father substitution. The horse that also had the same name with her lover, Macdarragh, supposed to be her last hope to achieve her happiness, however it must
die in the sea. She thought she could not get her happiness, so she preferred to end her life.
3. Centaur Figurine as One of Molleen’s Collective Unconscious
At the death of a boy named Macdarragh, there was something that connected Molleen with him as her lover. It was a little brass centaur figurine. The figurine
became part of symbolic journey of Molleen’s life that could explain why she did the suicide. The figurine could explain the mythologically reason based on the inherited
latent memory from the ancestor, not psychologically. If we look at the myth, centaur was part of Greek mythology that is a race of
creatures composed of part human and part horse. Many writers treated them as liminal beings, caught between the two natures, embodied in contrasted myths, and as
the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths, or conversely as teachers, like Chiron. The centaur is a symbol of conflict between civilization and
barbarism or battle between power and mildness. For a boy named Macdarragh, this creature represented him because in one
side, although he is a man but he could not act like a man physically because he was too weak because of his illness. But in the other side, he got the power to enchant
every woman who looked at him. That gift made all man in the island felt jealous toward him.
The men said he was too soft, that he thought himself a woman. But they were wrong about him. He possessed a manly grace not to be denied, a strong
sexual undercurrent. Even one of the older island women, Kate Beg, in her fifties, pragmatic and careworn, took to wandering after him. And so the men
hated him more because the women had gone dreamy since he’d come, pining for some unlived desire in themselves. McBride 2005, 27
While for Molleen, this creature represented the power to find the substitution
of her Self archetype but the sorrow detained her for getting it. The substitution could stabilize Molleen’s psyche so she could find herself again as a complete person and
by having it, it would make her to get her happiness in life, but the suffering she had, made her believe that she could not get her happiness, even though she already had a
husband but that made her even worst. In Greek mythology, there are also female centaurs called Kentaurides. There
is a centauress named Hylonome who committed suicide by casting herself upon his spear when her lover Cyllarus was killed in the war with the Lapiths.
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This myth also projected Molleen’s life in the future because she committed suicide by jumping to
the sea where her horse named Macdarragh died in the same place. The myth was inherited in Molleen’s latent memory and became her content
of collective unconscious. The figurine had affected her life even in her marriage, because she thought it was part of her memory and in the same time, it became part of
her psyche that could not be separated from her unconsciousness. This figurine also brought her to unhappy marriage as the writer had mentioned earlier. Finally it led her
to commit suicide just like the end of the myth.
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http:en.wikipedia.orgwikicentaur
Mythologically this is one reason why she did that. But psychologically, the writer will explain it later in the last part of this chapter.
4. The Separation with the Self Archetype
