Eckert 1

Callista Eckert

Dr. Naydenova

General Psychology

11 February 2017

Oedipus Complex

In Greek mythology, there is a story, Oedipus Rex, of a man who kills his father

and marries his mother. An oracle foretold of this event occurring. Wanting to stop the

premonition from coming true, Oedipus, the fated father-killer, was sent away by his

parents and adopted by another family. After growing up and learning of his fate,

Oedipus left his new family, though he did not know he was adopted. Oedipus killed a

man on the street that insulted him. The man was his true father. Continuing on his path,

Oedipus fell in love and married the widow of the man he had killed, who was in fact his

true mother. At the end of the play, Oedipus gauged his eyes out once he learned he had

not escaped his fate after all. Sigmund Freud, a renowned psychologist, took this story

and made a claim that every man will marry a woman exactly like his mother. This paper

is about Freuds theory and the complex itself.

Sigmund Freud began his life in the field of medicine, appointed Lecturer in

Neuropathology (Yorke para 9). After working alongside a renowned medical man

named Charcot, Freud became obsessed with hysteria. He treated a number of hysterial

patients by hypnotic suggestion but became interested in a colleagues treatment of a

patient by cathartic method (Yorke para 13). This patients hysteria symptoms

disappeared, and this cure was named the talking cure. After awhile, Freud stopped

using the hypnosis treatment and instead used the develop[ed] technique of free
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association in which the patient laid on a couch with the doctor sitting behind them and

said whatever came to mind (Yorke para 17). Unresolved issues of patients revealed

themselves in a way that hypnosis never could bring out from patients, having

memoryactively opposed by the force of repression (Yorke para 17). The conflicts of

the patients mind later on influenced Freuds development of psychoanalysis.

Freud wrote a book titled Interpretation of Dreams, in which he detailed his

thoughts and findings of a seduction theory and his own self-analysis. The self-analysis

piece was the most important; it gave rise to the field of psychoanalysis. Also within the

book are interpretations of what and why humans dream the way they dream, which is

one of the reason Freud is so popular today in the field of psychology. In Freuds opinion,

the dream was a hallucinatory wish fulfillmentgenerally far removed from the wishes

of everyday appearance, so the deep thoughts and wishes of one could be expressed

without having to have a public viewing of their secret yearning (Yorke para 22). Dreams

and thoughts ran parallel in Freuds world.

The Oedipus complex made an appearance in Interpretation of Dreams, but it

was not the focus of the book. However, this Greek mythological story and Sigmund

Freud had multiple encounters in which Freud turned a myth into a theory that is applied

to every son and daughter. Sigmund Freud believed that every boy struggles

withfeelings that Oedipus had struggled with; the feelings being sons have an internal

instinct to compete with their fathers due to a want of their mothers attention and a sense

of guilt at these subconscious feelings (Barratt para 1). Freud even extended his theory

towards daughters because they have feelings of rivalry toward their mother figures as a

consequence of harboring secret erotic feelings toward their father figures (Barratt para
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1). As this theory developed, more ideas and meanings have been added onto it.

According to Barnaby Barratt, there are three main processes connected in the theorys

meaning. The first one is the Oedipus complex refers to the fact that childrens earliest

sensual feelings are directed towards a person, usually a parent, even though a resulting

relationship would be incest (Barratt para 2). The love young children are first exposed to

in their lives is the love that their parents give them and that they see between their

parents. Typically, the mother figure is the one the child bonds with the most at first,

since she carried the child for so long. Therefore, if the child was a boy, this love could

be used as an explanation for how the stronger feelings develop as the child ages. These

feelings typically are never shown due to the feelings [being] so powerful and forbidden

that we repress them from consciousness (Barratt para 2). Children understand from an

early age that the feelings they might or might not recognize but are still there are wrong,

and therefore, at an early age, children try to find some other, non-family member, to

attach to in that way.

The second process is the Oedipus complex may refer to all of the triangular

rivalries that originate in early childhood, referring to the clash between children and

their parents (Barratt para 3). Whenever a child desires to become closer to one parent,

the other parent becomes a rival. Barnaby Barratt claims that the conflicts do not have to

involve the biological parents of a child; they could include mother figures and father

figures alike, along with siblings. This child versus two adults is the triangular rivalry that

was mentioned above in the quote. The difficulties with situations in which three

persons are in a relationship are very common throughout life, even without parent
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figures being involved, but there is a sense that these rivalries begin with the child versus

parents (Barratt para 3).

Third of the processes is the way in which children and adolescents mature into

their adult identity, especially around sexuality (Barratt para 3). This could refer to

multiple identity developments. For instance, one could become attached to a person and

consequently become someone that person would like them to be, so one could change

their identity or form it based on the need to have the person they have become attached

to become attached to them (Barratt para 3). Psychoanalysts have gone so far as to

declare that a girl may identify with a womans sexual personality, not just because that

is her gender, but also because she becomes attached to her father and knows that he is

erotically interested in women, (Barratt para 4) and vice versa concerning boys. All of

these attractions happen way outside the conscious processes. The details of an

individuals Oedipus complex are believed to have a major influence on the formation of

personality, therefore these sexual instincts are more than just applied to the

relationships children have and will have (Barratt para 5). According to the above quote,

a childs subconscious Oedipus complex influences the way in which they will develop in

life in a large way. In Barnabys article, he discusses the recognition children have in

reference to the sexual relationship adults have with each other, and the recognition is

what psychoanalysts call the primal scene (Barratt para 6). Psychoanalysts also relate

the unhappiness and suffering that goes on within humans lives with the Oedipus

complex.

