DEVEREUX, G.,
Dreams in Greek Tragedy. An Ethno-Psycho-Analytical Study.
Blackwell, Oxford, 1976. XXXIX,365p. Paperback. Upper edge slightly foxed. Else fine. 'In 1900 Freud's 'The Interpretation of Dreams' restored significance to experiences that had long been regarded as transient. His theories of analysis (...) remain a tool of mental therapy. If these same techiques can also be used to explain the meaning of dreams in the ancient world, we should gain in our understanding of ancient people's cultures. Devereux's subject matter intriques; his credentials (both anthropological and psychoanalytic training plus study of the Classics) would seem ideal. But brief reflection warns this undertaking, for all its erudition, cannot easily succeed. The principal difficulty is that Freud's techniques were designed for live patients, who might further be interrogated (...) More importantly still, one cannot question their creators (...0 about their overt intentions, e.g. whether they simply composed these dreams for their dramatic effect. (...) There is a tendency throughout the book to interpret almost everything in terms of sexual intercourse. Metaphors, whatever their content, are translated by Devereux into a basic meta-language of the unconscious, with clusters of associations so inflexibly set and syntax so limited that they would appear to be the work of a dogmatic allegorist, with moralistic aims. (...) Devereux's undertaking would have more validity if he could demonstrate a mutually informing relation between the dreamer's life and his dream. But as classicists also need to remind themselves, drama is not life, but instead an artistic genre with limitations of structure and content. If dramas still continue to move us (...) it is not because they focus on unconscious frustrations, but rather because they concern themselves with the terrifying conflicts produced by family structure. All dramas (...) concern families. This phenomenon suggests that the metalanguage of the Greek unconscious was more multivalent and less sexually oriented than the distinctively male animalistic associative patterns described in this book by Devereux.' (MARY LEFKOWITZ in American Journal of Philology, 1977, p.305-307). From the library of the late Prof. W. Geoffrey Arnott.
€ 25.00
(Antiquarian)