ABSTRACT
Freud believed the origin of tragedy to be linked to the Oedipus complex and, specifically, to the murder of the primal father by his sons. The author argues that the origins of tragedy are to be found, instead, in a phantasy of the murder of the child by his/her mother. Freud’s Ur-szene related to the origin of the individual is not the parental intercourse and associated oedipal triangulation, but the birth of the subject as the result of a traumatic rupture of an original undifferentiated oneness-with-mother. An unconscious primal phantasy of this violent split at the origin of the individual is what is enacted in tragedy. Burkert’s and Girard’s theories of the importance of aggression in the birth of human consciousness and the establishment of human communities are discussed. Under the drive of what the author calls “psychic imperative,” biological aggression is mentalized causing phantasies, rituals, symbols and thoughts. Finally, Aristotle’s account of the origin of tragedy when the exarchon broke off from the undifferentiated mass of the chorus is examined from the perspective of the views presented here.
