# Classical Mythology/Freudian psychology

* Ancient Myth The Castration of Ouranos
* In the Olympian creation myth, as Hesiod tells it in the Theogony, Ouranos came every night to cover the earth and mate with Gaia, but he hated the children she bore him. Ouranos imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Ouranos. Only Kronos, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea.
* For of all the children that were born of Gaia and Ouranos, these were the most terrible, and they were hated by their own father from the first. And he used to hide them all away in a secret place of Gaia so soon as each was born, and would not suffer them to come up into the light: and Uranus rejoiced in his evil doing.
* But vast Gaia groaned within, being straitened, and she thought a crafty and an evil wile. Forthwith she made the element of grey flint and shaped a great sickle, and told her plan to her dear sons. And she spoke, cheering them, while she was vexed in her dear heart:
* “My children, gotten of a sinful father, if you will obey me, we should punish the vile outrage of your father; for he first thought of doing shameful things.”
* So she said; but fear seized them all, and none of them uttered a word. But great Kronos the wily took courage and answered his dear mother:
* “Mother, I will undertake to do this deed, for I reverence not our father of evil name, for he first thought of doing shameful things.”
* So he said: and vast Gaia rejoiced greatly in spirit, and set and hid him in an ambush, and put in his hands a jagged sickle, and revealed to him the whole plot.
* And Ouranos came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Gaia spreading himself full upon her.
* Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father's testicles and cast them away to fall behind him.
* And not vainly did they fall from his hand; for all the bloody drops that gushed forth Gaia received, and as the seasons moved round she bore the strong Erinyes and the great Giants with gleaming armor, holding long spears in their hands and the Nymphs whom they call Meliae all over the boundless earth.
* And so soon as he had cut off the testicles with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the ocean a long time: and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden [ i.e. Aphrodite].
* Hesiod, Theogony 155-190
* Think about this story of Ouranos and Kronos in terms of Freudian psychology.
* Does this way of interpreting myth seem to work for this story, if not for others you know?
* What repressed desires are in this myth?
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* The desire to harm one's children, the desire to harm one's spouse,or the desire to harm one's parents are all taboo. Even a temporary expression of these wishes is usually dangerous in society.
* What repressed fears are in this myth?
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* Examples include fear of being harmed during sex,fear of castration, fear of being replaced by one's children
* Earlier in the story Gaia gave birth to Ouranos. What repressed desire is therefore also in this story?
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* Most world origin myths start with a limited number of characters, so incest seems inevitable and is not stressed in this myth. Nonetheless, one of the features of Hesiod's creation story is that the main characters sleep with their mothers, sons, sisters, or brothers.
* Comment on this myth reading on its Discuss page.
* Go ahead and use the Discuss page for Classical Mythology Readings as a Blog/Comments page for personal introspection on the passages.