What is tragic does not inhere in the external events, but rather in the internal meaning with which events are imbued and interpreted. 17) It is a mode of experience, a subjective shaping and way of organizing the data of existence.

Unamuno (1912) presented tragedy as a 'sense of life.' He termed it a pre-philosophy, only 'more or less formulated, more or less conscious.not so much flow from ideas as determin them.' ( p. In doing so, I shall extensively rely on the formulation of the tragic sense of life developed by Richard Sewall, whose teachings on the subject deeply influenced my own thinking, as well as so many others in the Yale University community. In this paper, I shall examine the extent to which the tragic sense of life is essentially related to the process and goals of psychoanalysis. 35) and, ultimately, that it is the vision that is most closely linked to psychoanalysis. While he also explored other modes of vision, he concluded that, 'of all the perspectives on human affairs, the tragic is by far the most remorselessly searching deeply involved' ( p. Roy Schafer (1976), in his book, A New Language for Psychoanalysis, noted the special relevance of the tragic vision to the psychoanalytic. It has long been apparent that this new understanding of tragedy has important implications for our understanding of psychoanalysis. It is reflected in the very titles of the works that have developed this particular viewpoint: Unamuno's The Tragic Sense of Life, Muller's The Spirit of Tragedy, and Sewall's The Vision of Tragedy. This new approach is based on a view of tragedy as a mode of experience, a particular way of viewing life. In recent years, a phenomenological approach to the understanding of tragedy has developed that has replaced more formalistic and stylistic definitions, in vogue since the time of ancient Greece. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFEĪnd as regards its truth, the real truth, that which is independent of ourselves, beyond reach of our logic and of hearts- of this truth who knows aught?'

Unamuno tragic sense of life