Enantiodromia

QUOTE

Plato once said…

“Everything arises in this way, opposites from their opposites.”

(Ancient Greek philosopher)

CONCEPT

Enantiodromia

Enantiodromia describes the phenomenon where things eventually turn into their opposites.

The term is used is psychology to explain how suppressed qualities or extremes within a person inevitably reverse direction: A perfectionist becomes self-destructive. A rigid moralist collapses into temptation. A society obsessed with order births rebellion.

Enantiodromia isn’t failure—it’s nature’s way of restoring equilibrium. The psyche, like history, resists extremes by swinging back toward the center.

STORY

Die a Hero … or Become the Enemy?

In 1793, the French Revolution executed its own revolutionaries.

Only four years earlier, the storming of the Bastille had symbolized liberation. The revolutionaries had toppled monarchy, abolished feudalism, and declared the Rights of Man. Their ideals were liberty, equality, fraternity.

But by 1793, the Revolution devoured its children. 

Maximilien Robespierre, once a champion of democracy and moral virtue, had become the architect of the Reign of Terror. The Committee of Public Safety—established to defend the revolution from tyranny—now ruled through fear, censorship, and execution. The guillotine, once a symbol of justice, became an instrument of mass repression.

Robespierre believed terror was “nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.” But justice without restraint became cruelty.

As the movement pursued purity, it turned paranoid; any deviation from revolutionary ideals was treated as treason. In barely a year, over 17,000 people were executed by the state, including many who had helped launch the revolution itself.

By mid-1794, the pendulum swung back.

Robespierre himself was arrested and guillotined, condemned by the same machinery he had set in motion.

The Revolution that promised renewal birthed tyranny; yet that tyranny, in turn, prepared France for a new balance under the Republic. The pattern repeats across history and psyche alike: pressure builds, breaks, and rebalances.

What rises unchecked must fall—not as punishment, but as nature’s insistence on wholeness.