Your Mind Matters – Anastasios Gaitanidis, Oedipus Myth & Destiny

So welcome to Mythology. I am Dr. Maria Kempinska, and I'm here with the eminent psychotherapist and professor Anastasios Gaetanidis. And of course, he is Greek, so who better to talk about mythology from the classical era than Anastasios? So today we're discussing the myth of Oedipus as written by Sophocles, because there were a few, um, stories about Oedipus. So we're taking the Sophocles version. Um, but welcome Anastasios, and thank you so much for joining me today. And please give us a brief understanding of your background and why this myth is so important. Um, thank you, Maria. Thank you for having me. Um, I'm a relational psychoanalyst. I have I have trained as a relational psychoanalyst in New York, and also I have been an academic teaching in various institutions in, in the UK, psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. I have— I've, apart from being academic and a relational psychoanalyst, I, I practice privately and I see patients privately. I think the myth is absolutely crucial because it teaches us— there are various themes. One of them is how a man confronts his destiny and his fate, and how we deal with one's fate and one's destiny, and how we also bring about our own fate and our destiny through our own actions, and how we perpetuate the violence that we try to avoid. I think these are the few themes that I can pick up right now. And of course, it was the basis of Freud's work. Mm-hmm. Especially in psychoanalysis, you can't actually understand his therapeutic sort of formula, if you like, his theory, without understanding what he called the Oedipus complex, which we'll touch on, but it's not totally the theme of this. But it is such a big theme in his work, and I think it's understood by so many people nowadays. But we'll touch on the actual myth itself. So can you give us the story? Can you tell us the story? Right. Um, well, Oedipus was the son of Laius, and, uh, who was, um, who received the prophecy that Laius received the prophecy that once his son would grow up, will kill himself and marry Jocasta, who was his mother, Oedipus's mother. So he was terrified to receive this news, and he gave his son to one of his servants to remove him from the palace and to put him in, in the forest nearby, where if he was left alone in the forest, he would be eaten by wolves and other predators. And of course, what happened is that the shepherd took the son, and he was a loyal servant of Laius. He took the son, he took pity on the little boy who saw him as being as being, uh, as being the victim of this prophecy. He gave him to another king and queen who were childless, and they didn't have a child, so they gave— they gave— they adopted him. But, uh, Oedipus was adopted by another king and queen, uh, which was, uh, they took him as their son. However, when he came of age, he received a prophecy himself that he will kill his mother and— sorry, kill his father and marry his mother, who he mistakenly thought that they were actually his adopted parents because his adopted parents never revealed to him that he was adopted. So in order to avoid the destiny, the fate of killing his father and marrying his mother, He said he left the city of his adopted parents and he went, he just exiled himself from the city. And on the way to, on the way to, on the crossroads of one of his travels, he met, you know, by accident, he met, of course, as the myth has it, he met his, his real father, who didn't know it was his real father, Laius, who was trying to get to a meeting that was arranged for him. And he ordered, both him and the carriage man, ordered him out of the way. And Oedipus followed the carriage man, killed the carriage man, then killed actually Laius, who didn't know was actually his father. Now on the way back to Thebes, he also met the Sphinx. The Sphinx was a monster who was terrorizing the city of Thebes and was— I think Laius was going actually to receive a prophecy of how to deal with the Sphinx because it was becoming a menace for the city of Thebes. So he was— Oedipus met As the story has it, as the myth has it, Sphinx was asking, the riddle of the Sphinx was, what is it that starts its life with 4 legs, moves to 2 legs, and ends up its life, his life with 3 legs? And Oedipus, in his incredible cleverness, responds, it's of course a human being, he's a man. You know, the man starts his life in 4, moves into two and then ends his life in three, in three lives. So in this, the Sphinx once receives the reply from Oedipus, falls from the height that it was sheltering itself, this monster, who was half human, half eagle. And, you know, it's fallen in its death. And Oedipus, you know, is announced by the people of Thebes, the king and is now, because Laius is dead, he's also given as, as, uh, as, um, you know, as a trophy wife, the queen of the city was Jocasta, who was his mother. So he ends up obviously killing his mother and, uh, sorry, killing his father and marrying his mother. Um, and, uh, unbeknownst to himself, years later, uh, since he, he gives, uh, birth to 3 children, 4 children actually, 2 boys and 2 girls, and with Jocasta. And, and, but then a plague befalls the city of Thebes, and everybody is wondering who is, who is the cause of the plague. And Oedipus, as a good ruler and good king, in all, in all accounts he's been a good king so far, he's trying to find the cause of the plague and And of course, he doesn't realize in his search, in his very thorough search, that, you know, unbeknownst to himself, he is the cause of the plague because he is the one who committed the hubris of killing his father and marrying his mother. And the gods actually bring the plague as a punishment for what he committed. And of course, he's resisting this truth. And the more he searches, the more he's approaching the truth, the more he's resisting the truth. Truth. And there is a famous encounter with Tiresias, which is the blind seer, uh, who reveals to Oedipus that he is the cause of the plague. He is accused then by Oedipus that he's, uh, you know, conspiring with Creon to— conspiring with Creon to overthrow him