MARS DROWNS IN VENUS: ENDING YOUR DRESSING GAMES

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

In the literature, you can find the so-called "Cleopatra Syndrome" (Nemirinsky O. V., Fedorus I. V. "Cleopatra Syndrome" (the dilemma of love and pride) // Psychological journal. - T. 12. - No. 5. - 1991. - S. 60-64). According to the authors, we can talk about two basic tendencies of this syndrome, which are realized in relationships with men. Firstly, this is an insatiable appetite for confirming one's high importance for a man and, secondly, avoiding such relationships with a man, where there is at least a minimal opportunity to be subdued. The actualization of these tendencies is manifested in two mutually exclusive models of behavior: attraction to strong, masculine men and a burning desire to humiliate them.

Relationships with men of a woman with Cleopatra's syndrome go through three successive phases: 1) a fantasy search for a hero; 2) psychological struggle with a real man for leadership; 3) the experience that it was not possible to gain the upper hand over a man - to reign over him. The authors believe that the main source of the syndrome is the narcissistic position of the parents, caused by the feeling of inferiority that arose in childhood, fueled by a strong fear of submission to powerful parents. Two tendencies in the mental life of modern Cleopatra: the insatiability of the intense need to confirm its significance (the first tendency), due to the presumption of its insignificant intrinsic value (the second tendency). The authors reduce the core of the problem of the syndrome to the dilemma of love and pride. V. G. Stepanov believes that it is more correct to talk about the dilemma of egoism and passion. In the opinion of the said author, “Cleopatra” does not love, because she only takes from the other. Moreover, "Cleopatra" is afraid of love, avoids it. Such a woman considers the expression of her passion not a huge gift to a man, but a humiliation of herself, an infringement of her own pride, an unwanted dependence on another. Therefore, in a relationship with a man, "Cleopatra" puts herself in the position of "queen", requiring submission and reverence. Like Queen Cleopatra, a woman with Cleopatra syndrome seeks to get rid of a loved one.

It’s interesting for me to shift the perspective of consideration to Shakespeare’s play "Antony and Cleopatra" with its psychological overtones of dressing up.

Cleopatra at all times was considered the most disgusting of all Shakespeare's villains. Indeed, the extremes of Cleopatra's behavior, inconstancy and licentiousness are quite difficult to endure, even for her loyal fans like me. At the same time, she fascinates, her incendiary sexual expressiveness cannot but captivate, and the eccentric sex changes of Antony and Cleopatra cannot but confuse and leave indifferent.

Cleopatra's worldview is erratic fluidity and variability, the abolition of limits and boundaries, gluttony, sex, anarchic energy, natural fertility. No one and nothing can control Cleopatra, so she does not experience her play. Antony and Cleopatra do not respect boundaries and know no limits. Caesar himself and his entourage call Antony feminine, although in the usual sense of the word Antony is more masculine than Caesar. Caesar is sexually neutral. Antony, the most sexually unstable hero, extols the masculine, he despises Octavius Caesar, who refuses to fight him hand-to-hand. Anthony's passion is reckless: "The passion for which there is a yardstick is insignificant." Everything in Egypt is redundant, wasteful and abundant. Caesar tries to suppress and channel the flow of emotions of the Egyptian experience. Caesar wants to measure the endless diversity of Cleopatra with a dispassionate rational measure. Throughout the play, Cleopatra's plurality is illustrated by the multiple transitions from one extreme in emotion to another. Cleopatra dissolves the masculine in the feminine. She is surrounded by eunuchs so despised by Rome, Anthony, after meeting her, changes his stoic Roman past to debauchery. Antony suffers from an expanded identity that he is unable to control. The dress-up game is a paradigm of emotional unity in love, lovers are so imbued with each other that they are mistaken for one for the other.

The psyche of Cleopatra is consumed by the irrational and barbaric. Her sexuality is so much higher than European norms about the norm that the Romans call her a whore, a whore or a wench. The "Nile snake" is the archetype of the femme fatale. Cleopatra is not a neurotic, or for that matter a psychopath.

