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The Psychotherapy Scene in Euripides' Bacchae

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

G. Devereux
G. Devereux
Affiliation:
Paris
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Extract

I propose to demonstrate the clinical plausibility of the ‘psychotherapy scene’ of the Bacchae, which is subjected here to a purely psychiatric analysis: all my interpretations and conjectures are based on clinical data and psychiatric theory only. Euripides' objective and rational treatment of the irrational, the accuracy of his descriptions (not theories) of abnormal behaviour, which are compatible, down to the last detail, with descriptions found in modern psychiatric texts, and his capacity to present not simply a partial list of symptoms, but a coherent clinical picture (syndrome) are taken for granted and will not be discussed further in the present context. The focus of my enquiry is exclusively the psychiatric plausibility of Euripides' description of the psychotherapeutic process.

It goes without saying that, since ‘instant cures’ are impossible, Euripides condensed a normally fairly long procedure into a single scene, selectively high-lighting only what would be the crucial moments of a real psychotherapy. His summary of the psychotherapy is as satisfactory as that of a modern psychiatrist. In fact, Euripides' masterly selectivity actually facilitates the understanding of the psychodynamics of Agave's recovery. This enables me to comment on the Euripidean text in exactly the same way as I commented on the verbatim transcript of the psychotherapy of one of my Plains Indian patients.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 90 , November 1970 , pp. 35 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1970

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References

1 Dodds, E. R., ‘Euripides the Irrationalist’, CR xliii (1929) 97–104.Google Scholar

2 Dodds, E. R., ‘The αἰδώς of Phaedra’, CR xxxix (1925) 102–4.Google Scholar

3 Bezdechi, S., ‘Das psychopathische Substrat der Bacchantinnen Euripides',’ Arch. Gesch. Mediz. xxv (1932) 279–306 Google Scholar; Blaiklock, E. M., The Male Characters of Euripides (1952) ch. 7Google Scholar; Dodds, E. R., Euripides: Bacchae 2 (1960) ad 1264–7Google Scholar; G. Devereux, ‘The Miracle of Iolaos’, La Parola del Passato (in press). Anthropological parallels: Dodds, , The Greeks and the Irrational (1951)Google Scholar Appendix I; Dodds, ad E. Ba. 1272; etc. Cf. [Long.] de sublim. 15.3; Pl. R. 396a ff. For Aeschylus' accuracy, cf. Devereux, G., ‘L'État Dépressif et le Rêve de Ménélas (A. Ag. 410–19)’, REG lxxxi (1968) xii–xv.Google Scholar

4 Sappho, too, could describe coherent syndromes ([Long.] de sublim. 10.1 ff.). Cf. Page, D., Sappho and Alcaeus (1959) 20–33 Google Scholar; Devereux, G., ‘The Nature of Sappho's Seizure’, CQ n.s. xx (1970) 17–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Devereux, G., Reality and Dream: The Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian 2 (1969) esp. pt. ii.Google Scholar

6 The clinically equally satisfactory scene in E. HE 1089 ff. is not, strictly speaking, a genuine psychotherapy. Pace Wilamowitz, Heracles the epileptic (Blaiklock, op. cit.) cannot be helped to recall the deeds he performed during his seizure. He can only be told of his crime and be helped to live with this terrible hearsay knowledge. Euripides is, thus, clinically correct in not causing Amphitryon to try to help Heracles recall something of which he probably has not even a subliminal memory. By contrast, Cadmus can help Agave remember her crime. On die difference between genuine recall and remembering only what one has been told about one's actions, cf. Devereux, G., ‘Obsessive Doubt’, Bull. Philadelphia Assn. for Psychoanal. x (1960) 50–5Google Scholar; id., ‘La Renonciation à l'Identité’, Rev. Françaue de Psychanal. xxxi (1967) 101–42.

