjoy a life without it. Laius appears to have one mitigating trait: he knows he's too fucked up to be raising children. His self-awareness in this regard is expressed in the myth as Apollo's prophetic curse (if Laius has a son, his son will kill him) called into existence by the father's earlier crime of pedophilia against the beautiful boy Chrysippus.

Upon coming of age Oedipus travels to Apollo's oracle at Delphi, seeking to clarify a rumor that Polybus and Merope may not be his real parents. The only information he can obtain there is that he's fated to kill his father and marry his mother (the flip side of the curse). Scandalized by the news, he hits upon a fool-proof way of making sure that that never happens. He takes the road to Thebes, and resolves never again to return to Corinth where his parents reside, the only parents he knows. If his relationship with them were complex-free, incorrigible Freudians may ask, why avoid them for the rest of his life? Oedipus is living in a fearful, truth-phobic, superstitious society. What makes him a hero is his struggle to overcome society's dysfunction at every turn. Yet some decisions can only be made based on information made available to him by people in his life. For selfish reasons, no doubt, his fearful, truth-phobic adoptive parents never tell me the truth about his origin. They had twenty-some years to do this, and even when pressed on the issue, they deny him the truth. A lesser man might have considered the case closed. Not Oedipus. His journey to Delphi for clarification is an early sign of heroic stature; his not going back home is another. Corinth is easy street, where a future is waiting for him quite literally on a royal platter. "So what if I'm fated to kill dad? He's going to die anyway; it only means I'll inherit the kingdom sooner. And as for marrying mom, she's beautiful, but that should be easy enough to avoid." Action motivated by this line of reasoning might have called the complex into question here. But Oedipus exhibits none of it. In a stunning move of self-sacrifice and piety, he hits the open road to start life over again from the bottom up. Who would change the course of his entire life in deference to an inscrutable oracle that could be dismissed easily as fortune-telling hooey? In ancient Greek society, a hero with great filial respect for his parents, who has a policy of zero-tolerance for a future in which he may bring them any harm or disgrace. He has to go somewhere, so he heads for Thebes, a town big enough for a young prince.

Meanwhile on the divine plane (an imaginary template humans create as a mirror for their own psychology) one man's curse (to be killed by the hero who is the son you never wanted) is steadily becoming another man's duty (to kill the monster who is the father you never knew you had). Says who? Says Justice in the form of Apollo who demands that Laius be punished for his crime. But Laius is a king descended from the Spartoi, the five noble families who founded Thebes, and well-protected by the power structure. How do you punish an autocrat like that? Under these conditions not even the gods have good options. Clearly a solution internal to the power structure must be found. Oedipus is earmarked (or should we say foot-marked?) to carry out the task. [3] But there's also the larger mission of replacing a corrupt autocracy with a regime of relative justice. For this, the hero must be raised with integrity, reason, principles and compassion - qualities which normally prevent one from killing one's father, though he may richly deserve it. So Oedipus must be re-sired and given new parents, which in any case the savage cruelty of Laius makes urgent from the first day of birth. Many years later when they meet at the crossroads, the young prince has what it takes to be a great leader, and both are perfect strangers to each other and remain so throughout the brief encounter. Being the monster that he is, Laius picks a fight with Oedipus, injuring his foot and threatening him with death for the second and last time in his life. The king has had ample opportunity to avoid the curse. It has always been his to avoid; not Oedipus' to fulfill. But Laius is unsalvageable. Now little-j justice (Oedipus' righteous self-defense) swiftly closes ranks with big-J Justice (Apollo's prophecy) to bring the life of this wretched man to an end. In this way, justice on all levels is served. And even the old man gets what he always wanted: to be put out of his misery. The myth is crystal clear on this point: Oedipus kills Laius because Justice, called into existence by the father's recurring inhumanity, demands it; not because Oedipus is suffering from some psycho-sexual dysfunction.

