Behind us lie four stages of a journey through mythology and psychology. We have examined both Cassandra’s appearance and her myth in search of traces of hysterical mechanisms. We reached differing conclusions: Some mechanisms are clearly visible, while others are not. The final part of this series constitutes the attempt to weave the threads together…
Trauma, Affect, Body—these are the concepts we have examined so far. Our journey—and this series—will conclude where it all began; with the myth of Cassandra. Yet, we will not examine the traumatic violation within Athena’s temple; instead, we will look at the myth of the unheeded prophetess itself. This requires a deep dive into her…
Cassandra appears—dancing, singing, frantic. Her body does no longer seem to belong to her; she moves like a possessed being. In his Studies, Freud describes how a strangulated affect takes possession of the body, converting psychic pain into somatic pain. But do these symptoms truly exist in the Trojan Women? Furthermore, how do we deal…
In the first part of this series, we identified an event in Cassandra’s past that can undoubtedly be termed a “psychic trauma,” as it is actively reproduced within the tragedy. In this post, we turn our attention to another core component of hysteria: unexpressed affect. The Adequate Reaction The affect constitutes the focal point of…
In the introductory post, I highlighted the distinct characteristics of Cassandra’s appearance in The Trojan Women. Now, I will examine whether this appearance reflects the mechanisms of Freudian hysteria. The first step: the traumatic experience. Basic Research From a modern perspective, I am deeply indebted to Freud, as he provided a definition of trauma relatively…