Icarus complex

The Icarus complex is a term in psychoanalysis and personality theory first used by Henry A. Murray^[1] to describe a particular type of over-ambitious character.

Psychosynthesis has applied it to those in whom spiritual ambition exceeds their personality limits, leading to a backlash.^[2]

Characteristics

It is seen in a personality type that contains many or all of the following attributes:^[1]

• cynosural narcissism (attention-seeking or admiration-seeking narcissistic behaviors)

• ascensionism (the notion that the future is not dictated by the past or present, and no destination or goal is unreachable) combined with an anticipation of falling (a foreboding sense of a future "crash and burn")

• Cathexis of fire (an emotional drawing towards, or fascination with, fire)

• possible enuresis (bedwetting) or incontinence in childhood, linked to an abundance of water imagery.

Ancillary consequences of this personality complex are:

• a craving for immortality (reascension)

• a conception of woman as an object to be used for narcissistic gains (sex as Narcissistic supply)^[1]
• Oedipal defiance.^[3]
• Perpetual adolescence.^[4]

Criticism

Doubt however has been expressed as to the therapeutic value of the diagnosis of Icarus complex.^[5]

See also

• Complex (psychology)
• Hubris
• Marlowe
• Michael Ayrton
• Scott Fitzgerald

References

1. Sperber, Michael A. "Albert Camus: Camus' the Fall: The Icarus Complex" American Imago (1969), 26:269-280.
2. P. Ferrucci, What We May Be (1990) p. 160-1
3. R. Hus, The Mindscapes of Art (1986) p. 196
4. E. A. Kreuter, Victim Vulnerability (2008) p. 38-9
5. C. Martindale, Ovid Renewed (1990) p. 53

Further reading

• Daniel Ogilivie, 'The Icarus Complex' Psychology Today (Dec 1968) 31ff