The Minotaur Labyrinthe as SCHAZOPHRENIA

Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, 

Edward Burne-Jones, 1861

Schazophrenia is quite a formidable beast, if I dare say. HOW CAN ONE CONCEPTUALIZE IT, especially when we are in these SCHAZOPHRENIC OF TIMES? That is the function of symbolism and metaphor. You see, for after a day of constant drinking, I AWOKE IN MY CHAMBER AFTER A MIDNIGHT NAP- and saw in the Labyrinth a metaphor for MADNESS. If only there was a licorice involved? But no, in the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, only a clew of wool was used to salvage Theseus from the Labyrinth. You see, for the Labyrinth too is a monster, an abyss, wherein the Minotaur himself is its first victim.

Now, what does this have to do with Schazophrenia? Well you see of course, that the mind-brain conundrum is, if one is insane enough to attempt to meander it, archetypally well illustrated by the convoluted voidey-ness of the Labyrinth. For speaking strictly neuropsychologically, what we have when we consider the internal topology and sub-topology of the brain as it is experienced phenomenologically, is a complex network of veins, gangliatic preponderances, irreducible clusters of nerve-feeling, etc, in short the mass of neuron-firings and chemical vorteces which supposedly make up our reality. All this is ultimately inexplicable, however, in a neuro-reductionist account of the self, which is a transcendant notion even if it posited within a social and linguistic framework and also frequently in danger of succumbing within the writhing neural mire of consciousness- i.e the underlying and unrelenting agony of being human and awake, in short, I dare say.

So what we have is a Thesean hero, connected by a string to the Princess Ariadne, the connection of the masculine-feminine bond, where if Theseus never had her help to escape Daedelus' ingenious invention, an artifice of the Aquarian inventor who both supersedes and epitomizes humanity in its madness- as I myself am doing in my own thought-stream in this discourse- I dare say- if I am to dare say as much- (which I just did)- then Theseus would have, in short, himself become the minotaur, for though he may slay the beast entrapped in this complex of darkness, without 'Ariadne's thread' he would soon have become like the minotaur in order to provide for his submerged nature into the violent unconscious, cannibalizing the 14 Athenian men and women sent every year to appease the Minoan bowels. Or something like that.

Thus Theseus may be visualized as the self which always has a connection to both the Labyrinth, the Minotaur, the Feminine [this can be interpreted differently, but I'm just being lazy], and which must defeat the Schazophrenia which rots at the center of the centerless mind-labyrinth. Etc etc I'm tired and drinking so I'll end it at that.