and take the throne. Uh, and Creon was his brother-in-law. And, uh, and Tiresias, uh, response that, you know, I might be blind, but you don't see the truth that is right in front of your eyes. And he's, uh, he's eventually, eventually, of course, the Oedipus sees the truth, uh, recognize that he is the cause of the plague. Jocasta kills herself, hangs herself, and Oedipus takes his eyes out because of the arrogance of not seeing the truth. And now he sees it, he takes his, his eyes out. And this is how the tragedy ends, with Oedipus blinding himself once he sees the truth that he committed these horrible crimes that he was destined to commit, but he resisted throughout his life only to find himself doing it. And this sort of compulsion, in a way, this destiny that was fulfilled through his actions, is a very big sort of a moral lesson of the tragedy, that you can't avoid your destiny. And do you think that's true for people in general? I think, I think there is something about this compulsion to, you know, the more you run away from something, the more you find it in front of you. And if you don't confront it right from the beginning, you know, the more you try to, to push it away, to avoid it, not to see it, it comes right in front of you and you have to face it. And I think there is something, there is a truth in that, irrespective of Freud, or, you know, or any other theory. I think there is something about the more you're trying to avoid something, a truth that has been revealed, or something that internally arises and you're trying to, to keep it away, whether it's a feeling, a premonition, an imagination, something that comes to— and you try to push away, eventually you find it in front of you, you know. Because what the myth tells us is that in essence, um, he was given away. He— in fact, the servant was asked to kill him. Yes. And that's where his name came from. He actually drilled the hole— the holes into his feet. Yes. But couldn't bring himself to actually kill him and was given to a shepherd.. And it's almost as if it comes with the story that there is a destiny within us all, which actually goes with Jung's terms of the self. So, you know, if we come in with a, a destiny of our own, we must acquire certain things from our heritage, which is what they're saying that Oedipus did here. He was trying to escape his heritage, not through his own fault, not through his own consciousness, but it's almost like an unconscious need to escape from own heritage. Yes, he didn't manage to do that. But it's so such a— almost it's tragic, the myth itself, because we all know as observers to this that in a way he— it wasn't really his fault. I presume the only fault he had was to kill his father Laius, but that happened because there was, um, a little bit of a, a sort of fight on that bridge. Yes, yes. I think on the crossroads, I think there is something symbolic of meeting him on the crossroads, that he could have taken another road, but he takes the road that meets his father, you know. And it itself, it says that there's something about the unavoidable, the inevitable sort of confrontation with one's fate, which the Greek myth wants us to believe, of course, right? But there is something about you receive a prophecy that you're gonna kill your father, and you kill an older man, right, in, in the, in the, in the spur of the moment, and, you know, being enraged by the fact that his, you know, the, the carriage man was trying to get him out of the way because they were in a rush to get to the Oracle themselves to receive a prophecy about what to do with the Sphinx. But, you know, but then you kill the carriage man, and then you find an older man who's, who, who, who is dressed as a royal right? And you kill an older man knowing that you perhaps— you receive the prophecy that you kill a father. Of course, you know, he didn't know it was his father, but, you know, knowing that, would you kill another monk? I think this is the whole element of projection, isn't it? So many people now unconsciously— I think they've always done it, but it's worse today for some reason, and maybe it's through social media. People just lash out. And it is this lacking control over your own emotions. Yeah. You know, we've thought— we talked about that in the Red Knight in, um, Parsifal. It's a young man not being— and it doesn't matter whether it's a man or woman, actually. It's that lacking control of why we behave the way we do. Yes, I think you're right. I think you're right, Maria. There is something about, you know, spur of the moment that he loses complete control and he loses his his ability to make a kind of rational judgment. And he lashes out and he kills both the carriage man and the king and his father, King Laius. And in that moment, in that moment, his fate is sealed. And of course, you know, then he also marries another woman, right? He doesn't It's quite interesting that he marries an older woman here because it's almost that he doesn't do that intentionally. He doesn't go out looking for— it's the— she's the prize. She comes with a kingdom. That's right. And in many ways, he could not have married her because she was already the queen and she was a widow now because the news of Laius' death has reached the city. And of course, he's the savior of the city. He saved the city from the Sphinx, right? He, he, and he was already very, um, he's feeling very powerful because he, he, he solved the riddle of the Sphinx. His, his knowledge was enabled him to, but that also is, is a sign of the futility of knowledge and the arrogance that we have by knowing through knowing stuff and not, not respecting destiny, but thinking that by knowing we can avoid all this. But it's the hubris that I think in the myths they deal with all the time, the hubris we'll come to in everyday life, because there's so many people that are full of hubris today. But in those days, you were given power because of your actions. Because your intelligence stood up against— even though, well, in The Odyssey, he stood up against the gods and said, you know, sort of, I did this, I won the Trojan War. But he, here, he did beat the Sphinx that was terrorizing the land. And then he had to live it out. So they did, when they married, of course, she was an older woman. But that wasn't sort of relevant because she was still quite young. