A psychoanalytic term describing the erotic feelings of a son for his mother, and an associated sense of competitiveness towards the father. The female equivalent is the Electra complex, describing a daughter's jealousy of her mother, love for her father, and blame for the mother's depriving her of a penis. Both terms were coined by Freud to understand phases of normal child development.
The Oedipus complex or Oedipus conflict is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud to explain the origin of certain neuroses in childhood. Later researchers used the term Electra complex for the same phenomenon in girls towards their father. (In Greek myth, Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, helped plan the murder of her mother.)
The idea is based on the Greek myth of Oedipus, who unwittingly kills his father Laius and marries his mother Jocasta. The Oedipus conflict, or Oedipus complex, was described as a state of psychosexual development and awareness first occurring around the age of 5 and a half years (a period known as the phallic stage in Freudian theory).
Theory of the Oedipal 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 super-ego. 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 writings, the Oedipus complex was a far more complicated process in female than in male development. Freud used the term "Oedipus complex" for both males and females and did not like the way rivals had coined the term "Electra Complex" for the process in girls.
The infant internalizes the rules pronounced by his father. The father now becomes the figure of identification, as the child wants to keep his phallus, but resigns from his attempts to take the mother, shifting his libidinal attention to new objects of desire. (Rank coined the term pre-oedipal.)
According to Freud, the absence or weakness of either parent, but especially the same-sex parent, can lead to homosexuality in adulthood due to a failure to resolve the Oedipus complex.
Little Hans: a case study by Freud
"Little Hans" was a young boy who was the subject of an early but extensive study of castration anxiety and the Oedipus complex by Freud.
Hans's fear and anxiety were thought to be the result of several factors, including the birth of a little sister, his desire to replace his father as his mother's mate, conflicts over masturbation, and other issues.
Hans himself was unable to connect the fear of horses and the desire to get rid of his father. George Serban, in a more modern commentary, says
This assumption was suggested to him by his father. and that 'his attention had to be turned in the direction from which his father was expecting something to come.' (Serban 1982)
Critiques of the Oedipus Complex
Popular culture often portrays Freud as overly focused on sexual influences and his theory of the Oedipus Complex is often considered untenable. However, there have always been a great deal of critiques of the Oedipus complex among psychoanalysts and philosophers who acquainted themselves with the work of Freud.
Alfred Adler contended with Freud's belief over the dominance of the sex drive and whether ego drives were libidinal; Adler believed that the repression theory should be replaced with the concept of ego-defensive tendencies - compared to the neurotic state derived from inferiority feelings and overcompensation of the masculine protest, Oedipal complexes were to him insignificant. Although Freud believed that the Oedipus complex takes place around the age of five, Melanie Klein believed it took place far earlier, possibly in the first two years of a child's life. Research such as that of Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands is often cited as a challenge to Freud's conviction that the Oedipus complex is a universal phenomenon.
Philosophy and the Oedipus Complex
Philosophers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, along with radical psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, have used their work to show how internalized power structures are a function of the world order we live in, bent on disciplining the subject. According to this theory the Oedipus Complex can only arise historically under certain conditions.
Deleuze and Guattari in Anti-Oedipus apply this to the dissemination of Freud's Oedipus Complex, which they call "Oedipalization". They believe that the capitalist system and psychoanalysis as its tool rely on making people believe in a father, who is more powerful than them and has a phallus, which will always be unobtainable for them.
French theorist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan revised the Oedipus complex in line with his structuralist attempt to combine psychoanalysis and linguistics. 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. 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.
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