Can You Escape the Past?

"Orpheus and Eurydice" by Rodin (Metropolitan Museum of Art , gift of Thomas F. Ryan, 1910)

Oedipus famously brought about the fate he feared in his attempts to avoid it. The Oracle had presaged that he would kill his father and marry his mother. So he ran away from his adoptive parents and proceeded to kill his real father Laius at a crossroads and then marry his mother Jocasta when he arrived in Thebes. In our age of candor, you learn all the terrible things that have happened to people. In fact the sins of the children and parents are often the subject of bestselling books like Kathryn Harrison’s memoir of incest, The Kiss and they’re certainly the subject of fiction as is the case with Louis Malle’s Murmur of the Heart. A few people may have actually murdered a parent in flagrante, but an even greater number have ended up sleeping with them. Much of the soul searching that accompanies the searing honesty of these revelations is accompanied with the hope that the painful exhumation of the past will result in a kind of exorcism. But can you escape the past? Can a deeply wounded person who has experienced all kinds of abuse go on to lead a so-called healthy life, freed from the demons  his or her upbringing? Or is the tragedy of life that fate, which is the subject of Sophocles drama, is impossible to avoid? The jury is definitely out and the verdict is not a shoe-in. The road to hell is lined with good intentions. Many victims of childhood attend rehabs to recover from the same illnesses their parents suffered from only to relapse despite all the knowledge they have gained. The past is like a black hole which relentlessly sucks one back to familiar ground.  On his way out of Hades Orpheus is warned not to look back at Eurydice or he will lose her, but he can’t stop himself. Those who think they have escaped from the darkness might howl in protest but it’s the dubious privilege of artists and writers to prove that the legacy of mythology is always ripe for reinterpretation.

Was Rafael Nadal Suffering from Hubris?

Oedipus at Colonnus by Jean-Antoine-Theodore Giroust (1788)

What happened to Rafael Nadal, in his loss to Fabio Fognini  in the third round of the US Open is what everyone is afraid of: falling from a great height. It, in fact conforms to Aristotle’s definition of tragedy which is the fall of a man of high position. In modern life we have revised the Aristotelian view to conform to the tragedies and indignities of everyday existence in which lives are cut short by unforeseen events like diseases and accidents. But the loss following a 2-love lead exemplify the notion of hamaria or tragic flaw, one of whose most common elements is hubris or excessive pride. Did Nadal underestimate his opponent once he took the lead (though he’d already had losses to a player, he'd once easily dispatched, earlier in the year)? Was the rest of the match a working out in microcosm of what happens when a champion thinks he has it in the bag with a big lead or reputation and then comes a cropper? That’s what happened in the famous fight in which Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo. Nadal told the Guardian, ("Rafael Nadal’s biggest loss is the aura of invincibility that has defined him," 9/5/14), “The sport to me is very simple, no? If you are playing with less confidence and you are hitting balls without creating the damage to the opponent that I believe I should do, then they have the possibility of attack.” When you think about it, classic tragedy has it right. Too much success goes to your head. Whether Tiger Woods' philandering was ignited by his success or vice versa, success creates a feeling of impregnability, what analysts term narcissistic megalomania. When you are one of the titans it’s easy to throw caution to the wind whether in the match or in the behavior surrounding it. And once a champion begins his or her fall, it’s a long and often Sisyphean road back to the top.

