The Rape of Medusa - Beth J. Seelig, MD

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mother in the area of creativity. As told by Ovid, the young Arachne was very proud of her outstanding ability as a weaver and made the serious error of challenging Athena to a weaving competition. Her skill was so great that her product rivalled that of the goddess. As punishment, Athena turned Arachne into a spider. Athena owes her possession of Medusa's head to her intelligence, which is appropriate to her role as the goddess of wisdom. It was her advice to Perseus—to use the indirection of Medusa's image reflected in his shield to avoid looking at her—that made it possible for him to slay Medusa, the only mortal Gorgon. The male hero Perseus, who, in turn, renounced the regressive implications of Medusa by giving her head to Athena, thus carried out Athena's wise advice. The pervasive appeal of the Gorgon's power is evidenced by its traditional use as an armour or shield device throughout Western Europe—as if the wearer triumphs over his enemy with the aid of Medusa's petrifying glance. Unlike Perseus, Arachne fails to renounce her childhood attachments and follow Athena's advice. As a result, rather than profit from Athena's wisdom as Perseus did, Arachne insists on pursuing the competition (Adams, 1990, p. 598). In this reading, the (bad) competitive feelings reside in the junior female Arachne. Athena is not described as competitive. However, it is she who avenges herself by transforming the unfortunate young woman into a spider. The spider is, like Medusa, frequently regarded as a figure of horror. Additionally, the multiple legs of the spider are much like the multiple snakes of Medusa's hair and the spider has long been regarded as symbolic of the bad mother (Abraham, 1923) and as a ‘polyphallic’ creature, symbolising the castrated female genital (Flügel, 1924). Thus, Athena transforming her rival into a spider is another version of the transformation of the young Medusa. In the case of Arachne, her successful effort to surpass the goddess in weaving is unacceptable, while in the case of Medusa, the young girl's success in attracting her father is severely punished. In both cases, the junior female victim of the older woman's hostile competitiveness is blamed and severely punished for her success. Electra, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon The term ‘Electra complex’ comes from the story of Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks in the Trojan War. I am using the Oresteia of Aeschylus (1984) as my source for this myth. Clytemnestra is Agamemnon's wife and Electra's mother. Having taken a lover during Agamemnon's long absence, Clytemnestra murders her husband on his return. She has several reasons for murderous rage at her husband. He had previously sacrificed another daughter, Iphigenia, to gain a favourable wind for the Greek assault on Troy to recapture the abducted Helen at the beginning of the Trojan War. Also, he returned from the war with a concubine, the Trojan prophetess Cassandra, who is also killed by Clytemnestra. As the story is generally told, Electra in turn became murderously
enraged at her mother because of the murder of her father by her mother and her mother's lover. She plots the death of her mother, inciting her brother Orestes to do the deed. - 900 - In the early years of psychoanalysis some psychoanalytic authors followed Jung (1913) in regarding the myth of Electra as the female equivalent of the Oedipus myth in the male child. The term ‘Electra complex’ was used. However, after Freud's vigorous condemnation of the use of the term, it virtually disappeared from subsequent mainstream psychoanalytic literature. More recently, however, the Electra complex has been gradually regaining popularity. In a paper on psychosexual development in the girl, Parens (1990) reflects on the Electra complex in a footnote. He suggests more extensive examination of clinical material in girls before ‘Electra complex’ should supplant the expression ‘Oedipus complex in the girl’. Again in a footnote, Tang and Smith state in connection with their paper on triangular conflicts in various cultures, ‘In this chapter, we consider only the Oedipus complex involving the male child. A similar analysis can of course be made for the Electra complex’(1996, p. 562n.). In a recent paper, Halberstadt-Freud argues for the use of Electra as a paradigm for female psychosexual development. In her discussion of Freud's rejection of the Electra complex, she suggests that Freud's lesser empathy for girls led to his insistence that it is only the male child who feels the painful combination of passionate love for one parent with concomitant hatred of the other. She goes further, saying, ‘the Electra complex describes the much more fateful combination of love and hatred for the same parent and seems particularly applicable to the girl’ (1998, p. 46). Persephone, Demeter and Hades Spitz (1991), Fairfield (1994), Tyson (1996) and Kulish & Holtzman (1998) regard the myth of Persephone as being most helpful in illustrating the oedipal configuration of the little girl. The myth is widely known and reported in many forms. In this brief description, I am following Kulish & Holtzman (1998) by employing The Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Foley, 1994). In the myth of Persephone and her mother Demeter, the young girl, at this time called Kore or maiden, is gathering flowers in a meadow and is kidnapped by Hades who is ruler of the underworld and brother of Zeus and Demeter. Hades takes Kore, thereafter called Persephone, to his underground kingdom of the dead where she grieves for the loss of her mother. At the same time her grieving and enraged mother Demeter removes her blessing of fecundity from the world, plunging it into winter. Eventually, Persephone is returned to Demeter and winter ends. However, Persephone has eaten some pomegranate seeds while she was in the underworld
Page 1 and 2: The Rape of Medusa in the Temple of
Page 3 and 4: Chasseguet-Smirgel was one of the a
Page 5 and 6: Medusa was originally a very beauti
Page 7: Athena could not get revenge direct
Page 11 and 12: incestuous nature of the rape of Pe
Page 13 and 14: weaker, unable to master his own pa
Page 15 and 16: only attractive to males, but the s
Page 17 and 18: The Desire to Have Everything The e
Page 19 and 20: understanding of female development
Page 21 and 22: Freud, S. (1925). Some psychical co

The Rape of Medusa - Beth J. Seelig, MD

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