Meanwhile a supernatural, demonic creature in the form of a Sphinx has been afflicting Thebes for some time, strangling and eating the citizens at will. This is Apollo's idea of a good time, and everyone has a fighting chance. The Sphinx is programmed to self-destruct when the easy riddle it poses before striking is solved. [4] But no one is brave and smart enough to do it. Everyone in this town is running scared and stupid. The Sphinx is symptomatic of the rot at the top. Laius knows that he's to blame and that Apollo is closing in. But he'll never cop to it. He has a skeleton in every closet of the palace, and lacks the integrity to impeach himself and atone for his crimes (the stuff of heroes). True to form, he flees town like a coward on the road to Delphi under the cynical pretense of seeking help from the same god he offends (and we already know what happens at the crossroads). When Oedipus arrives in Thebes, he doesn't flinch or flee. He faces down the Sphinx, the ghost of his father's demon, with courage and confidence. He solves the riddle, lifts the siege, and the queen's heart opens up like a flower in the sun. Consider her emotional pain: she's been living with a drunken, misogynistic pedophile since the day she was married. She gave her husband a son, but he ordered the baby killed on the day it was born; and she has no reason to believe it survived (knowledge only the shepherd has). No doubt since then, it's been all beatings and bruises walled in by the patriarchy on all sides - twenty-odd years of pain and humiliation. Now while her husband is missing in action at a moment of crisis, a young prince saves the whole town from mortal danger. He's intelligent, compassionate, self-sacrificing and skilled in statecraft. She's thirty something and eligible to remarry. For the first time in her life she has a chance at happiness, and it will be the last if she doesn't take it. If she didn't marry the young prince, she'd really have to have her head examined. And so would he for not marrying her. Corinth can't offer anything close to what he has now. He's a veritable rock-star in Thebes: the people worship him, the royal court is clamoring to make him king, and a widowed queen with no children is ready to requite him with family, love and devotion. How lucky can a guy get on his first go-around? Here again the myth is crystal clear: Oedipus marries Jocasta because she embodies a future impossible to refuse. In light of these circumstances, any mention of his being moved by an unconscious desire to sleep with his mother becomes absurd.

Myths may be interpreted in more than one way, but not in any way whatsoever. The analysis above shows why it's a cop-out and fraud to explain Oedipus' patricide and incest in terms of Freud's theory. Dyed-in-the-wool Freudians will resist any separation between Oedipus and the complex for the same reason Freud made the connection. Linking the theory to Oedipus lends it more power and grace than it deserves, and the appearance of universality. Decoupling the theory from him will result in a corresponding deflation, which it richly deserves. Can Oedipus remain a symbol of the complex, simply because at the end of the day he killed his father and slept with his mother? No, because at the end of the day it's impossible to claim that Oedipus is only a symbol of the complex without also implying that he suffers from it. Laius and Jocasta are parents-in-DNA only: enough to create Oedipus the tragedy, but not enough to create Oedipus the complex. This powerful myth cannot be used as evidence or support for Freud's ineptly named complex (which may not even be authentic if it exists at all). [5] For the power of the myth to be felt, its Freudian coil must be smashed.

Oddly enough, the father of psychoanalysis completely overlooked the two archetypes on either side of Oedipus, one negative and one positive, which might actually shed light on a binary system operating in the psycho-ether of the West. The Laius archetype is characterized by a conscious desire to snuff out the next generation and/or have sex with other people's kids. State and corporate policy as a matter of practice cannibalizes the children of the working-class, while media stories about parents killing their children are not uncommon in the US. And the worldwide psycho-sexual dysfunction of the Catholic Church, among other opaque and oppressive organizations, is divine proof that pedophiles are more effective in priestly garb than in clown suits. Throwing baby Jesus out with the bathwater, while sodomizing the altar boys: "suffer the little children to be buggered by me." No thanks, Father Laius. I rather like my brand of atheism. Where is Oedipus when you need him? Compared to the twisted knot of neurons in Laius' head, the whole Oedipus thing vanishes into thin air. Laius is a baby killer and a pedophile staring Freud in the face, but all he sees is Oedipus. Funny, isn't it? And that's not all the wonderful virtues this complex has to offer. It also includes using political office for personal gain and class warfare; being belligerent and bellicose, because you're too stupid for diplomacy; doing nothing, while death and destruction stalk the land; and clinging to power, though corrupt, cruel, incompetent and hateful, to ensure that good people do not come near.

