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The first well known psychotherapist in ancient Greece was Melambous. According to mythology the gods granted him the ability to heal all diseases. Melambous healed Alkanthos, the king of Megara, with the psychotherapeutic method, from chronic depression. He also healed Ifiklos, the son of the king of Thessaly Fylakos, from psychogenic incompetence, by finding his childhood psychological trauma which had caused him a fear of castration and consequently caused all of his sexual problems!!(Freud came 2.500 years later) Self-knowledge was very important for the Greeks. This is evident by the fact that the believers used to travel great distances to This belief is also included in the myths, for example in the myth of Hercules. According to this myth, when Hercules was born, Zeus assigned Hermes to nurse little Hercules from the breast of Hera, while she was asleep, in order for the baby to become immortal. Nonetheless Hera understood what was happening and pulled herself. From the milk that was dripping the myth says the galaxies and the stars were formed. According to the decoding of the Greek language by Theologos Simeoforos, Hera means the energy that flows both up and down in balance. Therefore the galaxies and the stars were created by the energy that flows in balance! Hercules is the glory (kleos) of Hera. He is the man who has reached balance. All twelve labors of Hercules are initiation processes of the soul in order to reach immortality, for example the Myth of the Lernaean Hydra. The second labor of Hercules was to be drawn to a dirty swamp, next to the river Amymoni and to kill a filthy monster which resided the swamp and was destroying the countryside. The monster had nine heads. One of its heads was also immortal. The peculiarity of these heads was that by cutting one head two sprouted. Hercules found the monster easily. The difficulty relied on the way that he would use to draw the monster out of the swamp. He did it by using an artifice. When he cut one head, he would cauterize with a torch, which Iolaos gave him, in order for the two heads not to sprout. The Hydra symbolizes the beast which we all carry inside us and the swamp in which the Hydra resides symbolizes our subconscious, instinctive impulses. The uprooting of a head and the sprouting of another show how, when a mean thought or desire is removed, another one takes its place immediately. The insatiable appetite for material goods! While Hercules was fighting in the swamp he could not win Hydra. In order to win he had to find another perspective. He lifted the Hydra onto the air. So the beast was weakened and was eliminated. The myth says that the ninth head was immortal, therefore the hero buried it and put a stone on top of it. The immortal head might be showing that no matter what the cause is creating a problem we can neutralize it, even if it sprouts with any chance it gets to show its signs. We all sometimes understand that in the deep areas of our conscience there is a monster with many heads. The only way to beat it is to elevate the problem to a higher dimension, to the clear light of our conscience. The last labor of Hercules is the descend to Hades. Hades symbolizes the Subconscious. After this descend to the Subconscious Hercules ascended to Mount Olympus and became immortal. The therapy of the Greek soul was performed in the ancient theaters through Tragedy and Comedy. In Ancient Greece there were eight hundred theaters!! (an unbelievable number) Aristotle clarifies that: Tragedy “through pity and fear” brings about the cathartic effect of our misfortunes. Comedy “through lust and laughter” brings about the cathartic effect of our misfortunes. The spectators were watching the misfortunes of the protagonists and came in contact with their own repressed pain of the soul, their own misfortunes and thus came the personal catharsis. They achieved the reunification of the mental (Apollonian spirit) with the emotional world (that of Dionysus). This reunification created Conscience. For the Greeks a human being is someone who has a conscience, namely someone who knows what he/she feels and is not afraid to feel and perceive… Homer is aware of how important it is for the physical, soul and spiritual health to feel pain. The heroes of both the Iliad and the Odyssey do not hesitate to reveal and in fact in public the entire spectrum of their feelings (anger, sorrow, shame, crying). Thus Achilles, the great hero of the Greeks, does not hesitate to mourn inconsolable for the death of his friend Patroclus. When king Priam, the father of Hector, goes to ask for his son’s body, both he and Achilles cried in each other’s arms, each due to his own grief. The two kings set arrogance aside. The common painful emotions (for the loss of a friend and that of a son) united them. Human communication was accomplished. The Greek scholar, French academic Jacqueline de Romilly writes in her book “Hector”: “The last rhapsody of the poem is dedicated to the burial of Hector and in the last words of the play one hears his name for the last time… The care to glorify a hero of the opposite camp, pity to be caused by a defeated person, the care to present man as being struck by war and death to spread a heart-breaking mourning, is in fact the beginning of western literature, a mention of great compassion. Nowadays, in times of war and slaughter, times full of brutality, when suddenly mass graves are tracked down, the presentation of such compassion is the answer to our worries. The Greeks continue on this course… …The Iliad is a poem about war, but not a bellicose poem. The luck intended for the body of Hector leads to the higher basic principles of humanity, for which we are grateful to Greece” The Greeks knew that one cannot heal others if one does not heal his- or herself. The world is a spitting image of the situation in our soul. Neurobiology proves nowadays how important the catharsis of pain is for the health of our body, mind and soul. Dr. Arthur Janov, one of the most important clinical psychologists, teaches that we have three brains in one: A) The brain stem or reptilian brain (its evolution lasts a billion years) B) The emotional or limbic brain (the brain of mammals. Its evolution lasted four hundred million years) C) The neocortex (its evolution lasted almost ten million years) The ancient Greeks knew about the triple division of the brain. This can be seen by the fact that the goddess Minerva, the goddess of logic and wisdom was called “Tritogeneia” (the goddess of three parts). Wisdom can be achieved by the balance of the three elements (The Intellect – the Thymic – The Impulsive). Each traumatic event is stored in a different part of the brain according to the time period that it happens. Whenever a traumatic incident happens, because the pain is too big to survive it, our organism repels it. This pain does not disappear but rather stays into our bodies (our insides) and in the emotional brain. The results are the physical, emotional and mental diseases. Because we are not in contact with our repelled pain we react to everyday stimuli as if we are in the past. The remaining pain (physical – emotional) causes an absurdity on a personal and group level. People become destructive both towards themselves and others. They destroy the nature that feeds them, they create wars, because human life has no value to them, they let children die out of hunger, they identify happiness with material goods, they deify money and they promote globalization. The basic aim of globalization is the annihilation of society and people, since it makes history, civilizations, values, manners and customs even. People are turned into mass, so that they can be easily controlled by the system. Each person has critical thinking and perception, so its existence can be threatening… Pain, no matter what we do to avoid it, will be following us like our shadow. The only salvation is the incorporation (catharsis), namely that both thought and emotion become a whole. To think about what we feel and to feel what we think. This means the end of hypocrisy. This article was published in the magazine Oroskopos, issue 5, September 2003 |