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Freud's theory of oedipus rex complex
Freud's theory of oedipus rex complex
Sigmund freud's psychoanalytic theory oedipus complex
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“A boy’s best friend is his mother” Norman Bates, “Psycho”. According to Freud, “Oedipus complex is a passage that all male children go through in their childhood.” What is Oedipus complex, why do people have it? Oedipus complex is; “it is a desire for sexual involvement, during the crucial stage of development in a man, with his mother and an affiliated sense of rivalry with his father” (According to Psychoanalytic Theory). Oedipus complex has a root in Greek myth about Oedipus. Oedipus complex is so strong in human beings that it conceives the superego while overcoming this phenomenon. Superego is the moral factor that dominates the conscious adult mind. Even though none of us wants to acknowledge the fact that our relationships with our parents are one of hate and love, it happens. Most people feel love towards the person who take care of them the most, which is usually the mother, and then the feel that their father is the rival. As children, we always seem to feel the need to have our mother’s attention and when someone gets in the way of that bond, we start to feel jealousy to...
Kazdin, Alan E. "Oedipus Complex." Encyclopedia of Psychology. Vol. 5. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2000. 494-96. Print.
The article “Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes” by Sigmund Freud focus on the difference between boys and girls and the consequences and impact the Oedipus complex and Penis envy. Freud studies the consequences and how boy and girls develop and move forward from this phase. It is to say that Freud has a strong point of view about this, and somehow this theory can come as masochism and has been criticizes by many feminist; but I cannot ignore the complexity and how his ideas are proper. But can we used this theories to understand the modernity if the society we live in.
The Oedipus complex was developed by the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The complex describes Freud’s theory of psychosexual stages of development in children, particularly boys. It denotes a boy’s feelings of lust and desire for the mother, and jealousy and envy for the father. The boy views the father as a rival for possession of his mother’s love and affection (Cherry).
The term “Oedipus complex” (or, less commonly, Oedipal complex), explains the strong emotions and ideas that the mind keeps deep within the unconscious of where a child, most notably male, is attracted to his own mother in a sexual nature. In society, incest is looked down upon because it crosses the forbidden zone, the desire for sexual relations, which deviates from the traditional parent-to-child relationship. This term was coined after the ancient Greek tragedy, Oedipus the King. The original script was first written around 429 B.C, by Sophocles. He was most famously known to be one of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived to this day. Knowing that he is a playwright who specializes in writing about the human condition
In other words, it includes the sense of rivalry and a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex. Oedipus complex is well-depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Billy Bibbit is the antagonist of this novel and his relationship between his mother is a great example of Oedipus complex. Billy Bibbit and his mother portrayed as an abnormal relationship of mother and son. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Billy Bibbit is portrayed as a momma’s boy. “The first word [he] said [he] st-stut-stuered: m-m-m-m-mamma” (Kesey 134). This shows how Billy Bibbit’s mother is the source of his problems. All the actions that Billy Bibbit and his mother have done is very insane. “Billy lay beside her and put his head in her lap and let her tease at his ear with a dandelion fluff” (Kesey 295). Children at this age usually doesn’t lay beside their mother’s laps. However, Billy Bibbit’s mother also doesn’t act like as if she’s the mother. Her actions toward Billy Bibbit can be seen as the relationship over the mother and son. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, “she wrinkled her nose and opened her lips at him and made a kind of wet kissing sound in the air with tongue, and I had to admit she didn’t look like a mother of any kind” (Kesey 295).
Poet and Scholar Robert Graves wrote in 1995, “Myth has two main functions. The first is to answer the sort of awkward questions that children ask, such as ‘Who made the world? How will it end? Who was the first man? Where do souls go after death?’…The second function of myth is to justify an existing social system and account for traditional rites and customs.” Oedipus the King written by Sophocles in 430 B.C. focuses around the second function that Graves noted. The play has been around for centuries, has evoked psychological theories, and will remain a classic. Sophocles has managed to touch on social, ethical, psychology, and more importantly philosophical issues in one play. Perhaps one of the most popularly known psychologist, Freud, was able to develop the theory that every child has a desire to sleep with their mother and kill their father. This is called the "Oedipus Complex". Oedipus the King tests all psychological boundaries for the reader by evoking self identification through the tragic concept of fate and using the literary tool of the chorus to internalize all of the emotion.
Sophocles, the author of “Oedipus the King” led individuals such as Freud to critically analyze this play specifically for its psychological content. Freud utilized this play to expand his dream analysis research as well as the inspiration of the infamous “Oedipus Complex.” Oedipus operates under freewill, yet his fate has been determined by the Gods although the end result may require a winding path of less than obvious events that occur to achieve the prophecy. The supporting roles in “Oedipus the King” truly exploit the protagonist, Oedipus, and his character flaws. All in all, Sophocles demonstrates the power of an individual’s psyche by illustrating the fears and dreams that are transformed into actions; such actions also lead to the rise and fall of the great Oedipus by the end of “Oedipus the King.”
According to psychologist Sigmund Freud, who is known for his theory of psychoanalysis, the human mind contains “a reservoir of mostly unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories” (Meyers 597). These unconscious desires then resurface and develop into the impulses for one’s actions and thoughts. Moreover, one of the most prominent and often times controversial ideas of this theory is the Oedipus complex. In Meyer’s textbook of psychology, the Oedipus complex is described as affecting young males by causing the development of sexual desires for their mothers and also jealousy towards their fathers
Essentially, a boy feels like he is competing with his father for possession of his mother. He views his father as a rival for her attention and affection. In psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex refers to the child’s desire for sexual involvement with the opposite sex parent, usually a boy’s erotic attention to his mother (Wood et al, 366). Freud’s complex is named after a character in an ancient tragedy, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. The main character accidently kills his father and marries his mother. But when it is referencing to females, the complex is called the Elektra complex, it is also after a similar play but a woman is the main character. These plays were popular during the 19th century in Europe, and Freud believed their popularity was because of the repeating theme, love for one’s opposite-sex parent. This represented a universal conflict that all human beings must resolve early on in their development (Cherry). With this assumption, Freud claimed that during the phallic stage, boys seek their mother’s attention and behave in a hostile way towards their fathers. Usually, boys resolve the Oedipus complex by identifying with his father and suppressing his sexual feelings for his
Sigmund Freud 's theory of the Oedipus complex describes the ideas and emotions that exist within the unconscious mind of children concerning their desire to possess their mothers sexually and kill their fathers. Freud believed that this complex occurred in both male and female children, with both sexes wishing to possess their mothers and eliminate the threat of their fathers who they competed with for the attention of their mothers. Freud believed that the Oedipus complex occurred during what he referred to as the phallic stage of development, the third of the five stages of a child 's psychosexual development which occurs when a child is between the ages of three and six. According to Freud 's theory, children direct their developing sexual desire toward
According to psychologist, Sigmund Freud, there are three main parts that make up a human’s personality: the id, ego, and superego. In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the narrator of the story, Chief Bromden, represents each of these traits. In the beginning, Bromden only thinks of himself as any other crazy man, who no one pays attention to, but throughout the story Bromden develops mentally through all three stages of Freud’s personality analysis, maybe not in Freud’s preferred order, but he still represents them all.
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...
The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic principles of Freud’s theories and to raise the main issues.
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.
Friedman, R. C., Downy, J.I. (1995) Biology and the Oedipus complex. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 64, 234-264