But there's no Laius complex in Freudian psychology, suggesting that Freud could not think outside the patriarchy of the myth, which covers up the crimes of the father by focusing on Oedipus' conditional fate, not on Laius' governing curse. Key to understanding the myth is that the curse is the complex. Apollo's prophecy is the voice in Laius' head, his own conscience telling him, "I never should have raped that cute little kid Chrysippus. What was I thinking? What if he were my son? He'll want to kill me when he grows up. But who can resist the pleasure in using power to plunder the weak! Isn't that what it's for?" At this point in the evolution of the man's conscience, he had a choice: change course or stay the course. He stays the course, committing more crime in an effort to make the world safe for the crimes of his past (a sure sign of the complex). Hence the order for infanticide, and more pedophilia we may assume (he's certainly not having sex with his wife). Now he's a rogue ruler out of control. You think maybe he needs his head examined? The curse controls the fate; the fate does not control the curse. Laius is shadowy; Oedipus is shiny. Freud falls for the bait (consciously or unconsciously?) thinking that Oedipus' fate represents a complex and that it's internal to the son. To break through the patriarchal code of silence protecting Laius from culpability, you must enter the myth, pretend you're Oedipus, and experience the action of the story for yourself - not what Freudian psychology wants to do. Why upset the rule of the fathers? Put the kids on the couch; let's see if they harbor any unconscious fantasies about killing dad and sleeping with mom. Meanwhile, the Laius complex breeds countless clones to fill the offices of a thousand Thebes-like cities around the world. Far from being a cryptic message of Freudian theory, the myth displays how even the most heroic struggle for truth, justice, community and meaning can all be for naught in a repressive, superstitious, truth-phobic society marked by fear, ignorance and violence. But as we'll see, it was not for naught; not even close.

The other archetype is Antigone, one of Oedipus' four children and the title of the third tragedy of Sophocles' three Theban plays. Eteocles, Polyneices and Ismene are his other children. As they come of age, the truth of their father's parentage pushes to the fore at a moment of crisis. The people of Thebes are afflicted again: not by demonic possession, but by human disease. News comes from Delphi that Laius' killer is at large and was never found, and that this offense is the cause of the epidemic. Oedipus vows to find and punish the killer whoever he may be. Immediately he launches and leads a thorough-going investigation, plunging forward even as all clues point back to him. Jocasta perceives the truth moments before her husband-son, and begs him to call off the search. True to his vow, he carries on. The queen rushes into the palace and hangs herself from rafters in the bedchamber. Now Oedipus discovers the truth and rushes into the palace, rampaging like a bull stung by a thousand arrows. Finding his mother-wife hanging dead above the conjugal bed, he takes her down and using the heirloom pins from her dress pokes out his eyes. Soon thereafter he crosses the city limits into self-imposed exile.

If the affliction of Thebes now, as it was before, is a symptom of the king's rule or inner state of mind, consider the differences. Oedipus does not leave town; he deals with the crisis immediately and manages the investigation himself. As the arc of the search for Laius' killer circles back on himself, he has the power and privilege to break it off, to let sleeping dogs lie. Instead he continues with heroic integrity and courage. When finally the truth falls to the ground like an ingot, he accepts responsibility, blinds himself in punishment, then doubles-down on the theme of permanent penalty by heading into life-long exile with no eyes - all of this when a simple resignation letter would have sufficed. Clearly not your ordinary man. Nor are these actions emotionally or psychologically consistent with the behavior of someone merely disabused of negative unconscious desires. They're consistent with the behavior of someone who has just discovered that the one scenario he's been avoiding assiduously his entire life, for the sake of which he's made careful decisions and personal sacrifice, has played out. He's positively sick at heart. His whole life has been an exercise in not killing his father and marrying his mother, but somehow it all happened. The world is a house of mirrors where nothing is what it seems. He never wants to look on it again or have anything to do with it. He goes to the grave with the truth of his parentage, but not with an understanding of why this tragedy struck him down. Only we can know that it's traceable to the crimes of the father (or perhaps more accurately to the father's never being able to accept responsibility). Oedipus, the son who cannot escape the repercussions of his father's crimes, takes responsibility for them even without full knowledge of what's happening to him. This is the poignant sacrifice that makes Oedipus one of the greatest tragic heroes of the Greek stage.

Inheriting their father's kingdom, Eteocles and Polyneices agree to rule in alternate years, while the other lives abroad. Eteocles wins the draw to rule first, but then refuses to yield power to Polyneices as agreed. By now Polyneices is married to a daughter of Adrastus, king of Argos. With the help of his father-in-law, he leads a large army in seven divisions against the seven gates of Thebes. The fighting is savage and the two brothers kill each other in mutual slaughter. But the attack is repelled and the city saved. Jocasta's brother Creon assumes control and gives the order to bury the Theban dead with full honors, but to let the bodies of the enemy rot above ground, including the corpse of Polyneices. Anyone caught burying the enemy will be put to death.

