The Oresteia and the Act of Revenge - of Desire and Jouissance

Oct 17, 2026

The Aeschylean Trilogy, the Oresteia, provides psychoanalytic insight into the origins of revenge and the links between desire and jouissance. This article argues that “revenge,” as a central signifier in the Oresteia, functions as an act, an impulse, and possibly a desire. Through Freudian and Lacanian readings, it contrasts revenge as castration-based desire against revenge as repetitive, destructive jouissance, and examines how later Lacan clarifies jouissance in Seminar XX. Findings aim to guide psychoanalytic clinical practice.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Revenge and Feminine Jouissance

Lacanian and Freudian frameworks

Cases of revenge and feminine jouissance

Sexuation formulas and types of jouissance

Links to pre-Oedipal experience and “ravage”

The Oresteia and the Act of Revenge: of Desire and Jouissance Dana Tor Tel Aviv University Abstract The Aeschylean Trilogy, the Oresteia, contains precious psychoanalytic knowledge about the origins of revenge. The Oresteia is not only a great myth that has garnered myriad interpretations, but it also illuminates some of the most critical psychoanalytic themes that Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan engaged with throughout their teaching: the murder of the father, the neurotic's debt, the impulses, myth, jouissance, desire, and das Ding. This article argues that “revenge,” a signifier that appears at the center of the Aeschylean Trilogy, represents an act, an impulse, and perhaps a desire. Examining the concept of revenge from a Freudian and Lacanian point of view, this essay inquires whether revenge is an act that is based on castration (i.e . , that is in the direction of desire and subjectivity) or an act that is dipped in ravaging, repetitive, destructive jouissance, and raises the question of whether the latter contradicts the former. Lacan developed the term desire in the first years of his teaching in Seminar VI, where he explores the meaning of desire via his reading of the play Hamlet. Jouissance is a term that was present throughout Lacan's teaching but received a new sense in his later teaching, particularly in Seminar XX: Encore. I follow Lacan and Freud's constructions of Totem and Taboo (Freud), Oedipus Rex (Sophocles), and Hamlet (Shakespeare) in my reading of the myth of the Oresteia, uncovering the logic of the relationship between desire and jouissance. Based on the Oresteia , I explore the convergence of desire and jouissance in an interpretation of Lacan's later teaching. I analyze how the myth of the Oresteia and the act of matricide uncover the psychic picture of revenge and draw conclusions that aim to serve as a compass in the psychoanalytic clinic. Keywords: revenge , the Oresteia , Freud, Lacan, jouissance , desire , father, mother, Oedipus, Totem and Taboo, Hamlet. To Cite As: Tor, Dana, 2022, "The Oresteia and the Act of Revenge: of Desire and Jouissance,” PsyArt 27, pp. 58-73. Revenge and feminine jouissance Reading Freud's articles on femininity and Lacan's Seminar XX. Lacan discusses the concept of revenge in his article "The youth of Gide, or the Letter and Desire," where he recounts the act of revenge performed by Gide's wife, Madeleine, referred to by Lacan as the act of a “true woman”(640) . Madeleine Gide, the wife of the great French writer Andrei Gide, took revenge against her husband for his love affairs with young boys by burning his most precious object, the love letters he wrote to her, which he considered his greatest artistic creation, and which he referred to as his children (Lacan, "The Youth of Gide" 640) . Other famous examples of revenge by real women that Lacan mentions are taken from Greek tragedies: Medea , who takes revenge on her cheating husband by killing her sons, and Philomela , who did the same (Lacan, "The Youth of Gide" 640) . What unites these acts of revenge is that both involve the killing of kin—the woman's flesh and blood 1 . These extreme cases of revenge raise the question of whether revenge can be understood as an affect that is at the core of feminine jouissance , a woman’sunlimited destructive enjoyment. They also raise questions about what Lacan means when he refers to these women as "true women" in relation to the act of revenge. In Seminar, XX Lacan presents his formulas of sexuation, or more precisely , his formulas of two types of enjoyments, or two types of jouissances (5-7) . According to Lacan, jouissance is the subject’s enjoyment of his own body as foreign or other (Seminar XX 4) . Jouissance, for Lacan, comes from the superego, and its aim is pure pleasure . Feminine jouissance , moreover, is jouissance without limits—so limitless is this enjoyment that it can be destructive for the subject. The logical rule of this formula

FAQs

How does the article define revenge within the Oresteia?

Revenge is treated as a signifier at the center of the Oresteia, functioning as an act and an impulse, and possibly as a desire.

What does the article contrast between Freudian and Lacanian perspectives?

It contrasts revenge as an act based on castration and oriented toward desire and subjectivity with revenge as an act driven by repetitive, ravaging, destructive jouissance, and asks whether the latter contradicts the former.

How does Lacan distinguish feminine jouissance from phallic jouissance?

Feminine jouissance is described as limitless and not entirely under the phallic law of desire, whereas phallic jouissance follows the symbolic order and has a limit tied to castration.

Oct 17, 2026

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