You’re So Vain

“Your so vain, you probably think this song is about you,” were Carly Simon’s words. The title of the song might really be Narcissus because it’s a wonderful contemporizing  of the famous character from mythology who drowns while staring at his own image. It's gotten to the point where the N word is so ubiquitously and frivolously used that it’s become almost meaningless. The word “narcissism” is like a stock that has split many times and undergone a great deal of dilution. Everyone is a narcissist and there are those who feel no compunctions describing themselves as such, much in the way that there are heavy drinkers who exhibit a certain bravado about their alcoholism. What’s brilliant about Carly Simon’s lyrics is that they function like a very good case study, like say “Anna O.” or the "Rat Man." In fact, Simon would later reveal who was the subject of her song (“Carly Simon finally reveals the subject of You’re So Vain...record producer David Geffen,” Daily Mail 2/26/10). In describing her character, she says “You had one eye in the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte.” One eye in the mirror is indeed different from Narcissus whose two eyes were undoubtedly employed in his self-hypnosis. But the one eye is in effect a more incisive description of a wily pathology. A true narcissist gives you the impression that he or she is paying attention to you with at least one eye. Such pandering is in fact how they get your eyes on them. And what you're staring at is them doing a little dance, a gavotte. It’s a perfect lyric since it’s so different from an over ripe term like narcissism. You either know it or you don’t, but it’s disarming. Narcissus is of course not the only mythological figure used by psychoanalysts and psychologists to coin a condition. Oedipus was the most famous character from antiquity whose narrative was conscripted to describe a dynamic. But there are times when a poem or story, in this the lyrics to a song, can provide a fresh perspective. Why doesn’t Carly Simon compose a song based on the Oedipus or Electra complex?

Pornosophy: Vice isn’t Nice, but Neither is Sex

Oedipus at Colonnus by Jean-Antoine-Theodore Giroust (1788)

For some people sex is an embarrassing painful and even expensive process whose only reward leads to the birth of a little tyke who trails you around admiringly for at least the first few years of its miserable life. Gay folks used to be exempt, but now that eggs and sperm can easily be drafted into service, sexual orientation no longer matters. Later the tyke will grow up and hate your guts so much that it may even want to off you, especially if it’s a motherfucker who wants its dad dead. Oedipus tried to run away from his fate, but ended up murdering the appropriately named Laius. But getting back to rewards. It’s like the time trials for the l00 yard dash. Some people exhaust themselves and end up with nothing more than cramps. There are a minority who enjoy sex. Usually these are the same people who trumpet the notion of art for art’s sake. This small but voluble group are always trying to get more conscripts through the creation of hedonistic propaganda. The Marquis de Sade, Frank Harris, D.H. Lawrence, Pauline Reage, Henry Miller and most recently E. L. James of 50 Shades of Grey fame are literary examples of this tendency, along with Gustave Courbet (“The Origin of the World”), Egon Schiele, Bernardo Bertolucci (Last Tango in Paris) and Lars Von Trier (Nymphomaniac) representing the fine arts and film. But one wonders if they would shut up if they actually had to put up. Talk is cheap. Is the pursuit of pleasure, Freud’s “pleasure principle,” actually all that it’s cracked up to be?

The Crimson Letter

Are there dramatic possibilities in the new ban on sexual relations between teachers and undergraduate students at Harvard (“New Harvard Policy Bans Teacher-Student Relations,” NYT, 2/5/15). According to the Times article, “The ban clarifies an earlier policy that labeled sexual and romantic relationships between professors and students they teach as inappropriate.” Anyone who went to college or grad school in the 60’s or 70’s when  professors hitting on students, was almost a requirement for tenure may applaud the decision. In those heady days, few professors or students, thought about the notion of transference, which is the same principle that analysts recognize when they resist the seduction of a love struck patient. It’s the Oedipus thing. Profs become big wigs to students and it can enable them to take unfair advantage. It’s also an abrogation of trust that can ultimately do considerable harm. But let’s get down to brass tax, how is Harvard going to police this? Will professors and students become injected with some sort of dye that allows for urine testing? Will those who are caught be forced to wear a Crimson letter And what happens in cases where real love does develop between a professor and his student, the kind of love that is not based entirely pathological (here’s where a new HBO series, The Crimson Letter, is brewing). At Harvard there are hundreds of geniuses walking around campus who are better qualified to teach the courses they take then their own professors. So it might even be countertransference that’s at work, with students who are in danger of taking advantage of their doe-eyed mentors? And then what happens to those Harvard professors who struck up romantic relations with students before the ban went into effect? Are those relationships also prohibited or will they be grandfathered in under the old policy which simply considered them “inappropriate?”