Medea (archetype)
Medea is a heroine in literary history. In the various adaptations over the millennia, new motivations express how the betrayed wife and mother are ultimately accused of murderous revenge on the faithless husband. The Medea dilemma is that the development of love hormones in man and woman over the course of millions of years creates an inevitable conflict. The anthropology of love, as researched primarily through Helen Fisher's life's work , shows that the Medea dilemma is a conflict between aging married couples that has been experienced over and over again over millions of years. Following the term archetypal created by Carl Gustav Jung , the love affair between Medea and Jason is presented as archetypal.
Hormonal control of love
Helen Fisher basically distinguishes 3 main components of love, which usually become effective one after the other and are maintained together:
- sexual love
- romantic love
- Married love.
Sexual love
Sexual love is completely independent of the individual claim to loyalty and is unscrupulously aimed at every attractive person who appears in the vicinity of a sexually mature person. It is controlled primarily by testosterone in men and primarily by estrogen in women . A binding globulin reduces the sexual effects of both hormones (sex hormone binding globulin: SHBG ).
Romantic love
Love is described as romantic when a person can no longer push a unique lover out of consciousness. The romantic lover longs for his partner day and night. Hormonal triggers are dopamine and endorphins . The person affected literally has "butterflies in their stomach". Through the individuation of love in the sense of romantic infatuation, jealousy becomes an essential motive. According to Helen Fisher's tiered model, romantic love rises above sexual love without giving up the underlying motivation.
Married love
The third and highest level of love is called married love, according to Helen Fisher. It is controlled by the hormone oxytocin . At the same time, the release of oxytocin leads to contractions of the uterus and accelerated regression of the uterus after childbirth. During breast feeding, oxytocin is not only released by the mother, but also in the infant there is an increased concentration of the hormone during the breastfeeding phase. Even when father only passes the bottle, oxytocin is found to be elevated in the blood of both father and infant. But oxytocin is also usually increased during sexual intercourse in mammals. The highest level hormone is regularly associated with the two types of lower love.
Loss of oestrus
In contrast to most animals, Medea, a young, sexually mature female, is particularly attractive. Because when the rut is lost, the synthesis of the sex hormone binding globulin no longer takes place in the ovary, but in the liver. Your libido is no longer restricted to a few days of the month. The golden flow has been stolen, so to speak.
Jason Dilemma
At the height of his manhood, Jason, as the leader of the Argonauts, steals the Golden Fleece and the king's daughter Medea from the island of Kolkhos. In later years he fell for the young king's daughter Glauke. Medea murders the rival and her father in mad jealousy. The aged Jason lies under his ship and is slain by the collapsing mass of the hull.
The physiology of the aging man reveals a decline in testosterone synthesis in the years past 50. Psychologically, the tendency to more stimulation by adolescent stimuli results. Adultery does not bring back the hoped-for youth in the long run. Eventually the old man succumbs to the ailments of his own heroic body.
Post menopause vs. Erotopause
The long-term division of the granulosa cells of the ovary leads to the irreversible loss of the telomeres. As the follicle matures, the ovary also ceases to synthesize hormones, so that there is hardly any estrogen in the blood of women over 50. The lack of estrogen causes osteoporosis and arteriosclerosis in the long term. In addition, there is an increased risk of the formation of so-called Alzheimer's plaques on the neurocytes of the brain.
Despite the low estrogen level in the blood, there is usually no restriction of libido, since a relatively high testosterone now takes over the stimulus for pleasure in sex. So the erotopause does not occur with the postmenopause. The other love hormones are also not affected by the involution of the ovary. Oxytocin, in particular, which is synthesized by the pituitary gland, maintains marital fidelity (agape) into old age.
Sex therapy of the Medea dilemma
The sex therapy since the pioneering work sets the American researchers Masters and Johnson pair occasionally directly from the physical disturbances of a couple's relationship on. This includes learning about masturbation and inter-individual stimulation techniques. Hormone substitution and negative pressure massages of the genitals are also used here. In terms of cancer prophylaxis, negative pressure massage of the testicles (including the prostate) and the breast are recommended.
Medea's Archetype in the Arts
The interpretation of the Medea figure in the course of history can best be shown in the surviving works of literature, music and art history. Criteria for the archetypal nature of the Medea experience are:
- Genetic Determination
- Reception of the literary structure
- Comments from the authors in the sense of an inevitable formation of human experience.
literature
- Bätzner, Nike; Matthias Dreyer, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Astrid Silvia Schönhagen (eds.): Medeamorphoses - Myth and Aesthetic Transformation. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7705-4840-8 .
- Fisher, Helen. Anatomy of love. Droemer Knaur 1995
- Hidalgo, Roxana: The Medea of Euripides. On the psychoanalysis of female aggression and autonomy. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag 2002.
- Kannengießer, Wilhelm: The great successes of cupping therapies in women's problems. 2010
- Ders .: The vacuum erection pump: Helping people to help themselves. 2009
- Leuzinger-Bohleber M. The 'Medea fantasy'. An unconscious determinant of psychogenic sterility. Int J Psychoanal. 2001 Apr; 82 (Pt 2): 323-45.
- Lütkehaus, Ludger: Myth Medea. Texts from Euripides to Christa Wolf. Reclam, Leipzig 2007, ISBN 3-379-20006-9 ; Reclam, Ditzingen 2007, ISBN 3-15-020006-7 .
- Masters; Johnson, Virginia: Human sexual response. Boston: Little, Brown 1966 (German: The sexual reaction. Frankfurt / M .: Akademische Verlagsges. 1967)
- Roth, Wolfgang: Understanding CG Jung. Basics of analytical psychology. Patmos, Düsseldorf 2009, ISBN 978-3-491-42136-3 .
- Sirola, Riitta: The Myth of Medea From the Point of View of Psychoanalysis, (2004). Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, 27: 94-104
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. Roth 2009
- ↑ Bätzner et al. 2010 show the so-called medeamorphoses. Cf. also Lütkehaus 2007. On the psychoanalytic interpretation of Medea in Eurypides cf. Hidalgo 2002, Leuzinger-Bohleber 2001 and Sirola 2004
- ↑ cf. Fisher 1995
- ↑ cf. Masters / Johnsohn 1966
- ↑ cf. Pot pourer 2010
- ↑ cf. Bätzner 2010