ABSTRACT
The issue of the body is entangled in the mythic roots of psychoanalysis. Since Freud turned to the ancient tale of oedipus, psychoanalytic inquiry has focused on two of oedipus' three encounters: oedipus' patricidal collision with his father, and his incestuous mating with his mother. But oedipus' journey included another fateful episode. between murdering his father and marrying his mother, oedipus faced the Sphinx. the monstrous Sphinx asked the question learned from the Muses: ‘What being, with only one voice, has sometimes two feet, sometimes three, sometimes four, and is weakest when it has the most?’
