Heracles’ Madness and War Neurosis

Heracles has been adored as one of the bravest mythical heroes all times and all places because it was thought that he protected his people and lands from invasion, plunder, or enslavement. However, I argue Heracles should be criticized as a war machine of violence and murder. War is homicide itself,which means humans kill humans, unlike other violent and sensual animals such as dogs, apes or pigs. It is ironically ambivalent to celebrate an excellent hero in homicide in this age of nuclear weapons. This irony leads to S. Freud’s ‘Death instinct’ or Malcolm Potts’s ‘war genes’. Unlike Freud, Malcolm Potts insists that humans’ war genes can be changed into peace genes because they were just remains of Stone Age. According to Apollodoros’ myth or Euripides’ tragedies, he was mad enough to kill his own sons and wife after he had murdered the king Lycos in Thebes. Though Rene Girard says that his madness was derived from contagion of violence and blood, I think that his madness came from horrible experiences of cruel wars as well as Hera’s maltreatment in his childhood. It will be demonstrated to be war neurosis, that is, PTSD(Posttraumatic Stress Disorder). In a different way from the modern media in which Heracles is being glorified as a purest macho and war machine, his old myths show the ambivalence of his violence and murder, and his daily misfortunes owing to his madness. In this sense, his myth is a kind of warning to the humans not to kill each other, or to stop wars.