Oedipus complex

The Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, is a group of largely unconscious (dynamically repressed) ideas and feelings which concentrate on the desire to possess the parent of the opposite sex and eliminate the parent of the same sex.[1][2] According to classical psychoanalytic theory, the complex appears during the so-called "phallic stage" of libidinal and ego development; i.e. between the ages of three and five years, though oedipal manifestation may be detected earlier.[3][4]

The complex is named after Greek mythical character Oedipus, who (albeit unknowingly) kills his father, Laius and marries his mother, Jocasta. According to Sigmund Freud, the Oedipus complex is a common phenomenon, built in phylogenetically, and is responsible for much unconscious guilt.

Freud spoke of the mythical Oedipus in these terms:
“ His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours – because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so.[5] ”

Classical theory considers the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex to be developmentally desirable, the key to the development of sexual roles and identity. Freud posited that boys and girls resolved the conflicts differently as a result of the male's castration anxiety (caused by Oedipal rivalry with the father) and the female's penis envy. He also held that the unsuccessful resolution of the Oedipus complex could result in neurosis, paedophilia, and homosexuality.

Classical theory holds that "resolution" of the Oedipus complex takes place through identification with the parent of the same sex and (partial) temporary renunciation of the parent of the opposite sex; the opposite-sex parent is then "rediscovered" as the growing person's adult sexual object.

In classical theory, people who are fixated at the Oedipal level are "mother-fixated" or "father-fixated", and reveal this by choosing sexual partners who are discernible surrogates for their parent(s).
Contents
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* 1 Theory
o 1.1 Little Hans: a case study by Freud
* 2 Evolution of Freud's views
* 3 Female Oedipus complex
* 4 Disagreement and revision
* 5 The Oedipus Complex in the Twenty-First Century
* 6 See also
* 7 Reference

[edit] Theory

The classical paradigm in a human (male) child's psychological maturity is to first select the mother as the object of libidinal investment. However, this is expected to arouse the father's anger, and the infant surmises that the most probable result of this would be castration. Although Freud devoted most of his early literature to the Oedipus complex in males, by 1931 he was arguing that females do experience an Oedipus complex, and that in the case of females, incestuous desires are initially homosexual desires towards the mothers. It is clear that in Freud's view, at least as we can tell from his later writ, the Oedipus complex was a far more complex procession in female than in male development.

The infant internalizes the rules pronounced by his father. This is how the super-ego comes into being. The father now becomes the figure of identification, as the child wants to keep his penis, but resigns from his attempts to take the mother, shifting his libidinal attention to new objects.
[edit] Little Hans: a case study by Freud

"Little Hans" was a young boy who was the subject of an early but extensive study of castrative anxiety and the Oedipus complex by Freud. Hans' neurosis took the shape of a fear of horses (Equinophobia). Freud wrote a summary of his treatment of Little Hans, in 1909, in a paper entitled "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy."
[edit] Evolution of Freud's views

Most Freud scholars today agree that Freud's views on the Oedipus complex went through a number of stages of development. This is exemplified by the Simon and Blass (1991) publication, which documents six stages of development for Freud's thinking on this subject:

* Stage 1. 1897–1909. Following the death of his father in 1896, and his later seeing Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Freud begins to use the term "Oedipus" but does not, at this stage, use the term "Oedipus complex".
* Stage 2. 1909–1914. Freud refers to Oedipal wishes as being the "nuclear complex" of every neurosis, and later uses term "Oedipus complex" for the first time in 1910.
* Stage 3. 1914–1918. Incestuous wishes in relation to the father as well as to the mother are now considered.
* Stage 4. 1919–1926. Stage of complete Oedipus complex, in which consideration of identification and bisexuality become more evident in Freud's work. Freud now begins to use the term "complete Oedipus complex".
* Stage 5. 1926–1931. Applies the Oedipal theory to religious and customary themes.
* Stage 6. 1931–1938. Gives more attention to the Oedipus complex in females.

[edit] Female Oedipus complex

Freud's writings on the Oedipus complex in females date primarily from his later writ, of the 1920s and 1930s. He believed that Oedipal wishes in females are initially expressions of desire for the mother. In 1925, he raised the question of how females later abandon this desire for their mother, and shift their sexual desires to their father (Appignanesisi & Forrester, 1992). Freud believed that this stems from their disappointment in discovery that they themselves lack a penis. It is note-worthy that, as Slipp (1993) points out, "Nowhere in the Standard Edition of Freud's Collected Works does Freud discuss matricide" (Slipp, 1993, p95). Freud's final comments on female sexuality occurred in his "New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis" in 1933 (Slipp, 1993) and deal with the different effects of penis envy and castration anxiety. The female version of the Oedipus complex is often referred to as the Electra complex; but Freud himself considered 'that what we have said about the Oedipus complex applies with complete strictness to the male child only and that we are right in rejecting the term "Electra" complex which seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitude of the two sexes'[6].
[edit] Disagreement and revision

In classical theory, the super-ego (considered "the heir to the Oedipus complex") comes into being as the infant internalizes the rules pronounced by his father. In contrast to this view, Otto Rank theorized in the early 1920s that the powerful mother was the source of the super-ego in normal development. This theory catapulted Rank out of the inner circle in 1925 and led to the development of modern object-relations therapy. (Rank coined the term "preOedipal".)

