Icarus complex Icarus complex The Icarus complex is a term in psychoanalysis and personality theory first used by Henry A. Murray to describe a particular type of over-ambitious character. Psychosynthesis has applied it to those in whom spiritual ambition exceeds their personality limits, leading to a backlash. Icarus was a Greek mythological figure who tried to escape imprisonment in Crete with his father Daedalus, using wings Daedalus crafted out of feathers and wax. Daedalus warned Icarus not too fly too close to the sun or too low to the sea. Overwhelmed with the excitement of flying, Icarus flew much too high, and
Golden mean (philosophy) flew up and up until the sun melted the wax off his wings. For not heeding the middle course, he fell into the sea and drowned. Another early elaboration is the Doric saying carved on the front of the temple at Delphi: ""Nothing in Excess"" ("Meden Agan"). The first work on the golden mean is sometimes attributed to Theano, wife of Pythagoras. To Cleobulus is attributed the maxim: "Mέτρον ἄριστον" "Moderation is best" Socrates teaches that a man must know "how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible." In education, Socrates asks