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Antigone and Ismene came to mind when a long-term World Mental Health Coalition member forwarded me an imaginative article: “A 15-Step Plan to Save Democracy Via the 14th Amendment Can Start Today.”
All power is available to the people. All tyranny occurs with our consent. Our helplessness is an illusion. Continuing in helplessness is a choice. Imagination begins the realization of our power. This, in a nutshell, is what psychotherapy achieves.
What does this have to do with Antigone and Ismene? Antigone is perhaps a less well-known Sophocles play than Oedipus Rex, which psychiatry popularized because of Sigmund Freud’s penchant for his young mother.
Antigone, however, gave birth to America. The risk she took is echoed in Thomas Paine, Paul Revere, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks. America, in turn, inspired the world and gave rise to dissidents and revolutionaries everywhere, starting with France. When confronted with the conflict between justice and law, truth and order, Antigone followed her conscience over political expediency.
Antigone is a product of the old king of Thebes, Oedipus, who, upon realizing that he had unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, blinded and banished himself. His incestual progeny included two sons and two daughters. The two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, killed each other in their fight for dominance, which caused Oedipus’ uncle, Creon, to take over. The new king’s arbitrary designation of Eteocles as hero, deserving a proper burial, and Polyneices as traitor, condemned to be left as vultures’ feed, began the conflict.
The two daughters, Antigone and Ismene, meet outside the gates of the city. Antigone wishes to bury their brother, at the risk of death; it is the right thing to do. Ismene, while lamenting her brother’s fate believes that disobedience of the law is wrong. If individuals decided which laws to follow and which ones not to, would this not lead to disorder? Ismene tells her sister she will keep silent about her act, but Antigone urges her to tell everyone. They part in disagreement.
Creon’s tyrannical character becomes evident when his laws are defied. When Antigone is caught burying her brother, her betrothal to his son Haemon no longer matters: she is to be buried alive. Ismene declares that she has aided Antigone in order to share her fate, but it is too late. Creon accuses Antigone of violating the city’s laws, but Antigone exposes that he is only serving himself. After Antigone dies, Haemon and then his mother kill themselves, and no one “wins”.
American revolutionaries could equally have been hanged as traitors, but instead the risk they took the foundation of one of the most prosperous nations history has known. We need more “Atnigones”.
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