The source From Oedipus Complex to Oedipal Complexity: Reconfiguring

(Pardon the Expression) the Negative Oedipus Complex and the Disowned Erotics of
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Disowned Sexualities is an essay written by a psychologist who detailed accounts of

patients that were examples of the Oedipus complex. Jody Messler Davies, the author,

wrote about a few patients unerringly thoughts about sexual desires that should not be

happening within her patients minds. For instance, a patient named Robert [held] his

infant son and is suddenly overwhelmed with thoughts of stroking and then sucking his

young babys penis (Davies 265). The reason Davies gives her patients accounts of

their bizarre sexual thoughts, such as Robert, is she is attempting to understand sexuality.

She comes to the Oedipus complex. Davies claims Freud created a theoretical space for

what he believed to be a universal bisexuality (268), meaning his ideas on children and

their thoughts and feelings about their parents can be interpreted as his belief every

human has a tie in a sexual way to the same gender. Davies also details what is known as

the negative and positive Oedipus. The negative Oedipus complex is the case of an

erotic tie to the same-sex parent and a competitive hostile tie to the opposite-sex parent,

and Freud claimed the positive must take over the negative for a healthier outcome

(Davies 268). Heterosexuality and homosexuality took the Oedipus complex and used it

for their own purposes apparently. Jody Davies states that every child has a primary and

secondary oedipal sense; the child in the process of developing a primarily homosexual

orientation, the primary oedipal configuration will stress erotic experiences of self in

relation to same-sex parents (Davies 269), meaning that the child will typically form an

orientation, either homosexual or heterosexual, due to the parents and their relationship.

If the child is raised in a same-sex home, the child will develop a primary Oedipal

complex that is homosexuality. Freud concluded this as well, just not in plain terms.
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Freud believed in sexual desires being derived from childhood. He also believed

that sex was one of two prime factors that motivated ones life (Fear 14). This is how

he became one of the most famous psychologists still to this day, his study of sexual

desires and development. Freud split the childs sexual development into two different

phases, the genital phase and the puberty onwards phase. He focused mainly on the

genital stage, especially in boys. When the boy is young, Freud claims the child [has]

direct and distinct graphic sexual feelings for the opposite sex parent (Fear 16). In the

source The Oedipus Complex: Solutions Or Resolutions, Rhona Fear reminds the public

that when Freud was developing his theories, parents sometimes shared beds with their

children and so ultimately the children were exposed to the sexual acts of their parents. In

todays society, that would never happen, but it is a fact to remember when speaking

about Freuds theories. Fear then goes on to argue with Freud, claiming that she is a

psychoanalytic psychotherapist who has worked with all kinds of patients, and some of

those patients have never shown any tendency that Freud states is inside all human

beings. Fear believes that Freuds theory of ubiquity if posited because of the clientele

with whom he was working into contact most of the time (16). His patients may have

caused his research to be biased in a way.

Rhona Fear also mentions resolving the Oedipal Complex Freud claimed so many

had done. Any resolution, according to Freud, necessitates that the little boy represses

his sexual wishes towards his mother and this allows for the concomitant internalization

of his father, meaning that if the boy were to suppress his feelings well enough, the

conflict he would have and was having with his father would be resolved (Fear 17). The

father should help with this suppression, trying to relate to the boy on an emotional level
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and engaging in activities they both enjoy together. According to Fear, if the father does

not help the son with the suppression, the boy may develop a homosexual identity (18).

Freud also agreed on this matter.

The Oedipus Complex can be viewed as a nasty theory from a popular

psychologist that has no truth in the present times. However, if thoughts are analyzed and

processed by both a doctor and patients themselves, more truth to Freuds theory could be

discovered. A boy will marry his mother, hate his father and a girl will marry her father,

hate her mother, the simple fact is that. However, suppression of these hateful emotions

can happen, in order to create a relationship with the same sex parent.
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Works Cited

Barratt, Barnaby B. "Oedipus Complex." The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and

Behavioral Science, edited by W. Edward Craighead, and Charles B. Nemeroff,

Wiley, 2010. Credo Reference, http://ezproxy.gardner-webb.edu/login?url=

http://search.credo reference.com/content/entry/wileycorsini/oedipus_complex/0.

Davies, Jody Messler. From Oedipus Complex to Oedipal Complexity: Reconfiguring

(Pardon the Expression) the Negative Oedipus Complex and the Disowned

Erotics of Disowned Sexualities. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, vol. 25, no. 3, May

2015, pp. 265283. PsycINFO [EBSCO], eds.a.ebsco host.com/eds/detail/detail

?sid=d48fe362-e355-4195-8847-1ebd8aef834a%40sessionmgr4006&vid=0&

hid=4202&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRz LWxpdmU%3d#db=psyh&AN=2015-

26605-001.

Fear, Rhona M. The Oedipus Complex : Solutions Or Resolutions?. London: `Karnac

Books, 2016. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/e

bookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzEwOTIzMDRfX0FO0?sid=349f25be-a2a3-4582-

9bcf-b82dcb297a51@sessionmgr 4008&vid=0&format=EB&l pid=lpv&rid=0.

Yorke, C. "Freud, Sigmund (18561939)." International Encyclopedia of the Social &

Behavioral Sciences, edited by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes, vol. 9,

Elsevier, 2001, pp. 5798-5805. Gale Virtual Reference Library, ezproxy.gardner-

webb.edu/login?url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GVRL&sw=w&u=nclive

gwu&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CCX3034001372&asid=5c11463c27af54e2007b

9224869e24cb.