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Oedipus' Parents Were Child Abusers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

David C. Taylor
David C. Taylor*
Affiliation:
Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Jesson House (RMCH), 78 Manchester Road, Swinton, Manchester M27 1FG
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Extract

The enigmatic title is taken from my first professorial lecture given on 21 December 1980 at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital. It linked psychiatry, mythology, and Christmas, bringing together three incredibles, in trying to bridge the credibility gap that makes paediatric/psychiatric liaison so tricky. The hospital psychiatrist is, like Tiresias in Sophocles' play, a bisexual (equally as available as repellent). Blinded when he once saw truth (mythically he peeped at Athena bathing), he was given the gift of prophecy by way of consolation. Tiresias, like the psychiatrist, although blind, knows all but, tiresomely, will not speak what he knows. “How does he know?” whisper the non-psychiatrists. “He is blind, he knows nothing”, they muse.

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Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 153 , Issue 4 , October 1988 , pp. 561 - 563
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1988 

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