The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [421]
Thus do we see the emergence of that familiar `dark inversion' whereby, in the name of creating the ideal state, bringing justice and liberty for society's dispossessed, a totalitarian new order emerges, much more ruthless and oppressive than that which it has replaced. What has happened is that the forces below the line, consciously motivated by the feminine values, have become unconsciously possessed by a dark version of precisely that masculine drive to power and control they so resent in those above the line. And at this point we see how the archetype which has really taken over is that of Tragedy. We see just why any revolutionary dream inevitably becomes self-defeating. Indeed it is here in the archetype of Tragedy that we can at last begin to unravel the true relationship between the unconscious patterns which shape stories and those which shape human behaviour in real life.
The fantasy cycle in history
It is no accident that so many of the world's best-known fictional tragedies were originally inspired by historical events, or by events which actually occurred in real life: Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Richard III, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir, the film Bonnie and Clyde, to name but a few. The reason why these episodes translated so neatly into fictional form was that the way they unfolded in real life (or at least as they were presented by historians) so closely followed the pattern of the tragic archetype. And the reason they did so was that this five-stage tragic cycle is not just an arbitrary construct of the human imagination. It is a pattern we see constantly being acted out in the world around us, because it is the pattern of what may follow whenever people, whether individually or collectively, are drawn to embark on a course of action based on ego-centred fantasy.
Exactly as in any fictional version, this is likely in some way to be based either on a desire for power (or money, a version of the same thing), or on sexuality. It may involve the planning of a crime or the start of an illicit love affair. It may be any scheme which involves deceiving others or any kind of reckless gamble. There will invariably be some form of Anticipation Stage when those possessed by the power of fantasy are looking for a Focus. When they find it, they commit the act which launches them irretrievably on their dark course. For a while, because they have taken the initiative or because what they are up to remains undetected, all seems to go well (Dream Stage). They seem to be getting away with it. But because what they are acting out is ultimately based on defying their surrounding framework of reality, they begin to run into difficulties. Other people and events begin to constellate against them (Frustration Stage). In an increasingly desperate attempt to keep the fantasy in being they push on, committing further dark acts, or attempting to cover up what they have done, as reality closes in on them (Nightmare Stage). Finally comes that moment when the fantasy collides with reality, bringing about their downfall or destruction.
Looking at history, we see how this cycle repeats itself again and again. We may see it in what happens to individual politicians, as when in 1972 President Nixon connived in the burglary of his opponents' headquarters at the Watergate. What eventually forced him two years later to become the first American President in history to resign from office was not so much this original `dark act' but the way he became increasingly caught out by his efforts to deny and to hide his involvement in what had happened. Repeatedly in the history