The Modern Icarus Complex: A psychoanalytic complex manifest in BASE jumpers and other action sports athletes

This study provided a psychoanalytic explanation of the extreme athlete (a.k.a. action sports athlete). The author reviewed psychoanalytic literature and personality psychology research pertaining to risk-taking enactments and integrated them into a synthesized theory: a Modern Icarus Complex. The author appraised Murray's Icarus complex (1938, 1955), a theory influenced by Freud's concepts of drive and oedipal conflict and presented its utility for interpreting the motivations of the extreme athlete. The author augmented Murray's original "theory of insupport" by reviewing ideas of pre-oedipal dynamics articulated by Klein and select object relations writers. Next, the author applied Jung's concept of a personality complex (1960) to organize a synthesized theory that involves a nucleus of narcissism, running the spectrum from the more neurotic to the more primitive level of functioning. Klein's concepts on manic defense and omnipotence, Winnicott's ideas on narcissistic object relating (1960, 1963), Balint's concept of the philobat (1959), and Wolson's concept of adaptive grandiosity (1995) are included as secondary constellations in this complex. The author integrated these features with Murray's observations to construct a complex that is more encompassing than the original (1938). Examples from action sports, predominantly BASE jumping, were used to illustrate the dimensional functioning in the Modern Icarus Complex. And finally, the author explored the benefits of applying this synthesized complex to the extreme athlete: among them, informing the clinician and personality researcher of the adaptive aspects of the Modern Icarian's enactment.