Violence and the Sacred

Like all biased pronouncements, Freud's strictures on Greek tragedy ultimately turn against the author. Ultimately it is Freud himself who appears guilty of "refined hypocrisy." And the modern critic in his concerted effort to undermine the structure of all religious, moral, and cultural distinctions ultimately brings these distinctions crashing down on his own head. He sets himself up as the prophet of new insights and new ideas, as the sole posessor of an infallible system of analysis - and finds himself condemned to recapitulate al the age-old distinctions of difference: Tiresias redivivus!

--Rene Girard, Violence & The Sacred