When with her very next breath Iokaste counsels her husband not to be afraid of matrimony with his mother, the audience need hardly ponder whether her position has any merit, for while her psychology is so insightful that Freud built the field of psychology on it, this does not prevent it from entirely missing the point: she seems incapable of considering that she has married her son. Her science is impressive, but the insight it affords does not help either her son-cum-husband or herself to health and reason, for psychological insight cannot supplant prophetic truth. The problem is that prophecy is not a purely psychological problem; if it is not allowed to “bother” one enough to motivate a salubrious response, the god will insure that one’s life is filled with physical and emotional dis-ease. Oidipous ought indeed to be afraid of sharing his mother’s bed. Her refusal to take this worry seriously is all the more horrific because she is speaking both from the experience of which she is conscious and that of which she is unconscious. She is conscious of the fact that, faced by the possibility of raising a child who would slay her husband, she acquiesced in its murder, and having done so, felt that the matter was settled. She is not conscious of the fact that that son slew her husband. Thus, she scorns prophecy and the gods. Her scorn puts her at odds with herself, however, for having proven that the gods have no power, she has proven the needlessness of putting her infant child to death. That Oidipous now doubts his own conclusion that he need not concern himself with his fears of prophecy is a sign that his reason has not altogether failed. After all, he has just now sought and received a prophecy that appears to be leading him to Laios’ killer and so to purging Thebes of its pollution. His error is not having given too much weight to prophecy, but rather too little and too inconsistently. [Md] [Mpea] [Mip]