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And they had the 4 children, which was harmonious for many, many years until the plague. So do you think if you— let's talk about it as a piece of drama at that time when Sophocles wrote it. There was a lot of war, there was a lot of fear, there was terror because in Thebes and in Greece at that time there were— and all over, let's say all over That's how they lived. They were dramatizing behavior. Yes. And so for the audience, they were looking at behavior and saying, what would I do here? And the drama actually only started in Greece around that time. So drama for us, and it sort of goes hand in hand with democracy, doesn't it? Drama, right? Because it enables the audience to look and say, what would I do here? This is how we are set in our world. These are dramas, these are the wars that are going on, these are the problems that we have in life, and what would I do here? But in a way, because if we don't get involved in the drama, if we watch too much— so in a way, in our modern life, that's been taken away. If we don't go to a theater and discuss it afterwards, then everything's been taken away from us. The whole point of this was that we could sit and the audience could sit and talk about these problems. That's right. A lot of these myths had actors that would ask that question, 'Hmm, what do I do here? What is the answer?' Yeah, I think that was also the function of the chorus, raising the questions, uh, that perhaps Oedipus is facing and what is happening, and actually, um, outlining, outlining the dilemmas and the possible sort of catastrophes will follow if one follows an action. And the chorus was very crucial in this sense, which also brought the music into the action of the, of the whole sort of tragedy. And in a famous sort of paper on, and a book on, on tragedy, Nietzsche says combined the Apollonian, which is the dialogue, with the Dionysian, which is the musical aspect, and brought the two elements of tragedy together. However, for the audiences of then and the audience of now, they are very much asking, what am I going to do if I occupy the position of the hero? What is my destiny? How do I actually escape it or fulfill it through my own actions? And in many ways, what is happening, Oedipus is bringing this upon himself, but also the audience feels very sympathetic towards Oedipus. After all, he wasn't, you know, he was provoked into killing his father. He wasn't the one who was abandoned. He was abandoned by his father, you know, in, you know, he was given to the servant to be abandoned in the forest. And then he was given to the king and queen of another city to be adopted as an act of pity towards a little boy. But fundamentally, you know, he hasn't caused any of this. But, you know, he's, apart from actually killing his father and marrying his mother unbeknownst to himself, all of this was provoked. And I think the audience feels like, you know, the tragedy is exactly that. How on earth? And then he's also a good ruler of the city. You know, for many years he's been a good ruler. Then the plague comes to punish his hubris. And, you know, one wonders what is exactly the hubris here? Exactly. And of course the hubris is that, you know, that he has committed these heinous acts, but, you know, he didn't even know that he did this. And that's where the notion of the unconscious comes into the picture, that there is so much knowledge that we are not aware of, but, you know, functions like a fate behind our backs, you know, and only if we know it then perhaps we can become fully aware of what we do. But our unconscious doesn't always belong to us, and that's what Jung addressed, that we have a collective, but also, uh, from our family lineage it comes through, because they saw it as a curse, didn't they? Yeah. And the curse is from the family. So how do we in modern therapy, or how does one who goes into therapy, reconcile that the element of curse. And in some countries, of course, they still talk about curses and family curses. Absolutely. And I think there is this because, you know, remember the, the whole sort of prophecy comes as a curse in a way. It comes as a curse to the family of Laios. And it's Laios who starts the whole thing by actually— and that he sets the whole whole drama in motion, the whole tragedy in motion, by deciding to kill Oedipus. But he does cannot do it himself, so he gives it to a servant to do it on his behalf, which of course is cowardly in its own right. But you can understand possibly why a father might find it difficult to kill his son himself. But still, he's the one who enacts the first act of violence and sets the whole thing in motion. And I think in many ways, you know, It's almost like the sins of one's father, you know. We carry the sins of our father, which is coming back to when we talked about Parsifal, is he goes and heals the sins of the father. Yes, yes. And it's almost as if Oedipus, there was no way that Oedipus could do that. No, I think quite the opposite. It feels like he becomes, he eventually reenacts the violence that he was done to himself. One thing that people have criticized Freud in a way is that he misses the point that Laius is the one who begins the violence. He's the father who starts the violence. Yes, because in— let's talk— so Freud, he uses the theme of Oedipus. Now let's be clear about why he chose that, because at the time, at Freud's time, when he thought about the Oedipus complex as part of his theory, there was— he was dealing with Anna O and, um, with Breuer, and they were discussing sexual, um, abuse for women, this particular woman. And when he wrote his paper, it wasn't accepted. And also, to be accepted, perhaps— we can't step into his mind, we can only see what he— what came of it— that he wrote the Oedipus complex, but he wrote it as if a child almost willingly wanted the sexual attraction of a parent as opposed to the attraction of a parent symbolically as opposed