7 Plaut. Amph. 703, cf. O'Brien-Moore, A., Madness in Ancient Literature (1924) 145, n. 10.Google Scholar

8 S. Aj. On the suicide of incipient, or else temporarily recovered, psychotics in a primitive society, cf. Devereux, G., Mohave Ethnopsychiatry 2 (1969) 301.Google Scholar

9 A self-abolishing lever is one whose successful use to effect a cure abolishes the patient's blind faith in, and reliance upon, that lever and upon the therapist who uses it. Cf. G. Devereux, Reality and Dream, esp. Introduction to the new edn.

10 E.g. the substitution of a taboo for a tic, cf. Opler, M. E., ‘Some Points of Comparison and Contrast between the Treatment of Functional Disorders by Apache Shamans and Modern Psychiatric Practice’, Amer. J. Psychiatry xcii (1936) 1371–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Cf. Melampus' hunting of Proetus' daughters (Apollod, ii 2.2, etc.). In the Agrionia, which commemorated the myth of Minyas' daughters, an armed priest pursued their female descendants (Plu. Q. Gr. 38, 299E ff.). Since Minyas' daughters bellowed like cows and since Kouretas, D. (Ἀνώμαλοι Χαρακτῆρες ἐκ τὁ Ἀρχαῖον Δράμα [Athens 1951])Google Scholar holds that Io's psychosis was simply a bovine zoanthropy, it is suggestive that Io was mercilessly hunted and harassed by a gadfly. Cf. also the (perhaps confused) tradition that Thebes was founded where, at the end of Cadmus' search for Europa (who had been abducted by the bull Zeus), a cow (= Europa?) lay down (collapsed?) (sch. E. Ph. 638). (Cf. also the well-known representations of sleeping maenads.) On the psychological aspects of ritual over-exertion leading to exhaustion, cf. Devereux, G., ‘Réflexions Ethno-Psychanalytiques sur la Fatigue Névrotique’, Rev. Médec. Psychosom, viii (1966) 235–41Google Scholar ( = Trav. III Congr. Internat. Médec. Psychosom. [1967] 159–65.)

12 Cf. many of the testimonia cited by Edelstein, E. J. and Edelstein, L., Asclepius (1946).Google Scholar

13 Paus. iii 39.4 ff. For a psychiatric discussion of this text, cf. Kouretas, D., ‘Brainwashing and its Ancient Greek Prototype’, Medical Annals (Athens) vi (1966) 935–55Google Scholar; id., ‘The Oracle of Trophonios: A Kind of Shock Treatment Associated with Sensory Deprivation in Ancient Greece’, Brit. J. Psychiatry cxiii (1967) 1441–6.

14 G. Devereux, Mohave Ethnopsychiatry; Kiev, A. (ed.), Magic, Faith and Healing (1954) etc.Google Scholar

15 Simply as a stylistic convenience, and without invidious connotations, in this study ‘psychotherapy’ denotes exclusively insight-and-recall oriented methods of treatment.

16 Thus, in E. Or. 258 f., the Erinyes were simply hallucinated. Also, though Menelaus apparently expected to learn that Orestes was pursued by real (A. Eum.) Erinyes, Orestes told him that his madness was due to feelings of guilt (E. Or. 396 and Méridier, ad loc.). In E. Tr. 914 ff., Hecuba opposed Helen's self-exonerating supernatural explanation of her misconduct by highlighting its real—i.e., psychological—causes.

17 Cf. both Pasteur's and Freud's difficulties with the medical profession and possibly also the contempt of certain philosophers for Archimedes' engineering interests and feats.

18 Dodds, ad 1272, citing E. HF 1094 fr. and E. Or. 215 f.

19 Winnington-Ingram, R. P., Euripides and Dionysus (1948) 137, n. 1.Google Scholar

20 Though psychiatrists know that, in dissociated states, ‘ignorance’ complements knowledge, and that the nature of one state complements the other, in their writings they often dramatize the ‘sensational’ distinctness of the two (or more) alternating states, instead of soberly stressing their complementary nature.

21 My discussion of 1147 owes much to Professor Dodds' advice and encouragement.

22 I disregard massive clinical experience bearing on this point and quote only two classical examples. Penelope sheds ‘paradoxical’ tears in the course of a prophetic dream which ‘should’ delight a truly devoted wife (Horn. Od. xix 541 ff.), cf. Devereux, G., ‘Penelope's Character’, Psychoanal. Quart. xxvi (1957) 378–86.Google Scholar Though still unaware of Hippolytus' innocence, Theseus sheds tears in Sen. Phaedr. 1115–22.

