Wittgenstein and Freud

Guilt is a painful emotion, but surely it has a positive value. Isn’t feeling sorry for the wrong that one has done the first step towards becoming a better person? It is certainly more attractive than refusing to admit that one has acted badly. But guilt is a difficult emotion to handle. It can create a split in the self, and it can have a negative impact. John Steiner explores this issue in his book, Psychic Retreats, particularly in the brilliant essay on Oedipus¹. The book illustrates the complex accounts of the self that psychoanalysis can lead to.

Steiner challenges conventional readings of Oedipus the King by arguing that on some level Oedipus knows that he is the cause of the plague ravaging his kingdom. Having left the city of his childhood in order to escape the prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother, he gets into an argument with an old man at a crossroads and kills him when he insists on taking precedence. Oedipus then arrives in a city that has recently lost its king and, despite the likelihood that he is the regicide, marries the king’s widow who, like the man he killed, is of an age to be his parent. When his wife tells him that she and her first husband had pierced their baby son’s feet and left him to die in the mountains because of a prophecy that he would kill his father and sleep with his mother, he does not link her words with the prophecy that caused him to leave Corinth. Furthermore, he fails to draw any connection between this story and his own mysteriously scarred feet. In short, he turns a blind eye. The truth is staring him in the face, but he does not want to see it.

According to Steiner, turning a blind eye involves a perverse relationship to reality and a pathological splitting of the self. He claims that typically the source of the problem is the individual’s difficulty in dealing with their own destructiveness. This leads to the creation of a defensive organisation which is intended to contain this destructiveness but which is also an expression of it. The compromise serves an adaptive purpose, and it provides an area of relief and protection. But it stultifies the individual’s personality, prevents contact with reality and interferes with growth and development (Psychic Retreats pg 5). Most of us turn a blind eye to some things, so perhaps the split is not always pathological, but what Oedipus refuses to see are the most fundamental aspects of his situation, and this is linked to a deep-seated split in his personality. As an infant, he suffered a trauma, and, as a young man, he suffered a second trauma when he was told he would kill his father and sleep with his mother. But he never acknowledges the impact that these events had on him. Instead, he takes refuge in a heroic idea of himself, insisting that he can cope with whatever fate throws at him. His view of himself is reinforced, when having given up the advantages of his upbringing, he almost instantly wins his way to an even more exalted position. What a man! But his success is based on ignoring the violent part of his personality. This expresses itself externally in the killing of an old man and most of his retinue over a minor affront. Internally, it expresses itself in his refusal to admit that he experiences any feelings of doubt, regret or abandonment. Oedipus does not have a weak side. He is a hero through and through.

When the truth threatens to emerge, Oedipus reacts angrily and claims that people are plotting against him. Then he changes tack and commits himself to getting to the bottom of things. Does this indicate a belated willingness to face up to the truth or is it a desperate attempt to insist that it cannot possibly be him? Perhaps a bit of both. When the truth becomes undeniable, his wife rushes out of the room and commits suicide. Oedipus sets off in pursuit of her and, when he comes across her dead body, uses the golden brooches that pinned together her dress to tear out his eyes. Both members of the couple appear to acknowledge their guilt, but the violence of their actions is striking as is the fact they each take matters into their own hands. Jocasta does not wait for others to decide how she should be punished. Instead, she assigns all the roles to herself, acting as judge, executioner and wrong-doer. Her suicide involves a splitting of her self that has multiple functions. It enables her to express her violent, angry feelings even if the victim is herself, and it allows her to see at least part of herself as untainted by what she has done. This part of herself then imposes a punishment that avoids any public shame and puts a definitive end to her sufferings. Can we really say that she has faced up to the truth?

Oedipus reacts somewhat differently. For a moment, he shows great courage, accepting the truth without prevarication or excuse. But then the burden of guilt overwhelms him and acceptance turns to anger. Shouting for a sword, he searches for his wife/mother with a view to killing her. When he discovers that she has abandoned him (again), he attacks his eyes, which provide the direct link to a reality he cannot bear. His action distances him from everything including the reactions of others to him. Like Jocasta’s suicide, it involves splitting his self, but it is impossible to see any part of him as straightforwardly good or bad². The judging part is aggressive, violent and reluctant to acknowledge that it has done wrong, but it is committed to life and looks for a way forward. The part of him that acknowledges his wrongdoing has no commitment to progress or to action. It just wants to wallow masochistically in the endless pain that it feels it deserves. The two parts of his self are locked in a mutually beneficial sado-masochistic relationship – one part can express his violent impulses while being free from any sense of having done wrong, while the other can express his feelings of guilt, while idealising and envying the part of himself that manages to live guilt-free.

The play, Oedipus the King, ends with Oedipus asking to be banished so he will no longer pollute the city that he used to rule. In Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles takes up the story twenty years later with the long suffering Oedipus about to achieve his final triumph. According to Steiner, however, this is a manic triumph – it involves a decisive retreat from truth, a retreat from inner reality and an abandonment of human values. Oedipus has given up the idea that he is a hero. Now he presents himself as a holy man purged of human weakness by his extraordinary sufferings. He denies all responsibility for what he did – everything was his parents’ fault, and it is who was terribly wronged. He has absolutely no pity for the sufferings of his daughter, Antigone, and he curses his son, Polynices, for failing to help him when he was banished from Thebes. The split in his personality seems to have disappeared. The aggressive part of his self has taken full control, and he gives unrestrained vent to his anger and hatred.  The defensive organisation that brought the different parts of his personality together in a sado-masochistic relationship has been replaced by a manic assertion of omnipotence. When he was the king, he had turned a blind eye to reality, but this approach still implied some respect – indeed fear – of the truth. Now he has lost any respect for reality and lost contact with his own humanity. Unable to face up to what he has done, he creates for himself a unified persona which has no place for guilt or self-knowledge. Oedipus finds a way of dealing with his pain, but he does not come to terms with his own destructiveness, and he does not become a better person. Instead, he kills off the part of himself that links him to other people and to reality. The split that he uses to cope with his guilt eventually enables him to deny that he has done anything wrong.

1. “Two types of pathological organization in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus” in John Steiner, Psychic Retreats, 1993. ↩︎
2. In the other essays in his book, Steiner explores the problems this kind of perverse organisation poses for the therapist. The therapist can build a relationship with a positive part of the self; rather they have to find ways of undermining the perverse relationships that have come to dominate the self. ↩︎