This paper traces the psychological implications of Sophocles' treatment of the Oedipus legend, in the light of Bion's concept of ‘catastrophic change’ and Keats's of ‘negative capability’. The first-written play, Antigone, concludes with the curse of revenge which falls when the mind-city fails to integrate conflicting emotions. The hero of Oedipus Tyrannos, however, overcomes the mindless pessimism which would deflect him from self-knowledge, by means of a necessary weaning process founded on memories of infancy. Finally, Oedipus at Colonus shows how mental beauty or poetry metamorphoses from the appearance of ugliness and makes ideas transmissible.