Editorial: The World in Conflict

For this year’s cover of the issues of the International Journal, we have selected an image from ancient Greece of the rape, or seduction, of Europa - a lot hinges on this important difference. Zeus was filled with lust by Europa’s beauty, and so, when she was picking flowers with her friends, he turned himself into a white bull and quietly joined the group of girls. Europa was entranced by the bull’s tameness. She started stroking the bull’s flanks, finally mounting and sitting on the bull. Zeus seized his opportunity and galloped off with her, swimming across the sea to the island of Crete. The myth has a happy ending: Europa gives birth to three sons and becomes Queen of Crete.

Psychoanalysts will make what they will of this famous myth, which is open to multiple interpretations. But we chose this particular image because it gives such a vivid depiction of violence, confusion and chaos. The couple - is Europa sexually exhilarated, or tricked and raped, a victim of narcissistic, phallic violence? - are depicted fleeing across the dangerous waters of the sea, over the heads of murderous sea monsters. The myth could be read as a representation of male to female misogynistic violence, and the fact that the myth and the vase date from so long ago (the vase is from about 350 bc), expresses the enduring nature of chaotic, sexual violence.

Such violence seems particularly rampant in human affairs just now with the brutality, cruelty and bloodshed of several wars, including in Ukraine, screeching with unbearable dissonance across the globe. Whole countries can be raped as well as individual humans. And the narcissistic stealing of what is lusted after, followed by post-hoc justification and rationalization (“Look, I’ve made her Queen, she is happy, she has three sons”), constitutes the depressing norm of so much international political life. I wonder if this myth might be useful for psychoanalysts contemplating big-group, national conflicts and controversies. But the myth a