to actually. And that's where he trips up, either in the way he wrote it or in our interpretation. Yeah, I think there is a lot of room to think about, you know, desires and wishes that the child might have as a kind of something undifferentiated that, you know, one might symbolize as erotic. But the problem is not that. The problem is that for Freud, he doesn't see that the whole sort of sexual scene and the whole sexual sort of sexual encounter is initiated by the parents. And I think this is what he's doing with the seduction, with the theory of seduction that comes, you know, which talks about child sexual abuse and, you know, and sins of seduction that happen from adults to, you know, from adults, from parents to children. And he changes his view and he ascribes all of these desires, you know, unprovoked, from the, you know, from the side of the child, of the little baby, which gradually, you know, at the age of 4 or 5 starts experiencing this sort of erotic desires towards the mother, and later on a kind of hostile feelings towards the father as the rival who wants to take mother's attention away from the child. Um, this is the positive Oedipus complex. Of course, he has a negative Oedipus complex where the father is the object of, of love, attention, and the mother is the rival in a way. But, um, but in many ways, in many ways, there is, uh, This is something that, you know, he finds these erotic desires right from the beginning, from the oral, anal, and phallic stages. And Oedipus is the culmination of this sort of triangulation of desire between the mother, the father, and the baby, in a way, and the child. But he doesn't realize that he's in the kind of— it's like later, for example, Jean Laplanche will talk about it, the fundamental sort of intervention of the adult sexuality into, and the messages of adult sexuality into the child who has to translate and make sense of, you know. And that's what, you know, in a way sets in motion infantile sexuality, is the adult sort of intervention, sexual administrations, seductions into the world of adult sexuality that the child is called upon to, to respond to and translate. This is, this is a far more sophisticated, I think, understanding, which also corresponds very closely to the, to the myth of Oedipus, who is Laius, who sets in motion the whole, and the messages that he gives by abandoning and, you know, and trying to, to kill his son as a rival for perhaps possibly the mother's sort of attention, because the mother is, is, you know, The mother completely sort of, uh, does not want to be involved with any of this. He doesn't want to. And it's Laius who's taking it upon himself to protect his family from this prophecy. Um, and, um, and in many ways, they set in motion the whole thing that happens later on. And of course, you know, Oedipus also, uh, finds himself enacting the violence that he's been transmitted to him from the father and, you know, fulfilling the fate that is already passing through the parents' sort of desires that they were trying to, to push away and project onto him. And I think there is— there are similar projections that come very early on in the child's life and which later on are being enacted by the child himself or herself. And would it have been different had the mother, Jocasta, had the power to stop the father. Yeah, that's the thing. And this is where, in those days, the king had the power. And it was what he said happened. And if a mother doesn't step in and see what's going on in modern terms, then of course, the father will have the power. Or it depends, you know, sort of, but you need the other person to see and actually step in and do something. I mean, at the end, Jocasta kills herself. She commits suicide because she realizes that equally unconsciously she's given birth to her son's children. That's right. And her children, which to her must have been— how do you live with something like that? Absolutely. But also the fact that she's also, because of her inability as a woman to step in and prohibit the assassination of Oedipus as a child. And later on to say no to marrying a man who she doesn't know, and because he saved the city, Oedipus, who happened to be his son. And then, you know, committing this horrible incestuous sort of union, which gives rise to Oedipus' children, who actually are his brothers and sisters. And of course, you know, she would have known that he was a lot younger. Yes. So if you compare it to today's, you know, sort of, you know, in a way, does it matter the age thing? I don't think it does matter because today, but as long as you're conscious of what you're doing, this is what we're talking about. Yeah. Knowing somebody, knowing their background, just don't take them on face value, which is what they, she was doing. And what was happening. I think she was doing, but also, you know, she had very little agency. Women, very little agency. They couldn't refute, or they couldn't, you know, and of course, in other tragedies, women have a lot of agency, but not in this one. It seems like it's an affair between men, and women are just there, used as a kind of objects of either satisfaction or exchange. She doesn't have a say in this from the very beginning. Either she doesn't have a say or she doesn't want to have a say. So it's very unclear, the whole thing. But she does commit suicide at the end, which of course is an act of her own will to give an end to her own tragedy. And perhaps her own disappointment she experienced with herself and disappointment with the acts that she had to to, to commit under the influence of, of the king or other sort of pressures that she received throughout her life as a woman. So again, Jocasta is a tragic figure in her own right, um, which of course makes her— makes her a tragic, tragic heroine in, in, in, in full force. But, but for me, there is something about in all of this is how is the idea of turning a blind eye. Yeah, you turn a blind eye to what is right in front of us. And there is something about the encounter with Thereseas, which of course is like a kind of ancient shaman, you can say. He, he's the one who was able to see the truth despite