The intuitive insight of the poets is again illustrated in Sophocles' Ajax and Shakespeare's Coriolanus. Both of these characters are accurate models for a type met with in clinical practice. Two persons in psycho-analytic therapy are described, showing the breakdown of a 'masculine protest' or hyper-masculinity defence under the pressure of feminine influence. Here, preconscious factors, promotive of timidity and docility, proved disastrous to these vulnerable men. Their prototypes were easily recognized in Ajax and Coriolanus. The genius of the poets is particularly striking in their awareness of the vicissitudes as well as many aspects of the genesis of this character type. It comes as no surprise that Freud gave full credit and priority to the poets and philosophers for the discovery of the unconscious:

Strangely the long and countless drift of time
Brings all things forth from darkness into light,
Then covers them once more.
(Sophocles, trans. Grene and Lattimore, p. 237.)