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“Let Medusa come, that we may change him into stone.” Inferno IX, 52.
This note on the reconstruction of the symbolism of the Medusa myth was suggested by material which appeared in the course of routine analytic work. The unexpected emergence of this material led to an investigation of the literature on the subject and to considerations on the unconscious significance of the Medusa story both in mythology and in the individual.
A young man with a schizoid obsessional neurosis, while under analysis related that for years he had had recurrent: fantasies of seeing his mother naked and her genitalia and pubic hair were very prominent. In the midst of this fantasy he would experience a feeling that he was compulsively gazing at his mother and during this time, too, he fantasied that his body became rigid and immovable. The affective reaction associated with this fantasy consisted of a mixture of love, disgust and hate.
Briefly, the analysis had demonstrated a strong Oedipus fixation, frequent expressions of hate and hostility towards his father, occasional castration dreams in which he seemed to be blind or having his arms amputated, feelings of narcissistic omnipotence with world destruction fantasies strongly resembling the Schreber case and a tendency to devaluate women. A long period of negative transference was finally overcome.
This type of fantasy, which resembles a definite mythological picture, namely the symbolism of the head of the Medusa and the reaction which results from gazing at it, has attracted the attention not only of analysts but also of writers on Greek mythology (Ferenczi, Freud, Jones, Fluegel, Richard Payne Knight). A review of the literature on the subject together with an analytic reconstruction of the fantasy as it emerged in this particular case may serve to illuminate a rather important aspect of unconscious symbolism.