The Unsilencing of Oedipus

Unsilencing denotes that something has gone unseen and is central in psychoanalysis where at its best the ethos involves voicing the truth of the hidden dramas that human beings must somehow face. Oedipus continually evaded the truth of his origins and had no curiosity about unsilencing his memories. Nevertheless, the quest for memory led to a violent eruption of truth, guilt, shame and horror. Addressing the uniqueness of the human being’s temporal awareness points to the need to turn ghosts into ancestors. The emotion of shame slows down the temporal flow and forces reflection, while at the other end shame can freeze the process of life. Finding truth is not about conformity but about creativity and new truth. In that process shame is an indicator of great or small disruptions in our self of a unified self. Deep shame can evoke profound questions about who we are and can have ontological dimensions as Primo Levi said when he referred to the shame he felt that human beings were capable of committing such atrocities.