Oedipus Rex, is a Sophocles play, that according to Freud exemplifies
a formative stage in a individuals psychosexual development. The
psychosexual stages are the age related developmental periods in which
sexual impulses are exerted through different bodily zones and then
activities are associated with those areas in the bodily zones. These
is when a young child will transfer his love object from the breast to
the mother. When the child gives up the breast and moves to the mother
it is known as the oral phase. The child then has the sexual desire
for the opposite sex parent and will usually have hostility towards
the same sex parent. During this time, the child will have a secret
desire to murder the same sex parent. Freud called the childhood
desire to sleep with the opposite sex parent and to kill the same sex
parent Oedipus Complex. Freud describes the source of this complex in
his introductory lectures (twenty-first lecture): “ You all know the
Greek legend of King Oedipus, who was destined by fate to kill his
father and take his mother to be his wife, who did everything possible
to escape the Oracles decree and punished himself by blinding when he
learned that he had none the less unwittingly committed both these
crimes.”(16.330) Among those individuals that do not progress in the
proper way into the genital phase, can still be playing out the
psychodrama in various displaced, abnormal or exaggerated ways. Primal
desires of course can be quickly repressed but even among the mentally
sane they could always rise again in dreams and in literature. The
most critical conflict that the child must successfully resolve from
healthy...
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... Freud (1905) Being that Oedipus was so much
younger then his mother probably really gave him the turn on of him
marrying an older women . The reason he probably feel in love with his
mother was due to the fact that they already had that attachment as
mother and son. The child also identifies with the same sex parent as
a way to resolve the sexual attraction toward the opposite sex parent.
Imitating the same sex parent also can play an important role in the
development of gender identity and especially healthy sexual maturity.
Oedipus Rex played out a psychosexual drama which consisted of him
killing his father along the road and then marrying his mother. It
could have been said that Oedipus suffered from a mental illness known
as Oedipus Complex, which was named by Sigmund Freud after the Greek
myth of Oedipus.
Oedipus began Oedipus Rex as a king, only to end the tale as a blinded beggar. Oedipus' fall from his kingly status was not by accident or because of some other person. Oedipus is the only one that can be blamed for his misfortune. Oedipus' character traits are shown most clearly during his spiraling downfall, thinking he is "a simple man, who knows nothing", yet knowing more than he realizes by the end of the story.
...le desiring the same sex parent. Freud states the decline of this complex occurs through the threat of castration for boys and the desire for a baby for girls” (Rowell). Examples in music include “the End” by the Doors where the singer states he wants to kill his father and have sex with his mother. In the media and movies we see it making an appearance in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi where a power struggle between son and father break out as Luke battles the same sex parent but due to his mother’s death turns to his sister Leia as a forbidden love instead. Overall, I feel the story of Oedipus Rex seems to portray that men can show great abilities in insight and they have a strong drive to acquire knowledge, but even the most intellectual person has the ability to be wrong and that man’s ability to acquire knowledge is inevitably very constrained and undependable.
In the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, Oedipus is depicted as a morally ambiguous character; neither purely evil or purely good. Oedipus runs from his fate initially to prevent himself from pursuing what he believed was his fate; however, he is lead straight towards his real fate. He kills his biological father as he is headed to Thebes, where he takes the throne. Once he has taken the throne, he begins to try and save his city from the plague by looking for the murder of king Laius. However, what he does not know is that the prophet has told him who has slew the king; therefore, he presents his ignorance as a leader. Not only does his ignorance create the flawed character inside himself, but it also causes him to run from his fate. The significance of Oedipus being a morally ambiguous character is that he cannot run from his fate
Oedipus at first finds the implications of killing his father and sleeping with his mother difficult to tolerate as a factual manifestation of his past. He disputes the fact that he had caused suc...
The ancient Greeks were fond believers of Fate. Fate, defined according to Webster’s, is “the principle or determining cause or will by which things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to happen as the do.” The Greeks take on Fate was slightly modified. They believed that the gods determined Fate: “…fate, to which in a mysterious way the gods themselves were subject, was an impersonal force decreeing ultimate things only, and unconcerned with day by day affairs.” It was thought that these gods worked in subtle ways; this accounts for character flaws (called harmatia in Greek). Ancient Greeks thought the gods would alter a person’s character, in order for that person to suffer (or gain from) the appropriate outcome. Such was the case in Oedipus’s story.
In Ancient Greece the existence of gods and fate prevailed. In the Greek tragedy King Oedipus by the playwright Sophocles these topics are heavily involved. We receive a clear insight into their roles in the play such as they both control man's actions and that challenging their authority leads to a fall.
