And, Or, Not Gates: Electra in Oedipus' Theater

Psychoanalysis borrows heavily from the myth of Oedipus. In the myth, Oedipus kills his father and sleeps with his mother. First, the interpretation of these particular points from the myth is itself a psychoanalytic practice. Perhaps psychoanalysis wished to derive a sense of authority and legitimacy by being able to speak to the world of myth. However, it is now our task to complicate this relationship between psychoanalysis and Oedipus by bringing into the equation an investigation into the nature, the needs and the form of any myth. We will try to show that the Oedipal myth, and myth in general (psychoanalysis borrows heavily from many myths, not just that of Oedipus) has to be reinterpreted, not just directly in its content, but in the form that the myth is presented in. One of the main assumptions here is that the myth does not reproduce and re-present what is existent in society, but the myth is rather a pure fabrication, the content of which society later mimics.

The nuclear family in the Oedipal myth is equated with the nuclear family in the analysand's ("patient's") life. Basically, the analysand, in the Oedipal stage, identifies with Oedipus, and, like in the myth, wishes to kill his father and 'sleep' with his mother. Psychoanalysis has progressed by looking at the details of what these Oedipal wishes mean, by attempting to go into the specifics of the content of the myth. Our assertion here is that what this does is nothing more than legitimize and strengthen the role of the family in an Oedipal analysand's life. In a sense, in the psychoanalytic logic, it is through the prince's conquests that the king and queen are 'crowned' as such. The real family borrows from the mythic family and even begins to mimic it. The current interpretation of the myth of Oedipus is nothing other than the attempt on the part of capitalism to 'enclose' the family with a model. The model has been made simple (you are Oedipus, your father is the king and your mother is the queen. There, you wanted to be a part of a myth and you got it.), because, for a variety of reasons, everyone wants to be a part of the grand myth and the mythical; everyone wants to be Oedipus, despite his terrible wishes. Indeed, bringing the terrible wishes out in the open, which psychoanalysis has done, only goes to take the 'sting' out of these wishes, by making it public and therefore seem inevitable. Additionally, the attraction is not just being a part of a myth, but also of being a part of psychoanalysis, which is a dominant body of knowledge in its own right. With contact with psychoanalysis and the myth that advertises it, the family perhaps felt a form of social mobility and recognition.

Some of the following questions regarding the Oedipal myth have therefore been suspended: when and for what purpose did the mythic form emerge? What was the way that the myth was presented/exhibited? What about the myth's audience? In short, what is the way in which the population comes to face the myth? In front of all these questions, the question regarding the myth's details about the mother/queen (how does your mother feel about this? in which question the analysand becomes a 'critic' of his own show) and the father/king seem secondary. The given questions at the beginning of this paragraph add a much needed social contextualization of the myth to its analysis. 

Our main aim here is to establish a new relationship regarding the Oedipal family: this relative to the family is the individual who does not completely flee the family and neither is she completely within it, she is, rather, somewhere in between. She is at the mid-point between abandoning the family and being within it. She recognizes the family as a figment of reality, as something which has to be reckoned with and which has to be engaged with. It is a dominant institution of our times. But she also recognizes that the family is in crisis, and that it needs a new mythic form, not just content, to solve this crisis.

It is our belief that the myth began to take shape in the theater. The theater was the site where it was presented, where the myth was played out. The theater was a dominant cultural formation and practice, and it was perhaps influenced as much as anything else by political and economic interests. Although we perhaps cannot use the term working-class to look at Greek civilization, that such a class existed which had to be pacified and kept in place is a given. Indeed, in Greek civilization, we have the beginnings of the inter-play of different institutions, the management of different social units and formations, and the display of different tactics to stabilize power and dominant interests. And, we have the beginnings of the study of society. So, we will venture forth with the assertion that a particular way of presenting myth has prevailed since the Greeks which has privileged the Oedipal myth, the nuclear family, the son (Oedipus) and has many other impacts to the present day.

Let us begin to give the myth a sort of functional status. In short, let us make the myth a successful cultural event resulting from a series of functional points that perform certain processes with respect to one another. We are applying to the myths the logic gates (the AND gate, the OR gate and the NOT gate) that are prevalent in computer science and very basic computer and mathematical programming language. It is through these gates that the myth was first programmed. In the mythical theater, there is first the actors, then there is the 'Greek chorus,' and then there is audience. The actors are the OR gate, since each actor, in his/her enunciation, begins after another actor has finished his bit. There is either this actor OR that one. Then there is the NOT gate: this is the audience, it is NOT with regards to enunciation, it is never present, it doesn't act, it is NOT on stage and so on...Then there is the AND gate. This is the gate of the chorus, which enunciates in such a way that it is both this actor AND that actor, and this actor AND the audience. It is the in-between gate, it combines two elements in its expression. The myth is therefore not about the King, the Queen and the Prince, but rather, it is about the three logical gates, namely the actor (OR), the audience (NOT) and the chorus (AND). We say this in order to show how the myth performs a mathematical, functional role, and we can therefore begin to determine the success of the mythic content, particularly of the Oedipal myth, with regards to the way the three gates are contextualized.

Why have we given the different components in an Oedipal myth the status of functions? Precisely to show that the form in which the myth is presented is more important than the content of the myth. The content has been mimicked by the population, with the help of psychoanalysis, but the form is what is hidden. The form is also strong and powerful, and we hope to have shown that the myth is indeed more powerful than psychoanalysis, no matter how much psychoanalysis poses as having included the myth within its discourse. This means that psychoanalysis will itself progress beyond the Oedipal myth, but it will always have one or another myth to support it. This is so because psychoanalysis is supported by the myth in a peculiar way: the analyst poses as the chorus/AND gate, with the OR gate as the conscious and unconscious actors of the analysand (because it is always unconscious OR conscious and never both at the same time, it is either the dream or the reality, so to speak), and the NOT gate as the rest of the nuclear family. We therefore have the analyst occupying the AND gate in psychoanalysis, and generalizing the 'rest of the nuclear family' to one gate. Further, psychoanalysis attempts to distance the individual from the family, and replaces whatever feelings may have arose for the family by the feelings and actions towards the unconscious...the analysand becomes actors. There is a dominance of the OR gate, the gate of the actors, over the other two gates. To conclude, it is our belief in this paper that the nuclear family must be given two gates, both the AND and the NOT gates. In other words, the psychoanalyst must be a position/function closely involved with the family itself. This is the distanced functional position of Electra with respect to the Oedipal family.

Unlike the son, the daughter Electra cannot express herself in the family without recourse to the mythic form. But, we have not attempted to romanticize the daughter's problems because we have not provided content of a particular myth with which the daughter measures herself and her marginalized status. The problem of psychoanalysis is that the analyst comes to occupy the daughter's functional position with regards the Oedipal, nuclear family. Ultimately, what psychoanalysis and the mythic form as highlighted can and must offer is a type of knowledge for the daughter to feel free with respect to the nuclear family. As a side note, in theater, the chorus must not be completely removed, or be made simple and mechanical as it often is, the bastion of function and form, but, it must embody and reflect the relevant emotions and undercurrents of the time. In one sense, the chorus must always be present, socially relevant and analytic.