Marita Digney is a Jungian analyst practicing in Center City, Pennsylvania. In this, the first of a series of interviews with the ET, Marita shares her observations on the relationship between the Hercules myth and the American collective unconscious.

In her essay, "The Hercules Complex", soon to be published by Open Court Books in "Myths and Images of Contemporary Culture", she considers the relationship of the Hercules myth to our culture's obsession with the OJ Simpson trial. Such collective fixation reveals the existence of an underlying archetypal pattern which in turn explains our fascination with the life and death drama of OJ and Nicole Brown Simpson. ED.

The connection between OJ Simpson and Hercules was not obvious to me at first. The recognition came very slowly because as an analyst I was absolutely amazed at the public's insatiable thirst for information on every aspect of the Simpson trial. As far as I was concerned, this shared obsession revealed far more about the American psyche than it did about the people and events related to the trial.

The whole phenomena reflected elements deeply rooted in the human psyche. It is an all too familiar tale of violence rooted in the distorted family system, revealed in the lives of OJ and Nicole Simpson. This pattern, which I call the Hercules Complex, is as contemporary as the Simpson trial and as ancient as the mythological figure of Hercules himself.

As details of his personal life were documented, OJ became the portrait of a man who had indeed gained the whole world, only to lose his own soul. While the cameras focused on his physical presence, we actually saw reflected back to us our own unconscious beliefs and feelings. Some saw a man who was guilty of murder. Others saw a man who was a victim of the system. For all of our obsessing, the vision of OJ as a brutal murderer or wrongly accused, arthritic sports hero remains in the eye of the beholder. The drama contained in "The Trial of the Century" provided an abundance of archetypal symbols which stirred the imaginations and the emotions, not the least of which was the growing connection to Hercules and the myth of the tragic hero.

The events surrounding the trial provided us with a microcosm of the macrocosm which surrounds us in our daily life. That is what is so compelling about this story. It validates what we already know to be true. When mens' needs dominate women, the family and the culture are radically imbued with violence.

The fact that Hercules, who never came to terms with his own violent nature, was ultimately deified, suggests a brutal, misogynist, shadow side to the patriarchal gods of Olympus. In the same way, OJ Simpson, sports "hero", reveals a dark side of American culture. Whether one believes him guilty or innocent of the murders, there is no doubt about his violence toward his wife. Family systems based upon male privilege and the limitation of women institutionalize a violence which is passed like a curse through generations.

It is time for our entire culture to awaken from the long nightmare of the Simpson trial. We must let this dream speak to our waking consciousness now before the obsession subsides. The message is that it is time to heal the blindness in the wider culture which created the un-mothered hero, the right of male privilege and the glorification of violence.

To the extent that a society is based on the premises of patriarchy, then Hercules will continue to be born anew in the human psyche. One who would consult the Oracle of Delphi today might learn that we now enter a post-patriarchal era when both men and women experience what Hercules could only long for - the experience of power spent in the service of love and conscious development for all.

The events surrounding the trial provided us with a microcosm of the macrocosm which surrounds us in our daily life. That is what is so compelling about this story. It validates what we already know to be true. When mens' needs dominate women, the family and the culture are radically imbued with violence.