Ego Defense Mechanisms in Aesop's Fables

Lee, Byung Wook

Abstract

Aesop was a famous fable and story-teller in ancient Greece, and his fables are still taught as moral lessons today. He is said to have lived as a slave in Samos around 550 B.C. Unfortunately, he met with a violent death at the hands of the inhabitants of Delphi, but the precise and/or accurate cause of his death remains unknown. Aesop's slave status in ancient Greece notwithstanding, he had a keen powers of observation, sensitivity and the linguistic and intellectual ability to convey what he knew in terms of pertinent social criticism. We surmise that this ability was developed from his hard life experience and fine-tuned by his intellect, but his moral sense seemed to have been very conservative. I would, in this regard, like to emphasize the many and various ego defense mechanisms incorporated into his famous fables. As a matter of course, Aesop knew nothing about the psychoanalytic concepts (including entities such as the unconscious and ego defense mechanisms), but we are able to empathize with the tales conveyed by his fables because many of the essential, underlying messages in his stories are every bit as applicable to life today as they were in ancient Greece. Many of Aesop's fables are so analogous to our present and often contradictory life experience, it sometimes seems as if each of his fables he neatly and correctly tweezed a thorn out of the finger of humanity. We have (anecdotally) confirm that human ego defense mechanisms have been in full operation without change for several thousands of years.