Please give an example on how to view Medea in a psychoanalytic perspective.

Psychiatrists have identified a condition which they have
termed the Medea Complex. Several articles on the subject are accessible on the
internet, including those on the reference links below. An article in the
British Journal of Psychiatry titled "The Medea Complex: the
Mother's Homicidal Wishes to her Child” describes the condition in part as
follows:

1.     The situation in which the mother harbours
death wishes to her offspring, usually as a revenge against the father, is described and
named the Medea complex.

2.     It is shown that there is
considerable resistance against admitting these thoughts to the consciousness of the
mother or any other person, but that they are of general
occurrence.

The Medea complex is somewhat analogous to the
better-known Oedipus complex in that both involve unconscious death wishes. A mother who
is afflicted with the Medea complex typically projects her hatred for her children’s
father onto the children themselves. It is noteworthy that Medea in Euripides’ play has
two sons. It seems more likely that a mother would project hatred onto boys rather than
girls because boys would be far more likely to remind her of their father. However, a
mother harboring hatred for an unfaithful husband or lover might influence daughters to
share her generalized hatred of men in general and make it difficult for them to have
normal relations with any man. Such seems to be the case with Miss Havisham in Charles
Dickens' novel Great Expectations.

The
article in the British Journal of Psychiatry states a profound and
tragic truth in restrained scholarly prose. A mother would have “considerable resistance
against admitting” these death wishes against her own children, but such wishes “are of
general occurrence,” meaning that many mothers would like to murder their children
because of their hatred of the children’s father. Fortunately, not too many children are
actually murdered by their mothers, but a significant number of children suffer all
their lives from having been emotionally rejected by their mothers and from having been
psychologically or physically abused, or both.

A harrowing
memoir of child abuse by a mother is A Child Called “It” (1995) by
David James Pelzer.