The Damon Complex

A statue of Saint Dymphna in the Netherlands. Note the chained demon at her feet.

In the seventh century, in what is now County Tyrone, Ireland, a small kingdom named Oriel was ruled by a king named Damon. Himself a pagan, Damon had a beautiful Christian wife, and together they had an equally beautiful daughter, the princess Dymphna.

When she was only fourteen, Dymphna’s mother died. King Damon decided that he would take his daughter as his new wife. Dymphna, horrified, fled with her confessor Father Gerebernus, two servants, and the court jester. They ended up in the town of Gheel, near Antwerp in Belgium. There, having taken with them a fair amount of the king’s treasure, Dymphna and Gerebernus set up a local hospice and developed a reputation for their devoutnesss and charity. Unfortunately, however, their spending left a trail of distinctive Irish gold coins that Dymphna’s father was eventually able to follow. He showed up one day with his military retinue, again demanded marriage, and was again refused. So he beheaded his daughter on the spot, as well as the venerable Gerebernus. She was fifteen years old.

Over the many years since, Saint Dymphna has been widely venerated as the undisputed patron saint of the mentally ill. She is known and honoured not just in the Catholic West, but even in the Orthodox countries.

A Saint Dymphna medal.

Why? It is not immediately obvious that Dymphna’s story, whether historical or legendary, has anything in particular to do with mental illness. Certainly, there is no hint anywhere that Dymphna herself experienced anything we would identify as mental illness. Other popular saints have—one thinks immediately, for example, of Saint Christina the Astonishing.

Often, the association is explained by suggesting that her father was mentally ill—so that she was a victim of mental illness.

But this—like the similar suggestion that Hitler was mad--is nonsense. In the real world, people do not follow a leader for very long once they believe he has gone mad. There are, it is true, stories of early Roman emperors who behaved bizarrely yet retained the throne for short periods; but these are quite likely coloured by later propagandists. In times for which we have good sources, going mad on the throne immediately ends one’s authority. All government depends to some extent on the consent of the governed to at least that extent. When George III of England went mad, a regent was appointed. When Charles VI of France went mad, effective power passed to two princes of the blood. When King Ludwig II of Bavaria went mad, he was deposed. 

A Medieval image of Dypmhna's martyrdom. Note the chained demon again.

King Damon remained king. Indeed, the story makes clear that he needed to doggedly pursue his purportedly mad plan for some time, and enlist many agents, in order to make it succeed. This demonstrates plainly that his contemporaries did not think he was insane. Evil, yes; mad, no. Moreover, it is a cruel slander against the insane to suppose that the two are similar.

Strikingly, however, the story of Saint Dymphna repeats all the essential features of the real Sophoclean legend of Oedipus. Dymphna is Oedipus. Damon seeks to kill her just as Laius and Jocasta seek to kill their son. Damon seeks to mate with her just as Jocasta mates with Oedipus.

Whether the Dymphna story is historical or invented to fit, it surely shows some ancient wisdom that an experience comparable to this is the standard source of “mental illness.” Having experienced an abusive childhood to the logical extreme of incest and murder, Dymphna was perfectly situated to identify with and help the mentally ill.

It shows how close Freud really was with the Oedipus complex—if only he had not reversed the motives, parent to child.

To be clear, Damon, like Laius, was a type of the abusive parent. This abuse can go two ways, and the Dymphna story shows both: it can seek to harm the child, to scapegoat him or her; or it can seek to assimilate the child, to see him or her as a mere possession, a trophy child. The physical expression or objective correlative of the former is murder; the physical expression or objective correlative of the latter is incest.

A votive card showing Dymphna with the sword that beheaded her.

Freud, being hopelessly literal minded, rejected the true significance of the Oedipus legend because he could not accept that so many children were really being sexually molested. They probably weren’t, and aren’t. But he did not understand that incest and murder in dreams or childhood memories could be symbols for a spiritual and emotional rather than a physical experience.

For our part, we would do better, and matters would be clearer, if we understood mental illness as most commonly developing not from an Oedipus complex, nor even from a Laius complex, but from a Damon complex—the story of Saint Dymphna should be our guide.

And, in that respect, the two companions who helped her escape from her father are worth notice: the old priest, Saint Gerebernus, and the court jester. Assuming this detail is fictional, these may show the two great refuges of those in abusive situations, proposed cures for “mental illness”: religion, and art.

Saint Dymphna on a Belgian stamp.