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dissonance': the ability to construct rational patterns which may in themselves seem orderly and logical but which do not correspond to the complexities of reality. The scientist, like the bureaucrat or the politician (or indeed any of us), may create a model to explain or replicate the workings of some phenomenon, but which is based on a failure to appreciate all the subtleties of what it involves. In trying to understand the world, ego-consciousness inevitably tends either to over-simplify or to over-complicate. The only remedy to this lies in the power of the intuitive faculty to see `the wider picture': what the model has missed out or failed to take account of. This is what was symbolised in Greek mythology by Theseus's need for Ariadne's thread to allow him to escape from the Labyrinth. In reality someone whose thinking function is strongly developed often has a poorly developed intuitive function. Hence the hyper-abundance in our world of flawed scientific models, mad bureaucracy, crackpot political schemes and other versions of the Labyrinth, all of which result from the thinking function becoming split off from intuition, feeling and a sense of the practical.

7. This is the two-part pattern to human life which is so imaginatively conveyed in The Magic Flute. In the first half of the story, we see young Tamino growing up under the guidance of his `mother figure; the Queen of the Night, representing the instinctive forces of Mother Nature. But then comes the central shift of emphasis where, to complete his maturing process and win union with Pamina, his anima, he must turn his back on unconscious instinct and submit to the equally benign guidance of Sarastro. This priestly `father figure, serving the goddess of wisdom, represents that which is needed for Tamino to complete the tasks of the `second half of life. To reach conscious Self-understanding he must develop the masculine strengths of reason, discipline and self-control which enable him in the end to reach full union with the anima and the Self. He thus achieves the purpose symbolised by the magical powers of the flute. The scenes where Tamino and Pamina undergo their final `ordeals; including the need to pass between the opposites of fire and water, are reminiscent of the Quest. We know that if they pass these tests they will reach the goal. At this point we see the forces of unconscious nature, represented by the Queen of the Night and Monostatos, being overthrown. Tamino has completed the transition from the state of unconsciousness, governed by instinct, in which he began the story, to his final state of fully-realised consciousness.

8. E.g., Odysseus, Aeneas, Christian in Pilgrim's Progress (even Babar in Babar and Father Christmas). As in Overcoming the Monster stories, but not the other plots, the central figure of a Quest is almost exclusively male, a hero rather than a heroine, because he represents the `masculinity' of consciousness which needs to find its ultimate fulfilment in union with the `feminine' unconscious.

9. Above it, determined by the Rule of Three, was the most familiar symbol in classical architecture: that triangular pediment of stone in which the two angles at each end of the base give rise to the third point above them, to make a perfect, transcendent whole.

1. This sketch was performed by its authors, Bill Alton, Del Close and Mina Kolb of the Second City revue company from Chicago, at the Establishment Club, London, in the autumn of 1962. An edited version was published in the magazine Private Eye, 14 December 1962.

2. The very fact that we use the terms `right' and `left' in this context is itself, of course, significant. Just as right-handedness is considered 'normal' in human beings, so right-sidedness is associated with the ruling order, being `right' rather than wrong, being on the `right' side of the law. Left-handedness is looked on as `abnormal' and the `left, as we have seen before, is associated with `below the line' attributes, as in the Russian na levo, `on the left'.

3. The archetypes underlying politics relate