『오레스테아』에 나타난 모친살해의 상징과 주체 형성

The Symbol of Matricide and Subject Formation in Oresteia

Just as the myth of Oedipus illuminates Freudian theory, Klein focuses on the myth of Orestes after diagnosing the matricidal fantasy in her clinic to discovery its underlying logic. Klein highlights a different sort of logical process that reflects subjective autonomy. In the ancient Greek tragedy, the murder of Orestes’s mother grants him freedom, though at the price of a depressive remorse that symbolizes the endless hounding of the Erinyes. Matricide clearly led to Orestes’s guilt, but he acquired an immense freedom and a preeminent symbolic capacity. Such an interpretation is not far removed from Sartre’s own reading of The Oresteia, a reading that informs his play Les Mouches. Klein shows the symbolic process by way of Dick’s case. She introduces Dick into the Symbolic through the constellation of the Oedipal triangle and brings about Dick’s Oedipal identification. The cult of the primary mother is a pretext for matricide in Klein. To get rid of the mother becomes the required condition for accessing the symbol.