Psych Majors

We start reading the story of Phaeton, the son of Apollo, the god of the sun, by hearing him speaking with a psychologist. I myself wondered if therapists even existed at that point in history, but that's beside the point. So what screwed him up so much that he needed a shrink? You might wonder. Oh, he merely lit fire to the Earth, literally, and 'completely and utterly destroyed' himself. It was 'O-V-E-R' for him. And our good friend the therapist links it all back to premature parental neglect. Let's retrace the story:

Phaeton's mother has a one night stand with Apollo, the sun, and out comes Phaeton. Apollo can't be with his son, for obvious duty-related reasons and so Phaeton grows up without a father. Nobody believes him that his dad is the god Apollo so one day he decides to go to him and prove it.
After a hard journey he gets to his father temple, ‘this passage is never easy’ says the therapist, referring to reforming the bond between estranged father and son. Apollo feels terrible for his son and offers him a gift, anything he wishes for. And what else should our rash and youthful youth want, other than to drive his father’s carriage and light up the sky? After all, ‘it’s [his] turn’.
Although Apollo knows it can have horrible consequences, ‘[he] promised’, and so he reluctantly hands over the keys. All the way that Phaeton flies, Apollo is yelling advice, ‘Don’t fly too high, nor too low, stay in the tracks, go slantwise.’
Of course Phaeton ignores him, and he quickly loses control of the reins and of the carriage, it was ‘as if no one was driving’. We know what happened then: he set the earth on fire and fell from the sky.

I think that the fact that this story is played by a young, arrogant boy, who probably had more attention than normal because of his father not being present, has an important meaning. It shows the irrationality of the favor he asks of Apollo, the feeling of superiority, which was really just immaturity, which makes him think he can do his father’s job as well, or better, than him. It is how many teenagers feel, or at least how other people portray them, that they are better than everyone else, that they can do anything that is given to them, and that they have more rights than others to do what they want.

The story also shows that a lot of the times, we don’t know what our actions will lead to, how grave the consequences might be. In this case, Phaeton is seeking proof that his father is the sun, which by the way I find kind of selfish, and decides to do something that seems cool to him, never realizing that his mistake could end as an end to our world.

The story of Phaeton captures perfectly what is sometimes called ‘teenage rebellion’, but one that brought grave consequences to the whole world.


The story of Eros and Psyche tells about Eros, known as Cupid, son of Aphrodite, and his wife Psyche. Theirs was a strange marriage, for they have never seen each other and never should. One night she decides to go see him while he is asleep, for she believes that he is a monster, a belief triggered by ‘her jealous sisters’. While she is spying on him, Eros wakes up and sees her doing so. Aphrodite decides to punish Psyche by sending on impossible and terrifying tasks, but out of her love for Eros, Psyche she fulfilled everything Aphrodite threw at her. In the end, Psyche was turned immortal by Zeus and she and Eros stayed happily married forever.

I think this story shows us the complexity of a human personality, and it shows both good and bad qualities of it. At first we see the impatience and mistrust from Psyche towards her husband whom she supposedly knows, trusts, and loves. She lets herself be influenced by other people into believing things for herself, and that is how she gets into the big mess in the first place. However, we also see her perseverance at making things right. This shows us how strong the bond of love is, and how she realized her mistakes and was willing to go to extreme measures to make them up. And we can see that all her efforts paid off, they both end up getting their Happily Ever After.