Difference between revisions of "Oedipus complex"

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Freud's conception of the Oedipus complex is probably one of the most popularized and at the same time one of the most misunderstood ideas of psychoanalysis.
  
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Taking his cue from the ancient Greek tragedy by Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, where Oedipus unwittingly kills his father and becomes king by marrying his mother, Freud suggested that our deepest unconscious desire is to murder our father and marry our mother.
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The Oedipus complex is rather more complicated than this, though, and represents Freud's attempt to map the ambivalent, both loving and hostile, feelings that the child has towards its parents.
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In its positive form the complex manifests itself as the desire for the death of a rival, the parent of the same sex, accompanied by the sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex.
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In its negative form the complex works in reverse, as the desire for the parent of the same sex and a hatred towards the parent of the opposite sex.
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In actual fact, a so-called 'normal' Oedipus complex consists of both positive and negative forms.
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What is important about the Oedipus complex is how the child learns to negotiate and resolve its ambivalent feelings towards its parents.
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Freud saw this process as taking place between the ages of three and five years.
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With the resolution of the Oedipus complex sexuality goes through a period of 'latency' until it reappears during puberty as adolescent sexuality.
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Most controversially, Freud insisted that the Oedipus complex was a universal, trans-historical and trans-cultural phenomenon:
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<blockquote>[T]he Oedipus complex is the nuclear complex of neuroses, and constitutes the essential part of their content. It represents the peak of infantile sexuality, which, through its after-effects, exercises a decisive influence on the sexuality of adults. Every new arrival on this planet is faced by the task of mastering the Oedipus complex; anyone who fails to do so falls a victim to neurosis.<ref>Freud 1991d [1905]: 149</ref></blockquote>
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In an early encyclopaedia article on the family (1938) Lacan adopted a fairly orthodox Freudian understanding of the Oedipus complex, and it was not until the 1950s and through the influence of Lévi-Strauss (see Chapter 2) that Lacan began to develop his own distinctive 'structural' model of the complex. For Lacan, the Oedipus complex is primarily a symbolic structure. When two people live together or get married they  do so forvery personal and intimate reasons, but at the same time there is a wider social or symbolic aspect to this relationship. A relationship or marriage concerns not just the two people involved but also a whole social network of friends, relations and institutions. Thus, personal relationships situate men and women in a symbolic circuit of social meanings. According to Lacan, therefore, we must distinguish between the real people involved and the symbolic structures that organize relationships between men and women. In our society the primary structure that defines our symbolic and unconscious relations is the Oedipus complex. More precisely the Oedipus complex represents a triangular structure that breaks the binary relationship established between the mother and child in the imaginary, although, as we will see, the imaginary is never simply a dual structure - there is always a third element involved. The infant's earliest experiences are characterized by absolute dependence upon the mother as she fulfils the child's needs of feeding, caring and nurturing. At the same time the child is faced with the enigma around the (m)other's desire - What am I in the Other's desire? The answers the child comes up with will be crucial to its resolution of the Oedipus complex.
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The Oedipus complex marks the transition from the imaginary to the symbolic. Through the intervention of a third term, the Name-of-the-Father, that closed circuit of mutual desire between the mother and child is broken and a space is created, within which the child can begin to identify itself as a separate being from the mother. Lacan calls this third term the Name-of-the-Father, because it does not have to be the real father, or even a male figure, but is a symbolic position that the child perceives to be the location of the object of the mother's desire. It is also, as we will see, a position of authority and the symbolic law that intervenes to prohibit the child's desire. For Lacan, the key signifier that this whole process turns upon is the phallus. 
  
  

Revision as of 11:59, 23 October 2006

French: complexe d'Oedipe


Freud's conception of the Oedipus complex is probably one of the most popularized and at the same time one of the most misunderstood ideas of psychoanalysis.

Taking his cue from the ancient Greek tragedy by Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, where Oedipus unwittingly kills his father and becomes king by marrying his mother, Freud suggested that our deepest unconscious desire is to murder our father and marry our mother.

The Oedipus complex is rather more complicated than this, though, and represents Freud's attempt to map the ambivalent, both loving and hostile, feelings that the child has towards its parents.

In its positive form the complex manifests itself as the desire for the death of a rival, the parent of the same sex, accompanied by the sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex.

In its negative form the complex works in reverse, as the desire for the parent of the same sex and a hatred towards the parent of the opposite sex.

In actual fact, a so-called 'normal' Oedipus complex consists of both positive and negative forms.

What is important about the Oedipus complex is how the child learns to negotiate and resolve its ambivalent feelings towards its parents.

Freud saw this process as taking place between the ages of three and five years.

With the resolution of the Oedipus complex sexuality goes through a period of 'latency' until it reappears during puberty as adolescent sexuality.

Most controversially, Freud insisted that the Oedipus complex was a universal, trans-historical and trans-cultural phenomenon:

[T]he Oedipus complex is the nuclear complex of neuroses, and constitutes the essential part of their content. It represents the peak of infantile sexuality, which, through its after-effects, exercises a decisive influence on the sexuality of adults. Every new arrival on this planet is faced by the task of mastering the Oedipus complex; anyone who fails to do so falls a victim to neurosis.[1]

In an early encyclopaedia article on the family (1938) Lacan adopted a fairly orthodox Freudian understanding of the Oedipus complex, and it was not until the 1950s and through the influence of Lévi-Strauss (see Chapter 2) that Lacan began to develop his own distinctive 'structural' model of the complex. For Lacan, the Oedipus complex is primarily a symbolic structure. When two people live together or get married they do so forvery personal and intimate reasons, but at the same time there is a wider social or symbolic aspect to this relationship. A relationship or marriage concerns not just the two people involved but also a whole social network of friends, relations and institutions. Thus, personal relationships situate men and women in a symbolic circuit of social meanings. According to Lacan, therefore, we must distinguish between the real people involved and the symbolic structures that organize relationships between men and women. In our society the primary structure that defines our symbolic and unconscious relations is the Oedipus complex. More precisely the Oedipus complex represents a triangular structure that breaks the binary relationship established between the mother and child in the imaginary, although, as we will see, the imaginary is never simply a dual structure - there is always a third element involved. The infant's earliest experiences are characterized by absolute dependence upon the mother as she fulfils the child's needs of feeding, caring and nurturing. At the same time the child is faced with the enigma around the (m)other's desire - What am I in the Other's desire? The answers the child comes up with will be crucial to its resolution of the Oedipus complex.

The Oedipus complex marks the transition from the imaginary to the symbolic. Through the intervention of a third term, the Name-of-the-Father, that closed circuit of mutual desire between the mother and child is broken and a space is created, within which the child can begin to identify itself as a separate being from the mother. Lacan calls this third term the Name-of-the-Father, because it does not have to be the real father, or even a male figure, but is a symbolic position that the child perceives to be the location of the object of the mother's desire. It is also, as we will see, a position of authority and the symbolic law that intervenes to prohibit the child's desire. For Lacan, the key signifier that this whole process turns upon is the phallus.



  1. Freud 1991d [1905]: 149