An attempt is made to define the essence of the tragic through an examination of Euripides' ‘The Bacchae’, a tragedy that deals with the origins of tragedy itself. The action here culminates in the dismemeberment of Pentheus by his mother. It is proposed that the tragic may be related to the earliest phases of differentiation of the subject as a separate entity breaking off from the original mother-infant unit. Tragedy, in this view, could be regarded as the enactment of a primal phantasy of the birth of the ‘I’ as the result of an archaic act of violence. The process of mourning for the loss of the original unity is central to this development. Pentheus' tragic flaw consists in his repudiation of contradictory dualities and his inability to mourn. The integrative function of ‘Logos’, both in tragedy and in the analytic process, is underlined. It is suggested that ‘Logos’ aims to generate meaning not by eliminating contradiction but by embodying the foundational human paradox.