Comment on Faber's analysis of Jocasta's suicide in "Oedipus Rex".

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Faber (1970) has analyzed the suicidal behavior in Sophocles' plays and noted that it illustrates the psychodynamics of suicide as proposed by Freud. An individual is angry at someone but unable to express the anger, and so turns it inward onto himself. For example, Oedipus, prior to enucleating himself, seems intent on killing Jocasta. When he finds her dead, his frustrated anger is turned inward onto himself. Faber interprets Jocasta's suicide in the same way. Jocasta is in desperate passion and cries aloud to her first husband. Faber sees Jocasta as reproaching Laius for his role in the tragedy and for abandoning her. Jocastn's suicide is motivated in part by the frustrated anger toward her dead husband. The thesis of this note is that the motivation for Jocasta's suicide may be open to an alternative interpretation. As Faber himself has noted, not all of Sophocles' suicides fit the pattern (Antigone, for example). It will be argued here that Jocasta may not fit the pattern either. The Greek original is by no means clear. 6py i j Xpwpiy (Storr, 1912) means to indulge one's emotion, and this emotion may be any violent emotion. Though commonly anger, it could just as well be anguish. Kahei means to call by name and carries no connotation of emotion. Jocasta calls out to Laius, therefore, not necessarily in anger bur possibly in anguish and helplessness. Laius was her first love, husband, and the one to whom she turned for support in her youth. In this time of distress, she turns to him again. Laius cannot join her to give her support, but she can join him through death. Her reunion fantasy (Greenberg, 1964) becomes a reunion. Suicide is particularly common after loss (MacMahon B: Pugh, 1965), a fact noted by Freud. Jocasta has lost two husbands, the first through murder and the second when he proved to be her son. This second loss may re-activate the trauma of the first and may be sufficient to propel1 her toward that relatively rare event-the taking of one's own life.