Medusa complex

Medusa complex is a psychological complex revolving around the petrification or freezing of human emotion, and drawing on the classical myth of the Medusa.[1]

Origins

The term Medusa Complex was coined in 1948 by Gaston Bachelard[2] to cover the feeling of petrification induced by the threat of the parental gaze.[3] A mute, paralysed fury responds to the danger of the obliteration of an individual consciousness by an external Other (and perhaps by the corresponding internalised desire to obliterate the subjectivity of others in turn).[4]

Developments

Later writers have developed Bachelard's idea in various ways.

See also

References

  1. Craighead, W. Edward; Nemeroff, Charles B., eds. (2004-04-19). The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science (3rd ed.). New York Chichester: Wiley. ISBN 9780471220367.
  2. F. Gleyzon, Shakespeare's Spiral (2010) p. 209
  3. J-P Sartre, Saint Genet (2012) p. 268
  4. A. Passo, Novel Configurations (1994) p. 215
  5. W. Craighead ed. The Concise Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioural Science (2014) p. 1044
  6. P. Bennett ed., Montreal 2010 (2012) p. 1593
  7. Waltzing with Medusa
  8. L. Shamas, We Three (2007) p. 36
  9. results, search (2010-03-19). Shakespeare's Spiral: Tracing the Snail in King Lear and Renaissance Painting. UPA.
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