Жажда смысла. Практики логотерапии по Виктору Франклу

Me: So, it appears that Medea could betray and Jason was not supposed to?

Irina: But the Jason was her husband. He cheated… She gave birth to children and before that helped to get the fleece… and he’s betrayed her.

Me: What if he just took her example? Saw how easily she betrayed her father and decided that nothing bad will happen to her. That betrayal is all right for these people.

Irina starts thinking. She is struck with the brand new discovery. Rightness of the women always was on first place for her.

Me: and how did you like Medea’s retaliation to Jason’s betrayal?

Irina: Well, this is a real nightmare. Why did she kill her children? All right with king’s daughter, then Jason himself. And then she could run away with children!

Me: So, somebody had to be killed anyway? Somebody, just not the children?

Irina: But he was humiliating her! Cheated on her! But in the end everything went terrible. No, nobody should’ve been killed

Me: So, why did she kill children? Children, but not the Jason?

Irina: She wanted the most terrible way of revenge. For him to live and suffer.

Me: Do you remember for what the Jason begged in the end? When the children were dead already?

Irina: Yes. He begged to leave him the bodies to bury them and then cry on theig graves.

Me: And Medea?…

Irina: It’s so terrible! She did not give him the bodies.

Me: But she had her 100 % revenge! And left him alive to…

Irina:… live live and… remember and suffer.

Me: Did it look like a smart move?

Irina: Well, I would not kill children. I would just leave him and that’s it. And leave him alone…

Me: How do you think, does this story has anything to do to you?

Irina: I am not going to kill anybody! And I was not betrayed by the way.

I offered Irina to think over the metaphoric sense of the episode with children slaughter. Murder is not just taking somebody’s life. In metaphoric sense – killing is leaving man without sense of life, leave the man without faith to people, to love.

Me: let us try to imagine everything as metaphor. Mother leaves with children. They will never see their father again. And the father will never see his children. So – she kills father for children, and children for father. Living with only one parent leaves child without something very important. For the rest of the life person is deprived. Because child needs both mother’s and father’s forces. And who is mother to become the judge and charge with death penalty? Does she have right to do that?

So goes the conversation that extracts the sense out of this plot. Figuratively the entire process of the dialogue can be imagined as separation of cabbage leaves out of the head. One by one, every one is different, closer and closer to the middle. Attention concentrates on the leave (plot’s branch) that is needed in the context of the given situation.

During the next session Irina is supposed to live through the plot of Medea herself. Here she is – daughter of the king, sorcerer. She sees Jason. Love on the first sight. She, guided by the power of love has to help Jason to gain the fleece and escape with it. Irina turns into the process of imagination. She completely submerges into the plot, sits with her eyes closed. When the story comes to the love on the first sight smile appears on her face. But when it comes on helping the Jason by betraying own father she opens her eyes and refuses to do that! She motivates that she, of course, is in love, but her father is more important for her. And who knows how long this love is going to last. And why she should escape her native land where she is in power. She refuses to submerge into this plot, knowing that she will be betrayed after her own betrayal. So, the entire sense of her love to Jason will be betrayed.

I ask: Does it mean that the plot of “Medea” contains two guilty persons? Two traitors?

Irina: Yes!

Me: Are mothers who forbid their children to contact their fathers completely open and honest to their children? Can you judge without hearing the other side?

My purpose was to induce Irina not to ban the father of her child in his fatherhood. But, as the result, she suddenly showed her wish to find her own father and talk to him. She wanted to understand the person who was described to her as a traitor by her own mother. As a man, they were better off.

Irina insisted her mother to tell her the name of her father. After the harsh conversation and rough commentaries of her mother, etc. Nevertheless, Irina learned everything she wanted. And immediately found him in social networks. She recognized her father on the first sight – they looked very much alike. They’ve met and father told her circumstances of that old conflict with her mother. In details of that quarrel Irina recognized her own behavior to the father of her child. And, what is very important, she started understanding how much she has lost herself, left without her father. Part of her soul all this time was frozen. And only then she understood the metaphor “killing the child”.