While Freud regarded boys' and girls' and adults' relationships to the father (and the father's phallus) as central to their psychosexual development, Melanie Klein focused more on the early relationship with the mother. Her insistence that oedipal manifestations can even be seen during the first year of life was a feature of the so-called "Controversial Discussions" which took place in the British Psychoanalytical Association between 1942 and 1944 - Kleinians believing that 'underlying the Oedipus complex as Freud described it...there is an earlier layer of more primitive relationships with the Oedipal couple'[7]. In Klein's work the Oedipus complex is also "dethroned" to some extent, its central role in development being usurped by her concept of the depressive position.[8][9]

Thus while Freud had written in 1920 that "with the progress of psychoanalytic studies the importance of the Oedipus complex has become more and more clearly evident; its recognition has become the shibboleth that distinguishes the adherents of psychoanalysis from its opponents,"[10] arguably it only "remained a cornerstone of psychoanalytical theory up to, say, 1930, but since then psychoanalysis has become increasingly mother-oriented and concerned with the pre-oedipal relationship to the mother'."[11] By the late 20th century, to "the avant-garde (the object-relations schools) the events of the Oedipal period are pallid and inconsequential in comparison with the cliff-hanging psychodramas of infancy....For Kohut, as for Winnicott and Balint, the Oedipus complex is an irrelevance in the treatment of severe pathology."[12]. Ego psychology continued to maintain however that 'the Oedipal period - roughly three and a half to six years - is like Lorenz standing in front of the chick, is the most formative, significant, moulding experience of human life...If you take a person's adult life - his love, his work, his hobbies, his ambitions - they all point back to the oedipus complex'[13].

One potent postmodern voice of protest against the dethroning of the Oedipus complex has been that of Lacan. He considered "the Oedipus complex - in so far as we continue to recognize it as covering the whole field of our experience with its signification - ...superimposes the kingdom of culture"[14] upon the individual: marks his or her entrance into the symbolic order. In this sense, 'a child learns what power independent of itself is as it goes through the Oedipus complex...encountering the existence of a symbolic system independent of it'[15].

Lacan's accompanying insistence on "the ternary relation of the Oedipus complex" as liberationary for the "prisoner of the dual relationship"[16] of mother-child has also proved fruitful in later psychoanalysis. Thus for Bollas the "achievement" of the Oedipus complex is that the "child comes to understand something about the oddity of possessing one's own mind...discovers the multiplicity of points of view."[17]. Similarly for Britton, 'if the link between the parents perceived in love and hate can be tolerated in the child's mind...this provides us with a capacity for seeing us in interaction with others and...for reflecting on ourselves whilst being ourselves'[18]. In such a way, then, we may see 'the Oedipus complex as a lifelong developmental challenge...[with] new kinds of Oedipal configuration that belong to later life[19].

'For the post-Kleinian Bion, the myth of Oedipus concerns investigatory curiosity - the quest for knowledge - rather than sexual difference; the other main character in the Oedipal drama becomes Tiresias (the false hypothesis erected against anxiety about a new theory)'[20]. As a result, 'Bion (1958) regarded the central crime of Oedipus as his insistence on knowing the truth at all costs'[21].

While Freud held that both sexes initially experience desire for their mothers and aggression towards their fathers, Carl Jung argued that females experienced desire for their fathers and aggression towards their mothers. He referred to this idea as the Electra complex, after Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon. Electra wanted to kill her mother, who had helped plan the murder of her father. Thus, in orthodox Jungian thought, the term "Oedipus complex" properly refers only to the experience of young boys. The "Electra complex" is not part of classical theory, and not usually accepted by those in the Freudian fold. In practice, the concept is rarely used, even by Jungians.

Modern analysts also differ in the extent to which they accept the classical view of the "universality" of the Oedipus complex. Some speak cautiously of the complex's significance "at least in Western societies",[22] while others consider its temporal and geographic universality to have been established by ethnologists.[23] Few would challenge however the fact that the "child then entered an oedipal phase...[which] involved an acute awareness of a complicated triangle involving mother, father, and child", or that "both positive and negative oedipal themes are typically observable in development."[24]
[edit] The Oedipus Complex in the Twenty-First Century

"A large number of people these days believe that Freud's Oedipus complex is defunct...'disproven', or simply found unnecessary sometime in the last century"[25]. In a postmodern understanding, however, "the Oedipus complex isn't really like that. It's more a way of explaining how human beings are socialised...learning to deal with disappointment"[26]. The key element to be learnt is that "You have to stop trying to be everything for your primary carer and get on with being something for the rest of the world"[27]. Whether such a post-Lacanian understanding "stretches the Oedipus complex to a point where it almost doesn't look like Freud's any more"[28] remains perhaps an open question.

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