Argue that Medea exhibits symptoms of a person suffering from bipolar disorder - Essay Example

tica’ to win Jason’s love, and in ‘Medea’ when Jason leaves her to remarry; she turns violent and kills her own children to take revenge on Jason. This act of killing her own children has left so deep an impact on human psychology that filicide is referred to as ‘Medea syndrome’. However in a modern context if we take a closer look at the character of Medea we will find that in her deep anguish, melancholy and her abnormal love for Jason she epitomized all the symptoms of the medical condition that we now know as ‘bipolar syndrome’.

Thus Medea is a character that is not to be hated and prototyped as anti-social and an outcast, but it is much to be pitied upon, in her loneliness and in her lovesick melancholia that wreaked havoc on her mind. This article will explore the traits and symptoms of bipolar disorder and relate it with the extreme behavior that Medea exhibited, as portrayed by Euripides in his play ‘Medea’. What is bipolar disorder? Bipolar disorder is a psychological condition where there are great mood fluctuations, from being happy in one moment, to becoming extremely depressed in the very next minute.

So this is also a sort of mood disorder. As Peacock tells us “people who have bipolar disorder experience extreme changes in mood, energy and behavior. They alternate, or switch, between two opposite emotions…their mood repeatedly alternates from extremely happy, or high, to sad and hopeless….people with bipolar disorder cannot control their mood changes” (Peacock, 5). People with bipolar disorder swing from, being excessively happy which is known as the manic phase, to being greatly depressed.

During the manic phase the patient is restless, full of energy, excited and also irritable. During the depression phase, they have a constant feeling of hopelessness and unhappiness which makes them dull and listless. So people with bipolar disorder are on an emotional roller coaster ride perpetually, either they are soaring high above