A condition familiar to many women, for which the name "premenstrual syndrome" is assigned, and which I call "dinosaur rumble", with its characteristic outbursts of anger, irritability, replaced by tearfulness, is a window into the unconscious in which the unbridled and unpredictable Cleopatra lives. Cleopatra is the reptilian brain as it is: the reproductive instinct, aggression, desire to possess everything, imitation, deception, power struggle, domination over a minority, composure, lack of empathy, indifference to the consequences of their actions in relation to other people. In every woman struggling with her reptilian brain, a battle is unfolding between barbarism and civilization in the premenstrual period.

Cleopatra's masculine face is also strong. Some researchers believe that Cleopatra, belted by the sword of Anthony, is a Renaissance "Armed Venus". Psychologically, Cleopatra also appears fully armed. Shakespeare presents Cleopatra, who is prone to male violence, as an extremely attractive literary image. The violence of Cleopatra, unlike, for example, Lady Macbeth, is permanent, not transitory. Cleopatra's impulses are sadomasochistic, if she is provoked, she goes into panic flight. Heraclitus called such a physical countercurrent of aggression "enantiodromia" - an escape to his opposite. Cleopatra embodies the Dionysian principle of theatricality, truth does not matter: dramatic values are above all.

Why does the mistress of all emotional states fail? Caesar is the principle of reality, he represents everything that Antony and Cleopatra rejected. Mental stability overcomes mental variability. The culmination of Antony and Cleopatra is the Battle of Actium. The defeat of Antony is the victory of Caesar and the beginning of the Roman Empire, united by the power of one person. Caesar is patronized by, as Nietzsche would say, "Apollo, the founder of states."

Shakespeare's Cleopatra is a free play of an independent imagination, hostile to the stability and solidity of the earth.

Antony's fateful decision to fight at sea ruins him. The commander of the infantry and the genius of land battles, he, like the last fool, allows Cleopatra to dictate the battle plan to him ("Earth is dung" … "But the greatness of life is in love"). Egyptians are seafarers. Cleopatra insists that the fleet, not the army, should give Caesar the last battle. The seasoned soldiers of Anthony cry in vain to him, he, blinded by love, brushes them off. Historians are puzzled by the sudden flight of Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium, and even more so by the shameful betrayal of Antony, who abandoned his troops and ships and followed her. Shakespeare presents the case in such a way that Cleopatra and Antony are fleeing the theater of war because they lack tenacity and determination. The psychological horoscope of Cleopatra lacks the element of the earth, the principle of reality that is inherent in Caesar. Cleopatra - fire, air and water. Fire is a fierce, hot-tempered character, aggression and violence. Air is the verbal energy and poetic power of creating images. Water is an indomitable rush of emotions and its rapid change of mood. Cleopatra's faces change constantly and randomly, because there is no land in her that can give her stability and be limited to one face. Her choice at Actium is the sea, liquid nature. Cleopatra is Egypt and Egypt is the Nile. According to Antony and Cleopatra, the dry land of Egypt itself has no value. Fertility occurs only when the land is irrigated with water. Antony, entering the damp asylum of her kingdom, loses himself. He betrays his people and himself. The indifference of lovers to public concerns and the preference for emotions over duty are predetermined at the beginning of the play by the metaphor of flooding the earth with water. Anthony exclaims: “Let Rome perish in the Tiber / And the vaults of the age-old power collapse” - a statement hardly fitting a Roman triumvir. Cleopatra angrily shouts: "Let Rome perish!", "Let the Nile rush into Egypt!" Lovers flood the earth with waves of emotions and cannot withstand the constant pressure of the "earthly" Caesar.

Cleopatra Shakespeare - a free play of independent imagination, hostile to the stability and strength of the earth, before death says: "I am all like marble / Now the fickle moon / Not from my planets." The continuous transformations of Cleopatra end with the immobility of death.