The Cassandra metaphor (variously labeled the Cassandra "syndrome", "complex", "phenomenon", "predicament", "dilemma", "curse") relates to a person whose valid warnings or concerns are disbelieved by others.
The term originates in Greek mythology. Cassandra was a daughter of Priam, the King of Troy. Struck by her beauty, Apollo provided her with the gift of prophecy—either on the condition that she agree to accept his romantic advances, or without prior agreement from Cassandra, depending on the source—but when Cassandra refused Apollo's romantic advances, he placed a curse on her, ensuring that nobody would believe her warnings. Cassandra was left with the knowledge of future events but could neither alter these events nor convince others of the validity of her predictions.
People have applied the metaphor in a variety of contexts, such as psychology, environmentalism, politics, science, cinema, the corporate world, and philosophy; it has been in circulation since at least 1914, when Charles Oman used it in his book A History of the Peninsular War , Volume 5, published in 1914. "both of them agreed to treat the Cassandra-like prophecies which Thiebault kept sending from Salamanca as 'wild and whirling words.'" (The Oxford English Dictionary records use of "Cassandra like" from 1670 and of "Cassandra-like" from 1863. [1] ) Later, in 1949, French philosopher Gaston Bachelard coined the term "Cassandra Complex" to refer to a belief that things could be known in advance. [2]
The Cassandra metaphor is applied by some psychologists to individuals who experience physical and emotional suffering as a result of distressing personal perceptions, and who are disbelieved when they attempt to share the cause of their suffering with others.
In 1963, psychoanalyst Melanie Klein provided an interpretation of Cassandra as representing the human moral conscience whose main task is to issue warnings. Cassandra as moral conscience, "predicts ill to come and warns that punishment will follow and grief arise." [3] Cassandra's need to point out moral infringements and subsequent social consequences is driven by what Klein calls "the destructive influences of the cruel super-ego," which is represented in the Greek myth by the god Apollo, Cassandra's overlord and persecutor. [4] Klein's use of the metaphor centers on the moral nature of certain predictions, which tends to evoke in others "a refusal to believe what at the same time they know to be true, and expresses the universal tendency toward denial, [with] denial being a potent defence against persecutory anxiety and guilt." [3]
In a 1988 study, Jungian analyst Laurie Layton Schapira explored what she called the "Cassandra complex" in the lives of two of her analysands. [5]
Based on clinical experience, she delineates three factors constituting the Cassandra complex:
Layton Schapira views the Cassandra complex as resulting from a dysfunctional relationship with what she calls the "Apollo archetype", an archetype referring to any individual's or culture's pattern that is dedicated to, yet bound by, order, reason, intellect, truth, and clarity that disavows itself of anything occult or irrational. [6] The intellectual specialization of this archetype creates emotional distance and can predispose relationships to a lack of emotional reciprocity and consequent dysfunctions. [5] She further states that a "Cassandra woman" is very prone to hysteria because she "feels attacked not only from the outside world but also from within, especially from the body in the form of somatic, often gynaecological, complaints." [7]
Addressing the metaphorical application of the Greek Cassandra myth, Layton Schapira states that:
What the Cassandra woman sees is something dark and painful that may not be apparent on the surface of things or that objective facts do not corroborate. She may envision a negative or unexpected outcome; or something which would be difficult to deal with; or a truth which others, especially authority figures, would not accept. In her frightened, ego-less state, the Cassandra woman may blurt out what she sees, perhaps with the unconscious hope that others might be able to make some sense of it. But to them her words sound meaningless, disconnected and blown out of all proportion. [7]
In 1989, Jean Shinoda Bolen, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, published an essay on the god Apollo [8] in which she detailed a psychological profile of the "Cassandra woman" whom she suggested referred to someone suffering—as happened in the mythological relationship between Cassandra and Apollo—a dysfunctional relationship with an "Apollo man." Bolen added that the Cassandra woman may exhibit "hysterical" overtones, and may be disbelieved when attempting to share what she knows. [9]
According to Bolen, the archetypes of Cassandra and Apollo are not gender-specific. She states that "women often find that a particular [male] god exists in them as well, just as I found that when I spoke about goddesses men could identify a part of themselves with a specific goddess. Gods and goddesses represent different qualities in the human psyche. The pantheon of Greek deities together, male and female, exist as archetypes in us all ... There are gods and goddesses in every person." [10]
"As an archetype, Apollo personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony, and prefers to look at the surface rather than at what underlies appearances. The Apollo archetype favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, objective assessment over subjective intuition." [11]