Creon is the epitome of injustice and stupidity in government. In the aftermath of a terrible civil war with relatives on either side, how is helpful to issue a decree outlawing burial for the losing side on penalty of death? It's easy to condemn Polyneices for attacking his native land, but Eteocles made the war all but inevitable. Power-hungry he unilaterally breaks the agreement made with his brother - essentially a constitution with a plan for harmonious rule. Creon's rash edict recognizes none of this, and flies in the face of basic religious customs and good public health practice. Indulging his insane thirst for vengeance even against the dead and those who grieve for them, he holds hostage the welfare of his own people and mismanages the aftermath out of sheer stupidity. Why? Simply because he can, because he is king, ruling from the position of a Laius complex. Who can live in Creon's world, a vengeful, hateful tyranny with no hope of justice, truth or reason? Not Antigone. In violation of the law, she buries her brother Polyneices, putting her in direct conflict with the highest authority in the land. She is caught and sentenced to death. Haemon, who is Creon's son and betrothed to Antigone, tries to persuade his father to be flexible and relent, saying that the people of Thebes are united on her behalf believing her deed to be honorable and just. Creon dismisses the people's democratic opinion, abuses his son for offering advice and defends his decision, not with rational argument but circular reasoning, citing the power vested in him to make it. Hearing his son defend, instead of denounce, the actions of a law-breaking woman, so infuriates the king that he threatens to make the bridegroom watch the execution of the bride.

How could your father be any sicker than that? The king's sadism creates a permanent rupture between him and his son. Clutching hard to the scepter of stupidity and injustice, Creon decides to entomb Antigone alive in a cave, so as to avoid the charge of killing her directly - a technicality with significance only to himself. Now he's burying the living, while allowing the dead to rot in full view of the city. Only when Teiresias, the blind sage of Thebes, in dire language counsels the king to change course, does he relent. After seeing to the burial of Polyneices, he hurries to the cave. There he discovers Haemon wailing in heart-rending distress over the body of Antigone who hanged herself with strips of linen torn from her own clothes. Haemon spits in his father's face and lunges at him with his sword. Failing to kill his father, he kills himself instead over the lifeless corpse of his fiancée. When Creon's wife Eurydice hears about the double suicide of her son and his bride, she takes her own life inside the palace.

Antigone is a positive, ennobling archetype that seeks to repair the wreckage wrought on society by the Laius complex. Characterized by a conscience desire to be an agent for justice in the world, it often brings one into direct conflict with the killing power of state and corporate institutions staffed by avatars of the Laius complex. Antigone's heroism is perhaps even greater than her father's. But because she's a woman, neither ancient tradition nor modern criticism can fully acknowledge it. Single-handedly she reverses the injustice of Creon's rule, and destroys his world. Though she's engaged to be married, with a husband and family to look forward to, she throws it all way. Embarking on a mission she knows to be suicidal, she uses her young life to challenge the manifest injustice of the political regime. Her name is proof that the ancient tradition never forgave her for making that choice. In Greek, Antigone means "against offspring." The patriarchy records and remembers her as "the one who didn't marry and have children." The one who got away, you might say; the one who ruined everything. She was born and bred to marry and produce heirs for the royal family: to continue its line of descent and autocratic control of society.

What happened to Antigone? Why didn't she perform as expected? Because at times the lack of justice and equality in the world is so egregious, so damaging, so intolerable as to cause those with an unerring sense of these qualities to postpone or forsake reproduction in the single-minded pursuit of restoring them to society. Which, after all, may be the highest expression of one's love for humanity. This is especially true in the world today, where injustice and inequality in society is now so grotesque and mind-altering that many people find more meaning and urgency in a life devoted to increasing the humanity of the world than in replicating the current model of a nuclear family engineered by corporate culture to play out as a form of economic oppression for the working-class. Though royalty herself, Antigone is not someone who can have children under any and all conditions. For her to procreate, society must be at least relatively just. If she cannot make it so, then at least she'll die trying. This mission gives her life form and meaning. No one else in Thebes is strong, brave or disciplined enough to do it, yet the whole town supports her and propels her into the sacrifice, which she chooses to make for reasons of conscience. Because Creon is too cruel and stupid to dispense justice and rule with wisdom, he's solely responsible for her death, the demise of his son and wife, and the ruin of his own life. The action of the drama makes this perfectly clear. Remember, the Laius complex is a curse containing the prophecy of its own punishment and demise. Creon cannot punish Antigone, because he embodies injustice. Of course, injustice works hard to create legal structures for its wrong-doing, and then "punishes" those who challenge its laws. But this is not true punishment, just more injustice. Only real Justice can truly punish, and more often than not it exists outside the legal structures of the state in the minds of those wise enough to discern it and brave enough to enforce it. Justice in the form of Antigone, backed by the people of Thebes, punishes Creon; it is not the other way around. The final passage of the play, spoken by the chorus, provides a key to interpreting the whole: "Wisdom is by far / The greatest part of happiness. / No irreverence / Must be shown to the gods. / The mighty words of overproud men / With mighty blows are punished, / And, with old age, teach wisdom." [6]

