From ejt1@columbia.edu Sun Sep 24 00:57:46 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id AAA116606 for ; Sun, 24 Sep 2000 00:57:45 -0700 Received: from aloha.cc.columbia.edu (IDENT:cu58912@aloha.cc.columbia.edu [128.59.59.134]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id AAA09371 for ; Sun, 24 Sep 2000 00:57:45 -0700 Received: from localhost by aloha.cc.columbia.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id DAA07594 for ; Sun, 24 Sep 2000 03:57:43 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 03:57:43 -0400 (EDT) From: Elias J Theodoracopoulos Sender: ejt1@columbia.edu To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: Medusa's punishment In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 21 Sep 2000, David Lupher quoted from Freud: > I won't presume to comment on the merit of the idea, but the connection > of Medusan petrifaction and male physiology was made by---as you came > close to implying yourself---Dr. Freud. See his 1922 essay "Medusa's > Head" ("Das Medusenhaupt"), first published posthumously in 1940, and > available on pp. 273-4 of vol. 18 of the Strachey translation. > > The main point of the little essay is that decapitation = castration, > and so the Medusa's head symbolically represents a young male's terror > when he first "catches sight of the female genitals, probably those > of an adult, surrounded by hair, and especially those of his mother." > He adds that "since the Greeks were in the main strongly homosexual, > it was inevitable that we should find among them a representation > of woman as a being who frightens and repels them because she is > castrated." A most amusing generalization about the sexual proclivities of "the Greeks". I wonder if the wording is Freud's or Strachey's. EJTh .