In 2014, Robert Tyminski, wrote "The Medea Complex- Myth and Modern Manifestation," for the Jung Journal
Tyminski's argument, and one that I tend to agree with, is that the Medea Complex is a intricate concept and one that is difficult to reconcile within our culture.
While Tyminski focuses on maternal "murder," I suggest that the complex extends to social parameters as well: A mother who sacrifices her children's development and emotional wellbeing for her own agenda. By extending that definition, Medea is a more common monster than perhaps we have realized. My analysis and presentation of this phenomenon is focused on the genre of drama both in the theatre and television series. In this way, I will show how the Medea Complex acts as the pinnacle unforgivable social disruption. Because of this, very little survives and if it does it is severely damaged and incapable of existing within the mother's sphere. The mother becomes "radioactive" where nothing can flourish, survive or develop within her proximity. She destroys what she loves. A contradictory, repulsive existence. There is nothing more dangerous than a mother that "eats" her own young only because there is nothing that will stop her. It is this unstoppability that makes her both terrifying and fascinating.
It is this binary between our deepest fears and our darkest fascination being realized, that has provided such a fertile inspiration on this topic in the realm of art. Though there have been numerous paintings and prose depictions of these fatal mothers, drama and television provide a particularly vivd location for this maternal archetype to play out. One, because the original Medea came to us via the stage in Euripedes Greek play, but also that things that transgress social boundaries seem to impact us most through a social experience. An depiction of these stories in the arenas of public, social performance, tap into the notiona that this topic is for all audiences: literatre, illiterate, cultured, educated and those who are neither. This is a topic that transcends, so the theater in its many formations is the ideal site for these narrations. And it is through this social experience that it creates a "chorus," much like the ones the Greeks used, to respond to what is happening. This chorus can be the communal moment of the audience as it responds to a performance of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler or Facebook posts regarding the most recent actions of "ma mere fatale," Gemma Teller from Kurt Sutters series, Sons of Anarchy. Regardless, in a world where we avoid speaking that of which we are most afraid, articulating the unspeakable should remove the threat. The dilemma is, and as I think this dramatic history shows, it never gets less frightening. Mothers who destroy their children is the ultimate act against nature. It is the thing that escapes our rationalization, defies our logic and destroys our peace...and from which we can't seem to avert our gaze.