ABSTRACT
Oedipus and Narcissus are two male protagonists of Greek tragedies who, as we know, stood sponsor to Freud when he wished to draw attention to ubiquitous confl icts of human mental life. Freud postulated that myths, as narrated to us by creative writers in every age, continue to fascinate us today because they portray central unconscious human fantasies and confl icts, as a rule connected with our repressed, early infantile sexual fantasies. These fantasies are preserved in our own unconscious minds and, in projecting them on to the main fi gures in these tales, we unconsciously recognise our own destiny in them: ‘It may even be that not a little of this effect [of an imaginative work] is due to the writer’s enabling us thenceforward to enjoy our own day-dreams without self-reproach or shame’ (Freud, 1908, p. 153).
