ABSTRACT
Ancient tragedy stages the shattering of omnipotence (hubris). Omnipotence is based on impossible links that lead to impasses in the society in which they are maintained by splitting processes. A tragic plot narrates their transformations into the paradoxes of politics. It holds in time the processes of being and thinking, the subject who thinks and trusts his thinking. Psychoanalysis of early and traumatic experiences has taught us that, before anything else happens in development, the human subject needs to attain the “tragic position”, the status of being a separate entity. The maternal care holds in time the ego needs of the infant, who gradually emerges as an autonomous subject living inside time and reality. After the separation from the primary union, the developing child struggles to recover from the shock of the loss of omnipotence by situating himself through transitional objects and phenomena. The institutions hold the integrity of society and create spaces where people meet and struggle together to know (transform) reality. They undertake the necessity to give meanings and integrate experiences of early infantile conflicts and traumas lying beyond words and reason. The citizens become personally responsible for their fate, tragic subjects of their polis.
