Level 8 - Mail 2
Prof. Guillermo Katz
Oedipus complex
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The Oedipus complex is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud, who was inspired by Carl Jung (he described the concept and coined the term "complex"), to explain the maturation of the infant through identification with the father and desire for the mother.
It is based on the Greek myth of Oedipus who kills his father Laius and marries his mother Iocaste. The Oedipus conflict or Oedipus complex was described as a state of psychosexual development and awareness first occurring around the age of 3 and a half years (a period of development known as the genital stage in Freudian theory).
Theory of the Oedipus Complex
Relying on material from his self-analysis and on anthropological studies of totemism, Freud developed the Oedipus complex as an explanation of the formation of the ego, the super-ego and the id. The traditional paradigm in a (male) child’s psychological coming-into-being is to first select the mother as the object of libidinal investment. This however arouses the father's anger, and the infant surmises that the most probable form of this is castration.
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 have his phallus, but resigns from his attempts to take the mother, shifting his libidinal attention to new objects of desire.
Carl Gustav Jung claimed that young girl's desire is for the father, known as the Electra complex, which is basically a reverse Oedipus complex. This is often falsely ascribed to Freud. In fact it aroused Freud's anger for he had more complex construction of the female Oedipal complex: The girl is originally attached to the mother as well, however the discovery of the absence of a penis leads to an anger at the mother, who is held responsible. She therefore turns her libidinal attachment on to the father and imagines that she will become pregnant by him. She believes that the pregnancy will replace the missing penis, which she envies and will allow her to gain equal status with the father.
French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan refined this very crude theory in his linguistic theories. He claimed that the position of the father could never be held by the infant. On the one hand the infant must identify with the father, in order to participate in sexual relations. However the infant could also never become the father as this would imply sexual relations with the mother. Through the dictates on the one hand to be the father and on the other not to, the father is elevated to an ideal. He is no longer a real material father, but a function of a father. Lacan terms this the Name-of-the-Father. The same goes for the mother — Lacan no longer talks of a real mother, but simply of desire, which is a desire to return to the undifferentiated state of being together with the mother, before the interference through the Name-of-the-Father.
This desire necessarily lacks something, i.e. it is a desire of lack. The father and accordingly the phallus (not a real penis, but a representation of mastery) can never be reached, thus he is above or outside the language system and cannot be spoken about. All language relies on this absence of the phallus from the system of signification. According to this theory, without a phallus outside of language, nothing in language would make sense or could be differentiated. Thus Lacan remodels the linguistic theory of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. It is this idea that forms the basis of much contemporary thought, especially poststructuralism. Nothing can be thought that is outside of language, but the phallus is there and therefore structures the whole system of thought accordingly.
And to further help you, here you have some pictures to help you get a better idea of the characters:
Gavin`s mother Gavin
Gavin`s father Ian Swan
Have a great weekend!
Gmo