The dichotomy between social and individualistic tendencies is a source of conflict within all humans and throughout history. Psychologically healthy people want to be in the company of other people, while in other cases they want to isolate themselves from the world and look inside themselves. These two inclinations are kept in balance by leading a normal lifestyle without any extreme emotional stimulation. However, when trauma is experienced in the psyche, this balance can be upset and people can find themselves looking only inward and completely shutting out the rest of the world. This self-imposed exile from humanity is something the ancient Greeks understood and often explored in their mythology. A common trend in Greek mythology was to use a self-imposed exile as a defense mechanism and form of punishment, as seen in the myths of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and Euripides' Medea. The myth of Oedipus Rex includes self-exile as a way for Oedipus to cope with the fate he suffered and which he worked his entire life to prevent. At the end of the play Oedipus Rex, Oedipus gouges out his own eyes because he realizes that he has fulfilled a prophecy told to him at the beginning of the play that he would kill his father and marry his mother. He was so determined not to fulfill this gruesome prediction that when he was told that the man he thought was his father was dead, he exclaimed: Ah! Ah! O dear Jocasta, why should we look to the Pythian hearth? Why should we look at the birds calling overhead? They prophesied that I should kill my father! But he is dead, and hidden deep in the ear, and here I stand who never laid hand to spear against him, unless perhaps he died of desire for me, and then I am his murderer. But the… middle of paper… themselves than they had experienced and in the end, neither achieved anything except alienation from the rest of their respective worlds. In both the Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, and Medea , by Euripides, the idea of ​​self-imposed exile is explored in depth. The reason for this is because when faced with great difficulties and psychological damage like that of Oedipus and Medea, the normal human response is to try to introvert and remove oneself from the world that has caused them problems. This tendency, despite being a normal psychological defense mechanism, is unhealthy because it violates the relationship that all people must have in their actions between individual and social stimulation. Only by achieving a balance between these two states of being can one truly achieve healthy emotional stability and happiness, which neither Medea nor Oedipus can ever have...