The Tragic Effect: The Oedipus Complex in Tragedy

by André Green, Alan Sheridan

In this stimulating and wide-ranging 1979 study, Andre Green, the eminent French psychoanalyst, demonstrates the relevance of psychoanalysis to literary criticism. He interprets the Freudian theory of the Oedipus complex - in its 'negative' aspect of male hostility towards the female - in several of the great European tragedies, including Aeschlyus' Oresteia (where the son kills the mother), Shakespeare's Othello (where the husband kills the wife) and Racine's Iphigegenie a Aulis (where the father kills the daughter), as well as Sophocles' Oedipodeia. Green sheds light on such important literary and psychoanalytic questions as the stage's kinship with phantasy, glorified in Artaud's theatre; those devices through which the spectator's unconscious may be affected; the family's privileged position at the centre of the 'tragic space'; the points at which modern structuralist thought fails; and the different perspectives exploring the Oedipus myth and Freud's interpretation of it. This will interest psychologists, anthropologists, and readers of literary debate."

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

André Green was a French psychoanalyst. He was born in Cairo, Egypt, to non observant Jewish parents. He studied medicine (specialising in psychiatry) at Paris Medical School and worked at several hospitals. Then, in 1965, after having finished his training as a psychoanalyst, he became a member of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society (SPP), of which he was the president from 1986 to 1989. From 1975 to 1977 he was a vice president of the International Psychoanalytical Association and from 1979 to 1980 a professor at University College London. He died, aged 84, in Paris.