23 By contrast, epileptics do ‘black out’ fairly completely. Hence, unlike Agave, Heracles must be told what he had done (E. HF 1114 ff.). Here, too, Euripides' clinical acumen is flawless; that of Wilamowitz less so.

24 Rattray, R. S., Religion and Art in Ashanti (1927) 303–4.Google Scholar

25 Pötzl, O., ‘Experimentell erregte Traumbilder in ihren Beziehungen zum indirekten Sehen’, Zschr. ges. Neurol. Psychiatr. xxxvii (1917) 278–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Hp. Insomn. 86; Arist. Div. Somn. 462b 17 ff. Their explanation is the same as that of modern psychiatrists, cf. Bartemeier, L. H., ‘Illness following Dreams’, Int. J. Psycho-Anal. xxxi (1950) 8–11.Google Scholar

27 On the distinction between these two types of recall, cf. n. 6, supra.

28 Winnington-Ingram, op. cit. 140.

29 It is perhaps the culture-historically regressive character of her act which shocks the Asiatic maenads; cf. Plu. Them. 13.2 f., Arist. 9.2 f. For a culture-historically progressive evolution, cf. E. IT 1458 ff. There exist anthropological parallels for both.

30 Cf. n. 11, supra.

31 Treatment administered during that state may be compared to genuine psychotherapy administered to hypnotized patients. This latter technique differs radically from a now obsolete hypnotherapy, in which the patient was simply ordered to give up his symptoms (often with catastrophic results).

32 The transformation of an exaltation into a suicidal or psychotic depression is described both in S. Aj. and in E. HF, though it took Greek physicians nearly 600 more years to establish a nexus between manic and depressive states; cf. Flashar, H., Melancholie und Melancholiker (1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim. On suicide as a means of forestalling an impending psychotic break or relapse, cf. Devereux, , Mohave Ethnopsychiatry 301 Google Scholar and passim.

33 The baiting of the insane occurs in many societies, cf. the eighteenth-century baiting of the insane in Bedlam Hospital, by visitors who were charged an entrance fee. Cf. Winnington-Ingram, op. cit. 23, 122, 136 n. 3, 144 n. 1.

34 The Sophoclean baiting scene (S. Aj. 74 ff.) is psychiatrically less convincing and humanly less compelling. Ajax' language is high-flown rather than exalted. He is ‘purblind’ rather than manifestly foolish and delusional; he is smugly self-satisfied rather than grandiose. Moreover, in Euripides, it is Agave's behaviour which arouses our pity. In Sophocles, only Odysseus' fear and compassion inform us that Ajax deserves to be pitied. For another cat-and-mouse game, cf. S. El. 1442 ff.

35 The Sophoclean Ajax is totally unaware of the real nature of his misdeed, and his unawareness is not due simply to the fact that he (unwittingly) exaggerates his crime (animals = men), whereas Agave (unwittingly) minimises her's (man = animal). Moreover, whereas Agave literally forces herself and her delusions on the chorus, Ajax simply answers Athena's questions in a relatively calm and even smugly complacent manner.

36 The affective façade of the Asiatic maenads' ironic approval of Agave's deeds is not only spurious but also (humanly) ‘inappropriate’. Cadmus' grief is both genuine and appropriate.

37 Cf. the Pötzl experiments mentioned n. 25, supra.

38 On the δυσκολία of the aged, cf. also E. Or. 490. Not all groups believe in senile decay and/or testiness. Among the Sedang, senile decay is not only taken for granted, but one and the same word designates the ancestors, the old, the violent and the strong. By contrast, even Mohave shamans specialising in ‘psychiatry’ never mention senile deterioration. (Cf. Devereux, , Mohave Ethnopsychiatry 254 ff.Google Scholar) In this respect the Mohave resemble the Greeks. Though in Greek tragedy the old themselves acknowledge that they are physically as helpless as children, psychologically not even those whom others (mistakenly) believe to be silly actually display symptoms of psychological senility. (Cf. Devereux, ‘The Miracle of Iolaos’, op. cit.)