Of what she describes as the negative Apollonic influence, Dr. Bolen writes:
Individuals who resemble Apollo have difficulties that are related to emotional distance, such as communication problems, and the inability to be intimate ... Rapport with another person is hard for the Apollo man. He prefers to access (or judge) the situation or the person from a distance, not knowing that he must "get close up"—be vulnerable and empathic—in order to truly know someone else ... But if the woman wants a deeper, more personal relationship, then there are difficulties ... she may become increasingly irrational or hysterical. [9]
Bolen suggests that a Cassandra woman (or man) may become increasingly hysterical and irrational when in a dysfunctional relationship with a negative Apollo, and may experience others' disbelief when describing her experiences. [9]
Foreseeing potential future directions for a corporation or company is sometimes called "visioning", [12] yet achieving a clear, shared vision in an organization is often difficult due to a lack of commitment to the new vision by some individuals in the organization, because it does not match reality as they see it. Those who support the new vision are termed "Cassandras"—able to see what is going to happen, but not believed. [12] Sometimes the name Cassandra is applied to those who can predict rises, falls, and particularly crashes on the global stock market, as happened with Warren Buffett, who repeatedly warned that the 1990s stock market surge was a bubble, attracting to him the title of the "Wall Street Cassandra". [13] Andy Grove, in his book Only the Paranoid Survive, reminds the reader of the Helpful Cassandras that sense the winds of change before others and are critical to managing through Strategic Inflection Points. [14] [15]
Many environmentalists have predicted looming environmental catastrophes including climate change, rise in sea levels, irreversible pollution, and an impending collapse of ecosystems, including those of rainforests and ocean reefs. [16] Individuals sometimes acquire the label of 'Cassandras', whose warnings of impending environmental disaster are disbelieved or mocked. [16] Environmentalist Alan Atkisson wrote in 1999 that to understand that humanity is on a collision course with the laws of nature is to be stuck in what he calls the 'Cassandra dilemma' in which a person can see the most likely outcome of current trends and can warn people about what is happening, but the vast majority cannot, or will not respond, and later if catastrophe occurs, they may even blame the person, as if their prediction set the disaster in motion. [17] Occasionally there may be a "successful" alert, though the succession of books, campaigns, organizations, and personalities that we think of as the environmental movement has more generally fallen toward the opposite side of this dilemma: a failure to "get through" to the people and avert disaster. In the words of Atkisson: "too often we watch helplessly, as Cassandra did, while the soldiers emerge from the Trojan horse just as foreseen and wreak their predicted havoc. Worse, Cassandra's dilemma has seemed to grow more inescapable even as the chorus of Cassandras has grown larger." [18]
There are examples of the Cassandra metaphor being applied in the contexts of medical science, [19] [20] the media, [21] to feminist perspectives on reality, [22] [23] and in politics. [24] There are also examples of the metaphor being used in popular music lyrics, such as the 1982 ABBA song "Cassandra", [25] [26] Emmy the Great's "Cassandra", Florence and the Machine's "Cassandra", and Star One's "Cassandra Complex". The five-part The Mars Volta song "Cassandra Gemini" may reference this syndrome, [27] as well as the film 12 Monkeys or in Dead and Divine's "Cassandra Syndrome". In 2024, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift recorded a song called “Cassandra” to her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department , where she uses the metaphor stating that no one believed her when she was telling the truth and asking, probably the same people, if they believed in her after they “set her life in flames”.
Dean Phillips has been described as the "modern Cassandra of American politics" due to his warnings about President Joe Biden's ability to win the 2024 United States presidential election and his campaign being widely ignored. After Biden withdrew from the race, he remarked "vindication has never felt so unfulfilling." [28]
Apollo is one of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, music and dance, truth and prophecy, healing and diseases, the Sun and light, poetry, and more. One of the most important and complex of the Greek gods, he is the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt. He is considered to be the most beautiful god and is represented as the ideal of the kouros. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.
Cassandra or Kassandra in Greek mythology was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate a person whose accurate prophecies, generally of impending disaster, are not believed.
The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 12th or 13th century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid.
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of at least one deity. In common parlance, or when contrasted with deism, the term often describes the philosophical conception of God that is found in classical theism—or the conception found in monotheism—or gods found in polytheistic religions—or a belief in God or gods without the rejection of revelation, as is characteristic of deism.
In Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo. Tiresias participated fully in seven generations in Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus himself.
Analytical psychology is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" of the psyche. It was designed to distinguish it from Freud's psychoanalytic theories as their seven-year collaboration on psychoanalysis was drawing to an end between 1912 and 1913. The evolution of his science is contained in his monumental opus, the Collected Works, written over sixty years of his lifetime.
The Goddess movement is a revivalistic Neopagan religious movement which includes spiritual beliefs and practices that emerged primarily in the United States in the late 1960s and predominantly in the Western world during the 1970s. The movement grew as a reaction both against Abrahamic religions, which exclusively have gods who are referred to using masculine grammatical articles and pronouns, and secularism. It revolves around Goddess worship and the veneration for the divine feminine, and may include a focus on women or on one or more understandings of gender or femininity.
James Hillman was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut.
The anima and animus are a syzygy of dualistic, Jungian archetypes among the array of other animistic parts within the Self in Jungian psychology, described in analytical psychology and archetypal psychology, under the umbrella of transpersonal psychology. The Jungian parts of the Self are a priori part of the infinite set of archetypes within the collective unconscious. Modern Jungian clinical theory under the analytical/archetypal-psych framework considers a syzygy-without-its-partner to be like yin without yang: countertransference reveals that logos and/or eros are in need of repair through a psychopomp, mediating the identified patient's Self; this theoretical model is similar to positive psychology's understanding of a well-tuned personality through something like a Goldilocks principle.
Clytemnestra, in Greek mythology, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, and the half-sister of Helen of Troy. In Aeschylus' Oresteia, she murders Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess Cassandra, whom Agamemnon had taken as a war prize following the sack of Troy; however, in Homer's Odyssey, her role in Agamemnon's death is unclear and her character is significantly more subdued.
Hercules is a fictional Olympian god in the DC Universe based on the Greek demigod and hero of the same name.
The idea of polytheistic myth as having psychological value is one theorem of archetypal psychology as defined by James Hillman, and explored in current Jungian mythology literature. According to proponents of this theory, polytheistic myths can provide psychological insight.
Father complex in psychology is a complex—a group of unconscious associations, or strong unconscious impulses—which specifically pertains to the image or archetype of the father. These impulses may be either positive or negative.
Cassandra is a 1983 novel by the German author Christa Wolf. It has since been translated into a number of languages.
The Apollo archetype personifies the aspect of the personality that wants clear definitions, is drawn to master a skill, values order and harmony. The Apollo archetype favors thinking over feeling, distance over closeness, objective assessment over subjective intuition.
In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex refers to a son's sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father, first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. A daughter's attitude of desire for her father and hostility toward her mother is referred to as the feminine Oedipus complex. The general concept was considered by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), although the term itself was introduced in his paper A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men (1910).
Jean Shinoda Bolen is an American psychiatrist, Jungian analyst and author. She is of Japanese descent. A Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, she is an emeritus clinical professor of psychiatry at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, UCSF Medical Center and member of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She is the author of thirteen books in over one hundred foreign editions. She was an NGO delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (2002-2018).
Vision in White is the first book of the Bride Quartet series of romance novels, written by Nora Roberts. It spent two weeks atop the New York Times Bestseller List and reached number 3 on the USA Today bestseller list, marking the first time one of Roberts' books had become a bestseller in trade paperback format. A downloadable casual-play computer game based on the book was introduced by I-Play in 2010.
Starcrossed is a fantasy paranormal romance novel by American author Josephine Angelini. The story follows a girl named Helen Hamilton, who is gradually revealed to be a modern-day Helen of Troy. After discovering her heritage, Helen learns that a union with the boy she loves may trigger a new Trojan War. The novel was followed by the sequels Dreamless and Goddess, and received praise from critics and fantasy authors amidst its release.
The Firebrand is a 1987 historical fantasy novel by American author Marion Zimmer Bradley. Set in the ancient city of Troy, the novel is a retelling of Homer's epic poem the Iliad. The Firebrand is written from the point of view of Kassandra, the prophet daughter of King Priam of Troy, and also features other prominent characters from Greek mythology. As in the Iliad, Kassandra foresees catastrophe for her city, but few pay heed to her warnings. In Bradley's story, Kassandra is presented as a strong and insightful woman rather than as a sufferer of insanity.
They have to bring you bad news and be Cassandras against the senior management, against the fear of management of repercussions.