the fact that he was blind, because he receives these messages because he's blind. He's a seer. He's able to to see things in the future and how they unfold. And he warns Oedipus, but Oedipus doesn't take him seriously until, of course, the time that he— the whole sort of truth is revealed by the kind of the shepherd who actually has given him as a child to the king and queen of another city. And he's revealed to him fully what he has done. And then once he realizes the truth, then he blinds himself. So there is a lot of, a lot of, you know, turning a blind eye and then blinding to the truth and then blinding oneself once the truth is revealed. But isn't it also, um, because, um, Oedipus actually said, I do want to know the truth. Yeah, I do have to find the truth. So it's almost like somebody coming into therapy and then not wanting to go through with what they Yes. And you get this a lot with people, you know, this is sort of self-help denial in a way that's going on today. Lots and lots of people find books, they read the books, they might want to actually help themselves. But the reality of it is that it's, it, you have to confront yourself. Yes. Not only your actions, and yes, those actions are dependent on the decisions that you make. Or made at that time. But unless you have somebody like, um, that person, i.e., therapist in place of the seer, that tells you, look, this is what you need to look at. And often people don't want to look at that. Very few people nowadays want to go through full-time therapy to come to the other side because it's so deep, some of the work that needs to be done. That it's not always their fault. Because often when you grow up, you're not in a position, it's like their children would've been children of, you know, sort of Antigone was the child of incest, but not their fault. But they still have to live out whatever is going on. And we make decisions throughout our lives according to our own destiny, if you like. Mm, I agree, Maria. So, you know, how do you, how do these people, people need to understand that just reading a self-help book doesn't actually address your internal work and the things that you must see. And that's why here with Edomus, although he says, yes, I, regardless, I must know because we, we have this plague. I need to save my, my kingdom, which is our own agency. People know they need to be saved, but they don't want to know the truth. That's right. And I think this is what— why therapy is so difficult, especially the therapy, psychoanalysis, because it deals with this depth that is very, you know, and also the— all the legacy, the family legacy and the family curse and the secrets and the lies and all of the traumas that happened in the past, uh, from one's parents and, and one sort of history. And how on one level we want to find the truth. But on another, we are very scared of it. And I think, you know, being confronted with the truth, it's almost— it's very painful. And it can blind us. It can blind us because, you know, I was blind, but now I can see, you know, but once you see the truth, it's too painful to bear. That's why people very quickly, you know, turn away from therapy or they they find self-help books, or they medicate themselves, so they, they do anything to avoid the pain that comes with the realization of what they have done, the responsibility they need to take for their lives, but also what was done to them and the pain that, that involves. Which, of course, you know, and also what do you do with what was done to you? Yeah, exactly. I think that's the key. How do you cope with that? Yeah, you find out the truth. And I think if we don't open this up in our society. In those days, you see, people used to talk. That's what plays were for. And Bruno Bettelheim talks about this, and Mary Goodman, uh, talk about the reflective nature of theater. And now theater's there to entertain, but— or we might see something on television, but we very rarely discuss it in depth or really reveal ourselves for fear that somebody could use it against instead of being compassionate and sympathetic. I think you're right. I think for me, for me, it's, um, I think that's what the nature of therapy— that's why sometimes it can last a long time. That's why it's difficult to, to sit with all these feelings and all these revelations and all these truths. And sometimes, perhaps, as therapists, we need to close our eyes to what is right in front of us, in order to listen with our ears, with our other senses, of what is happening inside the room and also outside of it. I think, you know, I think that the function of the therapist can be that of a blind seer. Yeah, where, you know, the more you see what is right in front of you, the more you miss what is actually hidden and what it needs to be revealed. If you stop looking at the obvious, you're looking at the things that are right, sometimes right in front of your eyes, but you don't want to see. And, you know, we have been trained as therapists to look for this. And I think it's very difficult sometimes to, to reveal it to others because it's painful. It's, it's hard. We need to be very tactful and very careful with what we give back. And our interpretations can be acts of violence if we're are not careful. Because, you know, it is painful, you know, it can shake someone to the core. And we need to be very mindful of how that we need gently to lead them to the truth themselves instead of just throwing it in on their face. Which of course, that's what Thereseas does with Oedipus, and that's why Oedipus reacts in this way. Yeah, you know, so he's not a very good therapist, Thereseas, quite the opposite. He gets angry and he tells him exactly what Oedipus doesn't want to hear, you know. But, you know, in many ways the therapist needs to be very thoughtful and very mindful of how empathic about how painful this process is. You can also— the person comes back to the willingness to hear. You see, Oedipus was willing to hear. He said, I've got to hear this regardless of the cost, whatever it's going to cost, regardless of who did it. I've got to know the truth. Yeah, and he doesn't stop even when Tiresias