Sigmund Freud's Oedipus Complex

Oedipus Complex

"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." - Sigmund Freud(Clark, 122)

The Oedipus conflict or complex is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud to explain the origin of certain psychological disorders in childhood. It is defined as a child's unconscious desire for the exclusive love of the parent of the opposite sex. This desire includes jealousy toward the parent of the same sex and the unconscious wish for that parent's death. Horney states that it is not a “biologically given phenomenon” but rather a response to the “provocation’s” of the outside world.(Horney)

The “Oedipus Complex” was started from Simund Freud. Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia, a region now in the Czech Republic. His father was a wool merchant and was forty when he had Sigmund, the oldest of eight children (Gay, 78) and lived till 1939. (Gay, 112)

The term Oedipus complex gets its name from Oedipus Rex. The story of Oedipus can be found in the recount authored by Sophocles. In the story Oedipus has been made King of Thebes in gratitude for his freeing the people from a plague brought on them by the presence

of the riddling Sphinx. Since Laius, the former king, had shortly before been killed, Oedipus has been further honored by the hand of Queen Jocasta.

Now more deadly famines and diseases are raging and the people have come to ask Oedipus to rescue them as before. Oedipus give his brother in-law the job of finding the solution. Creon, Jocasta's brother, comes back from Apollo's temple with the announcement that the famine will be cured if Laius' murderer be found and cast from the city.

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... things that don't support freud's idea. Freud’s theory was according to the libido theory every human relationship is based ultimately on instinctual drives. When the theory is applied to child-parent relationships several conclusions are suggested: “any kind of

submissive devotion to a parent of the same sex is probably the expression of passive homosexuality or of sexual masochistic trends, while a rebellious rejection of a parent of the same sex is probably an inner fight against existing homosexual desires,” (Horney)

Works Cited

Bernheimer, Charles, In Dora's case : Freud—hysteria—feminism , New York : Columbia University Press,

Horney, Karen, New Ways in Psychoanalysis, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000

Clark, David. What Freud Really Said. New York: Scholden, 1995.

Gay, Peter. Freud, A Life Of Our Time. New York: W.W. Norton, 1988.