Happiness in Hippolytus

As we discussed, there are two types of love according to Sigmund Freud: fully-sensual that is called Eros, and aim-inhibited that is called Ananke: ‘Eros and Ananke (Love and Necessity) have become the parents of human civilization too. …man’s discovery that sexual (genital) love afforded him the strongest experiences of satisfaction, and provided him with the prototype of all happiness… in doing so he made himself different in a most dangerous way on a portion of the external world, namely, his chosen love-object, and exposed himself to extreme suffering if he should be rejected by that object’ (55-56). The ‘aim-inhibited love’, or ‘affection’, or ‘possitive feelings’ is a love between parents and children, between sisters and brothers. The ‘fully-sensual love’ is a ‘love that extends outside the family and creates new bonds with people who before were strangers’ (57).

The most dangerous thing that happened to Phaedre is that she was rejected by her love-object – by Hippolytus, and thus she suffered greatly. She fell in love with Hippolytus and could not even sleep and eat. Freud describes such situation in the following words: ‘When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment’ (Freud 65).

The sexual love, which we can call passion, gave man the highest level of satisfaction. Phaedre could not stop thinking about this feeling of satisfaction - passion or desire. As Sigmund Freud points out, ‘People give the name ‘love’ to the relation between a man and a woman whose genital needs have led them to found a family.  Besides, he writes that with the development of civilization the feeling of love loses its clear meaning and becomes opposite to the interests of a society, which threatens love with ‘substantial restrictions’. Phaedre’s love and passion externalize. She understands that her secret passion is wrong.

The further reaction of Phaedre to the rejection by her love-object – Hippolytus, is a psychological deviation that is displayed in a neurosis. As it was discussed in class, Phaedre internalizes her passion for Hippolytus into aggressiveness. According to Sigmund Freud, ‘Neurosis was regarded as the outcome of a struggle between the interest of self-preservation and the demands of the libido, a struggle in which the ego had been victorious but at the price of severe sufferings and renunciations’.