tells him this. He doesn't stop. He carries on with his search. He wants to find who is the culprit, who caused the plague, and of course that leads back to him. And of course this— there is a, you know, there is a need to find the truth. There's an almost compulsion to find the truth. Yes, I think this is the most important part of life. Do we need to know the truth? Is it something that we have to know? And how important is it? And I think those are the questions only we can answer individually. It's almost instinctive within us that compels us to find something within us that needs to know that truth. And coming back to Parsifal, he had to. That was his destiny. But it wasn't the destiny of his brothers. But some particular person in the family, like Antigone, she had to carry through. That was her destiny to go and work something out. But certain people in the family have to find the truth, and some people don't, do they? Yes, I think, I think there is, you know, there is something about the truth is, is not palatable, is not something we can carry especially when it relates to trauma, when it relates to violence, relates to all sorts of things that we don't want to see. Because transparency is well and good, but when what you see on the other side of a clear glass is a beautiful landscape, but when you see is hell and horror, you don't want to see that, right? So in many ways, there is a praise of transparency instead of opaqueness. And that we, we don't— we, we would like to see. But you know, what you— if what you see is not a beautiful landscape, or is not something that is pleasing to the eye, but it's something that's quite horrifying and horrible, you might not want to see. Exactly. Do you think this is why, um, dreams are so important? Because dreams actually bring up the unconscious for us, individual, and each individual brings that to the therapeutic setting or in life. So there was a time when dreams in North American Indians and in, you know, for shamans and in Siberia where the shamans, they say they originated, um, you know, they use dreams always to find out the truth, not only for the individual but for the collective. And we seem to have forgotten that, not as therapists necessarily. I mean, Freud had his own You know, when they say sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But, you know, not everything is sexual. And I think being— if everything's sexual, it limits it. It limits it to the point of the act, as opposed to where did the act come from, which is what you were saying about Lysias, who actually was the person who sent Oedipus away, who wanted him killed, who wanted get rid of something because he said he didn't want that destiny. But somehow, how do you stop destiny from happening, or how do you live it out effectively knowing that it's not going to be good? I think in many ways this is also part of the myth, which is the first time that we hear in, in, in the, the prophecy was given by the Oracle Oracle of Delphi, which, which is not— um, usually is very ambiguous. It's like dreamlike from the Oracle, is like dreamlike. You have to interpret them. They were not given to you, you know, so clearly. So it's, it's quite surprising that in this myth it's very clear that the prophecy is that you will, you know, you will kill your father and marry your mother. It is unambiguous. Is open, is not dreamlike. And, you know, and in many respects it makes one think, how come in this tragedy the, the, the, the oracle was so unambiguous? And there is something about dreams when they become— they, they lose the capacity to be dreamlike, and they have— they, they process the images in a way that they make them more palatable. Then they become nightmares. And a nightmare is almost— symbolizes the inability to dream. A nightmare is something that is so powerful that is not being processed in such a way that gives you the truth in, in, in a straightforward manner without being able to be in a raw, straightforward manner, without being able to be processed and symbolized and, you know, metamorphosed into something else. I think this is where perhaps, you know, dreams also function as a protective, as protective, as something that make the truth something that you've been walked over, walked over and symbolized, something that can be processed instead of being given in a very raw, unprocessed form. And I think there's so many people that don't sleep. Maybe this is why, because they're not processing everything effectively. And that's why dream work is so powerful. Because even when Jung was doing work, and I know that I've dealt with dreams, and I love dream work. And we have a dream, some— I remember Jung having a client that kept dreaming, he was an American, that he would be stepping out outside his flat, which had this staircase outside. And was being shot. And Jung kept trying to make sense of it with the client. And eventually the client went back to New York and did step outside on this outdoor staircase and was shot. So some dreams are prophetic. Yes, yes. And some dreams are there as reminders of issues that can happen to us. And they are nebulous, but at the same time Coming back to that, the fact that they are nebulous, it almost gives us that opportunity to slowly enter into the state that we need to go into to understand what is happening within us. I think we underestimate, we underestimate this fear of illusion and this fear of, you know, we need our illusions. We cannot just receive the truth in all its form. Without small bites. We cannot bite wholly at the truth without, you know, without finding it too indigestible and unpalatable. I think that's why we need illusions. Illusions, the sphere of illusion takes away the force of the truth and makes it gradually— we approach it again, you approximate it, but you cannot fully bite it once and for all in a very abrupt manner. Truth itself can be very traumatic. So, so, but, but, and I think in many ways we need, we need to, that's why we need, we need the sphere of illusion, which also the sphere of culture, you know, what Winnicott would call this, the sphere of culture, the sphere of