Understanding Human Life through Psychoanalysis and Ancient Greek Tragedy

Drawing parallels between ancient theatre, the analytic setting and the workings of psychic life, this book examines the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus through a psychoanalytic lens, with a view of furthering the reader's understanding of primitive mental states.

Drawing parallels between ancient theatre, the analytic setting, and the workings of psychic life, this book examines the tragedies of Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus through a psychoanalytic lens, with a view of furthering the reader's understanding of primitive mental states.

What lessons can we learn from the tragic poets about psychic life? What can we learn about psychoanalytic work from ancient tragedy and playwrights? Sotiris Manolopolous considers how the key tenets of ancient Greek theatre - passion, conflict, trauma, and tragedy - were focussed on because they could not be spoken of in daily life and how these restraints have continued into contemporary life. Throughout, he considers how theatre can be used to stage political experiences and shows how these experiences are a vital part of understanding an analysand within an analytic setting. Drawing on his own clinical practice, Manolopoulos considers what ancient playwrights might teach us about early, uncontained agonies of annihilation and primitive mental states that manifest themselves both within the individual and the collective experience of contemporary life, such as climate change denial and totalitarian politicians.

Drawing on canonical works such as Hippolytus, Orestes, Antigone, and Prometheus Unbound, this book continues the legacy of research that shows how contemporary analysts, students, and scholars can learn from ancient Greek literature and apply it directly to those negatively impacted by the trauma of 21st-century life and politics.

Autorentext

Sotiris Manolopoulos is a child analyst and training analyst based in Athens, Greece. He was trained in the Canadian Psychoanalytic Society and is a member of the Hellenic Psychoanalytic Society, where he was previously president and director of training.

Inhalt

Introduction

Chapter 1 The dramatic point of view

Chapter 2 Euripides' Hippolytus: drives unleashed

Chapter 3 Euripides' Medea: the barbaric reality

Chapter 4 Euripides' Orestes: the contamination of the city

Chapter 5 Euripides' suppliant women: mourning and femininity

Chapter 6 Euripides' Alcestis: narcissim and anti-narcissim

Chapter 7 Euripides' Iphigeneia in Tauris: bringing the stranger back home

Chapter 8 Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis: triumph in sacrifice

Chapter 9 Sophocles' Philoctetes: from somatic pain to trading

Chapter 10 Sophocles' Antigone: the tragic staging of the political

Chapter 11 Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound: from pain to suffering and thinking

Chapter 12 A plea for a new political subject