39 φρονήσασαι (1259). Cf. Winnington-Ingram, op. cit., 140: Cadmus ‘knows that a time of awakening must come’.

40 Winnington-Ingram, op. cit., 139, n. 5.

41 On Cadmus' tenderness, cf. Winnington-Ingram, op. cit., 140. Cf. Dr S. Nacht's remark before a psychoanalytic audience: ‘We must love our patients.’

42 On these two distinct therapeutic devices, cf. Devereux, G., ‘Some Criteria for the Timing of Confrontations and Interpretations’, Internat. J. Psycho-Anal. xxxii (1951) 19–24 Google Scholar (= (in) Paul, L. (ed.), Psychoanalytic Clinical Interpretations [1963]Google Scholar).

43 Cf. E. Hec. 69 ff., E. IT 42 ff., etc.

44 On the proper therapeutic use of cultural levers, cf. G. Devereux, Reality and Dream, passim.

45 I have at times used very similar devices to make a hallucinating, depressed psychotic once more aware of reality.

46 Cf. Dodds ad 1264–7 and E. HF 1089.

47 Cf. Devereux, ‘Obsessive Doubt’, op. cit.; id., ‘La Renonciation à l'Identité’, op. cit. For the possibility of viewing the recall of anecdotes about oneself as ‘screen memories’, cf. Devereux, G., ‘Transference, Screen Memory and the Temporal Ego’, J. Neru. Ment. Dhease cxliii (1966) 318–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Cf. Ev. Luc. 14.26, 33; Ev. Jo. 2.14.

49 Devereux, G., ‘Cultural Factors in Psychoanalytic Therapy’, J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assoc. i (1953) 629–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 A loss of memory for recent events only is a common symptom of many psychiatric illnesses, including senility and alcoholism (Korsakow's syndrome). In E. HF 1102, Heracles recalls his descent into Hell, but not his recent actions.

51 G. Devereux, ‘Penelope's Character’, op. cit.

52 On the psychiatric importance of identity problems, cf. G. Devereux, ‘La Renonciation à l'Identité’, op. cit.

53 Devereux, G., ‘Mumbling’, J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assoc. xiv (1966) 478–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. Wilamowitz, ad E. HF 1130, on Heracles' reluctance to voice the horrible suspicions (not memories) which begin to dawn on him.

54 Devereux, G., From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioral Sciences (1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar passim, but esp. ch. 23. Cf. Winnington-Ingram, op. cit. 140, and n. 41, supra.

55 This is confirmed by Christ. Pat. 1466 ff.

56 Agave's incapacity to identify the head through tactile contact only, may well be a sign of resistance, masquerading as a tactile agnosia. For other commands to look at a horrible sight, cf. E. HF 1131, S. El. 1474.

57 At 1263 she is still mad, and her ‘question’ is really a denial. 1272 is not an explicit question: Agave simply professes to be amnesic and makes a request. 1280 is an evasive question.

58 The self-exonerating misperception of a human being as an animal probably accounts for many Greek mythical hunting accidents and is clinically persuasive. Two Pueblo Indian half-brothers first ‘saw’ their ‘witch’ enemies as foxes attacking their sheep and planned to shoot them. Later on they ‘saw’ a state policeman as a deer and actually shot him dead, G. Devereux, ‘Normal and Abnormal’ (in) Casagrande, J. B. and Gladwin, T. (eds.), Some Uses of Anthropology: Theoretical and Applied (1956).Google Scholar An Ojibwa Indian mother, in the grip of the cannibalistic Windigo psychosis, may see her children as (edible) fat beavers, Landes, R., The Ojibwa Woman (1938) 216, etc.Google Scholar

59 Myths, which are supposed to be believed, are always localised in space and sometimes even in time; this is one determinant of their credibility. Folktales, which require no belief, are hardly ever localised in space or time.

