Two authors look at the same wound, the incest committed without knowing it, and do opposite things with it. Freud uses Oedipus to name a mechanism of the mind. Thomas Mann uses a similar structure, in Gregorius, to lead the reader to redemption. It's the difference between explaining guilt and getting rid of it.
Freud and the diagnosis
Freud took the myth of Oedipus, the man who kills his father and marries his mother without knowing who they are, and transformed it into a clinical tool: the Oedipus complex, a map of the unconscious desires that permeate the child's relationship with his parents. It is a diagnostic gesture. Naming the mechanism, understanding where the psychic conflict comes from, this is what psychoanalysis sets out to do.
Mann and the path
Thomas Mann starts from an almost identical wound, an incest committed without conscious awareness, but takes the character to an entirely different place. Gregorius is not analyzed; he is penitent. He spends seventeen years on a rock, not to understand why it happened, but to purify himself of what happened. The book does not seek an explanation of guilt; it seeks a destiny for it.
Explaining is not absolving
This is the distinction that matters here: psychologizing guilt, understanding its mechanisms, its origin, its internal logic, is legitimate and useful work. But it's not the same thing as absolving. Knowing why someone carries a weight does not take the weight off the person. It is possible to perfectly understand the origin of a guilt and still need a way to free yourself from it.
A connection the audience has already made
It is no coincidence that readers of The Holy Sinner spontaneously connect Gregorius's story to the myth of Oedipus: the structure is the same, the Greek origin is the same. What changes is what each tradition does after discovery. Oedipus, read through Freud, becomes a diagnosis. Gregorius, read through Mann, becomes a path. Understanding the difference between the two is the first step to not confusing self-knowledge with healing.
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See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
What is the Oedipus complex, according to Freud?
It is the name that Freud gave, from the Greek myth of Oedipus, to a set of unconscious desires and conflicts linked to the child's relationship with his parents. Freud uses the story of Oedipus as a diagnosis, a map of psychic mechanisms, not as a path to redemption.
What is the difference between Freud's reading and Thomas Mann's reading of Oedipus?
Freud psychologizes: he uses Oedipus to explain a mechanism of the mind. Mann, in The Holy Sinner, does the opposite with a similar structure, involuntary incest: instead of diagnosing Gregorius, he leads the character along a path of penance until redemption.
Is psychologizing guilt the same as resolving it?
No. Explaining why someone feels guilty, where the psychic mechanism comes from, is different from offering a way for that guilt to be purified. The Holy Sinner suggests that understanding the origin of guilt does not replace the work of facing and overcoming it.
Continue: The Christian Oedipus: Gregorius and Oedipus · Freud, Adler and Frankl: Pleasure, Power or Meaning? · In Search of Meaning, by Viktor Frankl · What is Fides et Ratio
Source class: O Eleito, de Thomas Mann