The psychoanalysis of Pentheus in the Bacchae of Euripides

Summary

INTRODUCTION

My purpose here is to analyze Pentheus, not to discuss the Bacchae as a whole. But the psychoanalytic critic suffers from a questionable reputation, and should welcome the chance to show that his credentials as a man of taste, if not as a scholar, are reasonably well in order. Necessity offers that chance, for a few preliminary remarks on the nature of Dionysus are vital to any analysis of Pentheus, psychoanalytic or otherwise; perhaps while making them I shall be able to give some reassurance as to my own literary sanity. After that I want to go through each of the Pentheus scenes as if it were a session on the couch; then a look at one of the case-histories in the psychoanalytical journals may enable us to reconstruct a life-history of Pentheus' illness. I am not threatening to present a completely unfamiliar play: the reader will have to decide whether I have used the facts of another man's life and another man's illness to illuminate or to strait-jacket the life and illness of Pentheus. But the hard evidence I use will all be taken from the play. If there is disagreement – and I have yet to encounter the psychological interpretation that won much initial favor – it will be over how to interpret what is in the play, not over my dragging in hypotheses from outside that have the approval of famous names in psychiatry.