60 At 1084 Agave probably offers to feast the Asiatic maenads only on those remains of Pentheus' body which had not been devoured raw during the rending itself. That omophagia takes place during the dismemberment is proved by the r.f. hydria, BM E 246, which, thanks to the courtesy of Dr Ann Birchall, Asst. Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, I was able to examine personally.

61 Cf. Dodds, E. Ba., p. xvii.Google Scholar

62 I recall that at this point Agave is no longer psychotic.

63 One of my patients stubbornly asserted that she was the only person depraved enough to engage in auto-erotic practices, until I pointed out to her that the existence of a word denoting such activities proved that others also engaged in them. Cf. the tactful ‘those who’ (instead of ‘he who’) used in connexion with Menelaus' symptoms, A. Ag. 412–13.

64 This can happen even in the case of normal persons, cf. Devereux, G., ‘Orthopraxis’, Psychiatric Quart. xlii (1968) 726–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar for several cases analysed in depth.

65 Pl. Phdr. 244a ff., Ion 533c ff.; ‘The Blessings of Madness’ (Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, ch. 3) are largely those provided by μανία.

66 Cf. the fact that Porphyrius (de abst. 4.19) ‘almost forgot’ to cite E. fr. 471N2, which also mentions omophagia.

67 The following discussion owes much to the advice of Professors Dodds and Lloyd-Jones.

68 Devereux, G., ‘The Structure of Tragedy and the Structure of the Psyche in Aristotle's Poetics’ (in) Lazerowitz, M. and Hanly, C. (eds.) Psychoanalysis and Philosophy: Essays in Memory of Ernest Jones (in press).Google Scholar

69 Arist. Po. 1460a26 f. I note in support of Aristotle's distinction between on-stage (rational) and off-stage (irrational), that even though Cadmus' metamorphosis into a serpent is predicted on stage (1330 ff.), it only occurs later on—after the tragedy ends—off stage.

70 On the capacity of dramatic ‘confrontations’ to function as closure-elements (‘interpretations’) in psychoanalysis, cf. G. Devereux, ‘Some Criteria for the Timing of Confrontations and Interpretations’, op. cit.

71 The old distinction between neurosis and psychosis, in terms of the presence or absence of insight, is still of great heuristic value in psychiatry.

72 Devereux, G., ‘Primitive Psychiatric Diagnosis: A General Theory of the Diagnostic Process’, (in) Galdston, I. (ed.) Man's Image in Medicine and Anthropology (1968).Google Scholar

73 On this new concept, cf. G. Devereux, ‘Transference, Screen Memory and the Temporal Ego’, op. cit.; id., ‘La Renonciation à l'Identité’, op. cit.

74 Thus, chronic neurotic invalidism, though it involves many renunciations—such as tying the ‘sufferer’ to his bed—usually involves the ‘secondary gain’ of permitting the sufferer to monopolise attention and to rule his household with the iron rod of his ‘martyrdom’.

75 Cf. Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the Irrational (1951) ch. 1.Google Scholar Cf. also Dawe, R. D., ‘Some Reflections on Ate and Hamartia ’, HSCP lxxii (1968) 89–123.Google Scholar

76 Firm, , de err. prof. relig. 6.Google Scholar On the doer and his responsibility in general, cf. (with some reservations) Adkins, A. W. H., Merit and Responsibility (1960).Google Scholar

77 E. Med. 1019 ff. Rivier, A. (‘L'Élément Démonique chez Euripide jusqu'en 428’, Entretiens Hardt vi [1958])Google Scholar notwithstanding, this passage does not shed light on Euripides' psychological theories. It is simply a superbly realistic clinical description of a manoeuvre every experienced psychotherapist has had occasion to observe.

78 When a satisfactorily analysed patient is told that his analysis is almost finished, he often has a brief relapse: all of his old symptoms return for a few days or weeks. This relapse seeks to stave off the final resolution of his dependence upon—and transference on—his analyst. At times, it is precisely the analysis of this brief relapse which permits the complete dissolution of the analytic relationship.

79 Cf. Verdenius, W. J., ‘Notes on Euripides' Bacchae ’, Mnemosyne xv (1966) 337–63.Google Scholar