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
Aerope of Crete son of Danae, so he locked her away. Nevertheless, Danae became pregnant, by Zeus according to most accounts, and was cast into the sea by her father, but survived through the intercession of Zeus. In Ovid's "Ars Amatoria", Aerope is given as one of several examples showing that "women's lust", is "keener" than men's and having "more of madness": Aerope of Crete In Greek mythology, Aerope (Ancient Greek: Ἀερόπη) was a daughter of Catreus, the king of Crete, and sister to Clymene, Apemosyne and Althaemenes. She was the wife of Atreus (or Pleisthenes), and by most accounts the mother of