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A close reading of the Oedipus myth suggests that the conflict between human subjectivity and fate is more central to its meaning than the problem of human desire. Our strong misreading of the Oedipus myth as a cautionary tale of incest has misplaced an essential aspect of human psychology, the struggle, or agon, with and against fate, which emerges again and again in the psychoanalytic relationship and is typically a crucial element in the individual's life development.
Fate is regarded as the individual's intuition or inchoate recognition that something other than his own will is directing his life. It is an effect of reflection at the limits of reflection. It is also the effect of a historical or narrative sense of one's life.
This reading of the Oedipus myth suggests that we consider the struggle against repetition, against history, against fate, poorly or anxiously glimpsed, as an essential human agon. The final scene of the Oedipus myth poses the question: How do we proceed, what happens to us, after our fate is accomplished?