This article seeks to broaden the psychoanalytic understanding of tragedy. The author stresses Aristotle's concept of mimesis, that is, imitation. In the beginning,

the chorus represented man's desire to fuse with the god, Dionysus, and his Goat-Satyrs. Tragedy means goat-song. The etymologies so skillfully quoted in this piece are meant to remind us of essences. The goat-song was a literal imitation, a desire to fuse. Evolution brought the subtler sense of mimesis, a becoming like. Two players are present and the emphasis is on the word. Man begins with flaw (harmatia) in that he is ignorant of a critical difference or a distance between himself and other. Oedipus desires to become like his own origins and is ignorant of his real one. These two aspects of his one self conspire to create the foundation of his tragedy. This careful analysis has a rhapsodic quality of its own and is extremely well done.