Prometeo, o il Frankenstein antico

Victor Frankenstein is the mad scientist archetype, a man drawn by the hubris of knowledge, or a ‘Modern Prometheus’, as stated in the subtitle of Mary Shelley’s novel. Frankenstein’s arrogance mirrors the contemporary psychological way of treating rationality as an all powerful tool, ignoring the unconscious drives of the mind. The goal of this paper is to inquire what Jung calls ‘inflation’, or the rationality’s prevarication over the irrational side of the psyche. As Nietzsche states, the consciousness’s arrogance (the main fault of Socrates) marks the beginning of the Western society’s decadence. As Jung states in the Red Book, the only way to deal with the unconscious’s creative and destructive drives is to acknowledge our inner dark half, our ‘Self ’. By refusing his own monster (or his psychological doppelganger), the Modern Prometheus marks his doom.