illusion, art, music, they, they, that's why the Dionysian element, the art element, the music, makes the Apollonian element, the element of truth, more palatable for the people who attend the tragedy, for the audience. Because in itself, if it was given in its pure form without music, without art, without this, the aesthetic dimension, it will become too powerful and too difficult to process, and people will run away from it. That's why there is the Dionysian in there. In order to make the truth something that is aesthetically not so forceful. The beautiful, the role of the beautiful and the sublime. But we are running away from the beautiful, aren't we? They're trying to, you know, sort of, they, culture, the people, you know, sort of through the media are trying to force us away from the classics, from those elements of the sacred, the beauty. Into the day-to-day, which we don't always want. You don't always want to hear certain types of music. You want to be lifted away from yourself. You want the beauty of life. You don't want to always encounter, especially when life is difficult, you don't want to encounter these sort of tragedies. Because I think it's quite difficult if you don't have other people to discuss it with. Yes, because if life, like with Oedipus, who is, you know, his name derives from a wound, you know, yes, yes, that's what it means in Greek. And if life, you start life with a wound like this, if the wound that you try to recover from, of course, you know, you know, finding this, the ugliness of that right in front of you, facing you, face you directly, this happiness is not bearable. You need to encounter it through the form of tragedy. That's why, you know, the ancient Greeks had offered these myths in the form of something palatable, which is the tragedy, the ancient tragedy, where the chorus will participate and music will be played and art will transform the ugliness of it. Existence into something that you're able to bear. Yeah. And, um, I think the wound— this is a lot of religions have a wound. They talk about that we're born with a wound. And I think that may be quite a healthy thing for people to understand, especially if they know that there's hope, get through this, whatever your wound is. And do you think we're being inoculated psychologically? By not having the, the religious connotations to the psychology of our lives. If we're trying to say that everybody is fine and we can help ourselves and we are, you know, I don't mean to use the term narcissistic in that way because I don't think that's necessarily the right way, but we're trying to say that each person can heal themselves, but they can't. Yes, they can't understand themselves to this depth. No. And I think there is— there is— that's why, uh, with therapy as well, we have to be very mindful of, of, of the aesthetic dimension of therapy as well as the truth that is offered, that we need to, to provide to, uh, to others, to, to our patients and clients. I think the aesthetic dimension is very important, and we need to be able to offer interpretations and truths that are aesthetically pleasing as well, as well as in order to be able to offer, to communicate in an artful way, in a tactful way, what the truth is of the other person. Which of course is also the truth of existence. I mean, there are truths that are very difficult. I mean, there are several lessons, lessons that we need to learn in life that are very hard to bear, starting with the fact that, you know, in life, nobody, everybody will like you, and you will create enemies, and you will be disliked, and you will grow older, and you will die. I think that's it. These are truths that are fundamental. You know, but the sooner we come to terms with them, the better. But, you know, but of course we cannot just come to terms with them before we're ready to come to terms with them. I think one of the hardest truths, especially for me, and also especially in therapy, that you need to learn is that, you know, the attempt to be liked is also a shortcut to living a life which is, you know, full of full of denial, denial of the fact that, you know, sometimes, you know, in order to be able to do what you need and what is important to you, you will be disliked. And in order to tell your truth, people might not like it and might find you like Tiresias telling the truth to Oedipus. He didn't like it. But you need to tell the truth, otherwise you will not be able to be, to have your own personal integrity and your own way of being in the world, which is actually valid. By telling the truth, sometimes you will— I remember one of my friends said, if you go, uh, through life without upsetting anyone, then you haven't lived a very good life because you haven't spoken your truth. And I think this is important, you know, and these days more than ever we need to speak our truth. But it's how do you do it? How do you do it? Yes. I think it's not whether you do it. And I think, for example, you know, as you know, my parents were prisoners of war and there were a group of Polish, they were elderly people by this time in Manchester. And a friend of mine, sadly she is no longer alive, the two of them, they made a film called The Polish Odyssey, the odyssey of how the Poles were taken by the Russians into Siberia. And both my parents experienced that, but I knew about that. But the film actually was shown to the people in Manchester, this old people's home full of Polish people. And the Polish people, uh, the woman that was looking after them was English, but she showed it to them and she said they all changed once they had their experience validated. And that is, she said, suddenly what was, you know, sort of their fear, their burden had been lifted because it had now been recognized. And I think that's what the therapist and the therapeutic setting does. It recognizes somebody's pain. It recognizes what has happened. To the individual. And at the moment, I think we have got so many people that talk about their truth and talk about it in a way that is far too public, actually, that is not necessarily helpful for them or anybody else because it's confusing. But a lot of people are in pain for