If the Laius complex afflicts the ruling elite as a demographic (the 1% who preside over a global superstructure of grotesque injustice and inequality), then Antigone inspires the rest of humanity (the 99% who must suffer the hubris, violence and stupidity of the 1%). Taken from the Occupy Movement, of course, theses figures are hardly used as precise data, but only to make the point that the psychology of the modern world is better explained in terms of these archetypes than by Freud's phony Oedipus/Electra complex. The figure of 1% is almost certainly too low and that of 99% too high, as there are many in the 99 who identify with the 1; who are loyal to it, exercising subordinate power as junior partners: agents and sympathizers aping the behavior of the 1% and taking direction from it. If you thought Freudian psychology explained you, think again. Feelings of rage, rebellion and resentment against politicians, professionals, clergymen, generals, bosses and billionaires don't occur spontaneously. They come from somewhere, which for the great many who feel these emotions is located in the systemic injustice and inequality of the external world. Justice-minded young people surrounded by Laius- and Creon-like adults, with no examples in their life of truth, courage and integrity, can be driven to desperation, suffering serious bouts of anger, isolation, depression and suicidal tendencies. Antigone probably wanted to kill Creon, her uncle and soon-to-be father-in-law, which Freud no doubt would have given an oedipal spin, but that's not her trip. Her trip is justice, and her form of punishment for Creon is direct action and civil disobedience. Far from killing Creon, she sacrifices her life to her conscience (the epicenter of justice in Thebes) allowing Creon to kill her, triggering a chain of events that destroys him. This is too big and authentic for the microscope of Freudian psychology. Fortunately, the socially redeeming archetype of Antigone (not the pseudo psycho-sexual theories of an Austrian neurologist) animates the brave and brilliant youth of the world. And they are all heroes.

Little Big Pine: citizen, patriot, poet; may be reached at littlebigpine@gmail.com.

Endnotes

1. Whatever value "the theory of the unconscious mind" may hold for some, it should not be regarded as scientifically valid. That's not to say that things can't happen in the mind which we aren't fully aware of. But the idea that certain thoughts, fears and desires are locked up in a region of the mind qualitatively different from other parts of the mind, where thoughts, fears and desires not are locked up, is incoherent upon scrutiny. This is my understanding of John Searle's critique, and Karl Popper's criticism that the theory cannot be falsified (a widely accepted criterion of scientific theory) is equally damaging. Other powerful critiques to its claim as science may be found.

2. The utility of psychoanalysis is in its practice as art, not as science; though the two disciplines are not mutually exclusive. What does it mean to psychoanalyze someone like Oedipus, a mythical and literary figure, who cannot be interviewed? It means working backwards from the elements of the story to arrive at motives for his actions and decisions in an effort to understand him psychologically. When this is done using logic, reason and human experience as our guide, certain motives become plausible, while others do not.

3. Before condemning his newborn son to die by exposure, Laius injures the baby's feet (presumably so it can't crawl to safety). When the baby arrives in Corinth, his feet are swollen from the injury. His adoptive parents name him Oedipus, which means "puffy feet."

4. What creature goes upon the earth with four legs in the morning, with two during the day and three at night? Man who crawls first on all fours, then walks on two, then hobbles with a cane in old age.

5. Freud's theories are of dubious value. His most significant discovery was not theoretical but clinical evidence for a seemingly high rate of child sexual abuse (especially of young girls) in nineteenth century Vienna. In the mid-1890s, he presented these findings to the Society for Psychiatry and Neurology in Vienna, which took the form of a "seduction theory" indicating that childhood sexual abuse was responsible for mental health problems in many of his adult patients. When this hypothesis met with professional opposition, he scrapped it and reinterpreted the accounts of childhood sexual abuse as memories of repressed childhood fantasies bubbling up from the unconscious. Now the health problems were judged to be internal to the patient and not the result of trauma inflicted on the child by an outside agent. In this way, by reinterpreting the accounts of childhood sexual abuse described to him by the adult patients who suffered it, Freud developed the "theory of the unconscious" and the "Oedipus complex" – shielding in the process (consciously or unconsciously?) Viennese society from charges of pedophilia.

6. Sophocles, Antigone, lines 1320-1326, c. 442 BCE; trans. David Franklin and John Harrison (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 103. "No irreverence... to the gods" refers to Creon's law forbidding the burial of the enemy dead.