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Arts & Communication The riddle of the sphinx revisited

sphinx-mother (played by Ruth Brigitte Tocki). Caresses it as a representation of the late 19 -century esoteric
th
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also features explicitly in Martin Scorsese’s The Age of revival. According to the so-called secularization
Innocence (1993), a film about two young people (Daniel theory, the successes of modern science and technology
Day-Lewis and Michelle Pfeiffer) involved in a forbidden led to the demise of modern Western religion and
love affair. 18 the rise of atheism. However, as the sociologist

Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) was a contemporary of Campbell 24(p[168]]-[188]]) notes, this is not what has
Khnopff (1858 – 1921). He mentioned his theory of the happened in actual society. The traditional church
Oedipus complex for the 1 time in 1897, just a year after institutions did not empty out in blatant atheism. They
st
Caresses was painted. 19(p23) Even though Khnopff’s work rather lost their members to various other forms of
was widely admired by contemporary Viennese artists, who spirituality, branded as esotericism. Campbell argues
also loved to experiment with the theme of Oedipus and the that, whereas rationality forms the official self-image of
Sphinx, there is no evidence that Freud was directly influenced the modern West, esotericism forms an unofficial but
by Caresses. Freud’s artistic taste was more classical. His favorite widely spread alternative sense of what it means to be a
rendition of Oedipus and the sphinx was Ingres’ painting, of modern Westerner.
which he had a reproduction in his cabinet, thereby presenting These two self-images exist in a continuous tension and
himself to his patients as the Oedipus of his age – the great are much older than modernity. Campbell even locates
solver of the riddle of human unconsciousness. 19(p[203]]) In The the origin of this tension in 480 BC, the year in which, as
Interpretation of Dreams (1900), he admitted that, as a student, already mentioned, the Persian empire was defeated by
he had fantasized about his future students honoring him with the Greek troops. The victory was so unexpected that the
the words in which Sophocles described Oedipus: “He, who Greeks believed it had to be due to their superior, rational,
understood the famous riddle and was a masterful man.” 19(p[183]]) and powerful “Western” culture. 24(p[129]]) Defining such
In Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex, however, a Western civilization required an Eastern opposite, for
he focused more on the tragic Oedipus. He interpreted which the Persians stood as a symbolic counterpart. As the
Oedipus’s story as an expression of the universal childhood West self-identified with “an intelligence independent of
desire to get rid of the father and gain unrestricted access to old, mythic conceptions of might and impotence,” 1(p16) the
the enjoyment of the mother. Those unable to manage the East had to be defined by contrast: A culture of spiritualism,
tension between this urge and societal norms would become mystery, and decadence. 24(p[137]]) As mentioned above,
neurotic, and Freud’s psychoanalysis served to solve that. In the oldest remnant depiction of Oedipus and the sphinx
The Interpretation of Dreams, the Oedipus complex was still (Figure 2), painted around the same time, heralds that
presented as a tentative hypothesis. 20(p[223]]) By the time of rational self-image. 1(p16)
Totem and Taboo (1913), Freud arrived at the more robust Not all Greeks, however, felt at ease with this rationalistic
conclusion that “the beginning of religion ethics, society, and self-image. Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Tyrannus, for one,
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art all come together in the Oedipus complex.” By 1920, he can be read as a warning to his hubristic fellow Athenians,
declared that “one has to accept this fact, acknowledged by showing them that, in spite of all human rationality and
the Greek myth itself, as an inescapable fate.” 22 power, the mysteries of divine fate would prevail. Another
Regardless of how (un)truthful one thinks of Freudian way of dealing with the discontent over the rational
Oedipal ideas, their massive spread and popularity in self-image was to adopt Eastern mysticism as a positive
Western art and culture forms part of the modern Western complement, something the West had lost and needed to
tendency to cast the meaning of life in an individualist be restored through esoteric means. Eastern is therefore
format: “How do I manage the conflict between what I not necessarily a geographical term; it could just as well
want and what society allows me to get?” 23(p[295]]) “How to refer to esoteric movements within Greek culture, such as
pursue my deepest passion?” “What is my true, authentic the Dionysian or Orphic cults. 24(p[125]])
desire?” I consider this individualist streak of modern In post-antique Western history, one such esoteric cult,
Western culture, which has only become stronger in the Christianity, came to be a major cultural force. However,
recent neoliberal decades, as one of the factors inhibiting from the Renaissance onwards, a new tension arose
us from developing an ecological morality based on between a newly budding rational Western self-image and
relationality rather than on self-fulfillment. 6,14 its esoteric counterparts, which aimed for an alternative
approach: One that turned away from rationalism and
5. The not-so-alternative alternative from mainstream institutionalized religion. Renaissance

This individualist bias also has an older source – one Rosicrucianism, the seventeenth-century Athanasius
that is found all over Caresses, as soon as we interpret Kircher (author of Oedipus Aegyptius ), and the
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Volume 3 Issue 3 (2025) 6 doi: 10.36922/ac.5868