one reason or another, and yet to have the right person witnessing that pain feeding it back and saying, yes, I see what you actually did experience. And this is where the aesthetic dimension of that comes into the picture, because the way you give it back, the way you listen, the way you empathically listen, witness it, and give it back, where you process it in a way, you contain it, you process it, you give back as something that is transformed and given, you know, some aesthetic value, then it becomes something that is accepted not as a truth that is only painful, but also something that is beautiful as well and can change your life. There is something about this, the importance of beauty and how in therapy and how the beautiful within it can transform the whole process from that of excruciating pain into something that is containable and transformative. Yeah, and repair. And repair, yeah. You know, the whole point, and I think this is where your work comes in and mine, has— we're not hampered by restrictions of old theories. You have to move with the times and therapy has which is what you're talking about, the relational therapy. Yeah, actually it's so important for people to know that they can repair something within themselves because you cannot live in the depth of that. So you've got to grow out of it, you've got to actually give it space, give it room, you've got to allow the wound to come out to be seen. But also it does need to be repaired. You can't just sit there in that moment of time. So you need to bear the ugliness of existence, but then you need to use the ability of words, of images, of one's own presence to metamorphose and transform, metabolize this ugliness into something that bears the mark of beauty or even the sublime. And I think for that, these moments in therapy, I call them in another second moment moments of grace that takes us out of the gravity of existence. And isn't that where art comes from? The Greeks used to do that when somebody had a dream, used to create a piece of art, whether it's poetry. Yeah. You know, a painting, a story. And I'm so glad that we are now open to a lot of people's work, but we must include that. Not just— we're not just talking about therapists, but as a society, We must keep that going, the drama, the arts, the films, so that people can talk about this, but they know that this is being expressed outside themselves. I think the danger in our times is that we have— there is a lot, as you said, there is a lot of productions truth which is coming out unfiltered in social media. And, you know, people's pain and people's sort of dissatisfaction is constantly being promoted and given, but there is, there is no transformation, there is no witnessing, there is no processing. And all of this is just lost in the ether of the internet without, without some of this being finding some space and some other collective or personal space, interpersonal space that can be processed and given back and transformed into something that is containable, something that can transform one's life. I think there is a lot of evacuation and catharsis of feeling, of pain, but without any transformation. And so that's the problem that I face. And so it becomes punishing for everybody around, and there's a lot of punishment isn't there, with that type of awareness. Mm-hmm. I mean, he— Oedipus punished himself. Jocasta punished herself. Yes. You know, he could have well gone and killed his mother, but he didn't, you know, and he went off and he actually saw that he had to be blinded in order to see more clearly, if you like, because what he had done. But people are punishing each other instead of looking inwardly and saying, well, why did this happen to me? What did I do to make it happen? And I'm not saying that young people do do that, but what is this about my life that attracted this to me? What is my fate? What is my destiny? How can I repair that? How can I 'Right, and take it back on the right track.' That's what makes Oedipus and Jocasta and the myth itself and the tragedy itself so appealing, because these are ethical subjects. At the end of the day, they, they realize they commit hubris, and however much they, they are not arrogant and say, 'Well, I don't care. I mean, I will carry on as I am. I'll kill my wife and, you know, kill my children and carry on 'as I am.' I mean, this is not— they succumb to the— there is, there is some restoration, there is some repair. They punish themselves for what has happened, and they try to, to restore the, the, the hubris that they committed. They are not carrying on being hubristic and arrogant. So there is some restoration, there is some, there is some faith that comes out of their own actions. There is vibrational faith that comes out of their own actions. However, today we are, you know, we are proceeding in the direction of arrogance, not in the right direction of humility. Of course, points to the opposite direction that the ancient tragedies were facing, and I think this is, this is what is very important. Anyway, I realize that we're probably approaching the end. Yes, we are, but is there something you want to say just to tie up? Because it's such a big story, a big myth, and I do think it has value for today. And I think we've covered so much of it. It's actually, it's so big and there's so much to it. But is there anything you want to close with? I think for me, the Väterbusch myth today is again, is the lesson that we learn when we confronted by our own destiny and our own truth, but how we bring it about by our own actions and how we, by learning this truth, by confronting this truth and going to therapy and processing all of these unconscious sort of elements, how we can— we have a chance not to, to, to take the, the loss the road less traveled, the one that doesn't lead to one killing the father and marrying the mother, the one that doesn't perpetuate and repeat the patterns of the past, the one that, you know, stops us from passing the buck to the next generation and actually carrying the responsibility for our own actions. So as always, what is unconscious needs to become conscious. Anastasios Gaitanidis.