The Oedipus complex is a psychological theory that a child has a desire to replace his or her parent and be involved with them both sexually and emotionally; Paul displays this complex in The Rocking Horse Winner. “The father, who was always very handsome and expensive in tastes, seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing.” The boy appears to have a desire to replace his father and support his mother due to his father’s lack of ability displayed; he feels he needs to provide for the family financially. The sexual desire of the Oedipus complex is also established because Paul’s
Oedipus Rex, an ancient Greek tragedy authored by the playwright Sophocles, includes many types of psychological phenomena. Most prominently, the myth is the source of the well-known term Oedipal complex, coined by psychologist Sigmund Freud in the late 1800s. In psychology, “complex” refers to a developmental stage. In this case the stage involves the desire of males, usually ages three to five, to sexually or romantically posses their mother, and the consequential resentment of their fathers. In the play, a prince named Oedipus tries to escape a prophecy that says he will kill his father and marry his mother, and coincidentally saves the Thebes from a monster known as the Sphinx. Having unknowingly killed his true father Laius during his escape, he marries the widowed queen of Thebes, his mother Jocasta. Many events in the story should lead to suspicion of their marriage, but out of pride and ignorance Oedipus stubbornly refuses to accept his fate. Together, these sins represent the highest taboos of Greek society, revealed by Socphocles’s depiction of the already pervasive story. Before the Thebian plays, the myth centered more around Oedipus’s journey of self-awareness; meanwhile, Sophocles shows Oedipus’s struggles with his inevitable desire toward his mother throughout these stages of psychological development.
Freud emphasized that early childhood experiences are important to the development of the adult personality, proposing that childhood development took place over five stages; oral, anal. Phallic, latent and genital. The phallic stage is the most important stage which contains the Oedipus complex. This is where the child (age 4 - 6 yrs) posses the opposite sex parent and wants rid of the same sex parent. Freud argued that if the conflict is not resolved in childhood then it could cau...
Sigmund Freud developed the psychosexual stages of development to describe the chronological process of development that took place from birth through later adulthood. The stages of psychosexual are oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. Freud developed that as children grow they progress from self-pleasing sexual activity to reproductive activity. Through this developmental process one will develop adult personality. Freud put much emphasis on sexual context of how ones libido, which is one sexual desires played a role in each stage of development. Freud emphasizes that individuals will strive to obtain pleasures in each stage of development, which becomes the basis of ones personality.
Developmental psychology is an area of research dedicated to the understanding of child-development. Throughout history many theories have been used to attempt to explain the complex process. Two of those theorists, Freud and Erikson, were instrumental in creating a foundation for child-psychology to build on. From a Freudian perspective, human development is centered on psychosexual theory. Psychosexual theory indicates that maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development. Alternatively, Erikson is considered a neo-freudian scholar who developed psychosocial theory. In Erikson models there are eight major conflicts that occur during the course of an individual’s life.
Throughout the tragic tale, the troubled young Oedipus is faced with many opportunities to give in to fate and throw his life away- all of which he accepted and executed proudly. After having been informed of his undesirable fate, the young man finds himself at a crossroads, pestered by another traveler. In a blinding flash of rage, Oedipus murdered the very man he was trying to avoid, as he later recounts to his wife and mother, “My stick had struck him backwards from the car and he rolled out of it. And then I killed them all”. While fully aware of the possibility that he may know not the true identity of his parents, he was not at all concerned that he may fulfill his prophecy in any violent act he commits. Oedipus took the prophecy seriously enough to uproot his life and leave his home in Corinth, but not seriously enough to even attempt to take up a life of pacifism. His misplaced efforts placed before him a choice between a bruised sense of self worth and uncalled for brutality, his inability to discern the difference between a necessary evil and an absurd liability lead him to begin fulfilling his prophecy. Since first discovering the foul outcome the divine had planned for him, Oedipus was disgusted with the thought of marrying and taking to bed his mother, but in a moment of excitement and thoughtlessness he mar...
Aristotle, in his work The Poetics, tries to delineate the idea of a tragedy. Throughout his work Aristotle says that the hero, or at least the protagonist in a tragedy must be substantially good, almost godlike. This hero must bring upon themselves their downfall, due to their fatal flaw. If the hero is not at a high point, an audience will not care about them, and won’t notice their fall. One must fall a long way in social class in order for it to be noticed by the outside man. Oedipus perfectly exemplifies a tragedy, in relation to modern society, effectively showing how too much pride can often lead to downfall or doom.
Sigmund Freud proposed a theory of psychoanalytic development; he stated that early childhood experiences and practices affect later development in adulthood. Freud’s stages of psychosexual development comprised of five stages: the oral stage (0 – 1 year), the anal stage (1 – 3 years), the phallic stage (3 – 6 years), the latency period (6 – puberty) and the genital stage (puberty –
The theory does a good job at delineating the stages of psychosexual development; our childhood has a great influence on our personalities. Referring to Freud’s ‘psychosexual stages’, it is very clear that parents’ role in an infant’s life is the foremost step to structure the personality. Not to forget, the oral and anal stages are focal fundamental to character traits in a person’s behavior. The inner ‘instincts’ of sexuality and aggression meeting with the socially acceptable norms creates a conflict zone, wherein it is decided what we are to do and what we would become.