Cry and response
Anthony Korner in Communicative Exchange, Psychotherapy and the Resonant Self, 2020
The Oedipal drama is well known in the modern era because of Freud’s famous application of Sophocles’ play to patterns of the unconscious. A widely accessible account of the psychoanalytic understanding of familial interactions is quoted: [The] Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father. Sigmund Freud, who coined the term “Oedipus complex”, believed that the Oedipus complex is a desire for the mother in both sexes.In classical, Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the child’s identification with the same-sex parent is the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex and of the Electra complex; his and her key psychological experience to developing a mature sexual role and identity.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_complex) In this formulation there is a focus of desire on certain fantasied events (kill father; sexually possess mother). There is also emphasis on identification with the same sex parent. However, identification is not simply equivalence. In actual development ongoing involvement with parents supports a sense of continuity and a model for learning that depends more on a sense of similarity rather than strict identity.
Normative Dreams, Typical Dreams, and Repetitive Dreams
Milton Kramer in The Dream Experience, 2013
The typical dream has been described by Freud (Freud, 1955b) as a dream that has an essentially standard manifest content to which the dreamer usually provides no associations; but if the dreamer does provide associations they rapidly become obscure. These typical dreams are distinguished from dreams with identical content, as typical dreams have affect associated with them and their counterparts do not. Understanding the meaning of these dreams requires the use of symbolic interpretation, a secondary, auxiliary method of interpretation. Freud believed that as many people dream the same dream, they must have the same meaning and have the same source. He presents two major examples of typical dreams. One is the embarrassed dream of being naked, scantily or inappropriately dressed, and not being able to get away. This occurs in front of strangers who don’t comment or notice the impropriety. The source is related to exhibitionistic wishes or behaviors from childhood. The second example is of the death of a loved one, usually a relative, associated with a feeling of grief. It has as its source the childhood feelings surrounding the Oedipus complex, the wish to possess the parent of the opposite sex to the dreamer and to remove the parent of the same sex.
Neurosciences and diseases of the mind
R. Paul Thompson, Ross E.G. Upshur in Philosophy of Medicine, 2017
Perhaps the most well-known, and controversial concept Freud introduced, is the Oedipal complex, named after the ancient Greek play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. In the play, Oedipus, the king of Thebes, unknowingly marries his mother. This results from his being abandoned when he was a child. Also, robbers had killed his father. Oedipus, prompted by the blind seer Teiresis’ revelation, came to believe that he was the abandoned child and that he had killed his father, and now was married to his mother. Freud used the theme of this tragic play to capture his view that children – and some individuals into adulthood – have a love and sex desire for their opposite-sex parent. The emphasis has been on a boy’s love and sexual desire towards his mother. A failure to resolve this leads to internal conflict and mental disorder. As this brief outline indicates, Freud had a complex and well-developed theory of the mind and of the stages of mental development.
Questioning the Phallus: Jacques Lacan and Judith Butler
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2020
This is clearly seen from Lacan’s remarks on the relationship between the paternal metaphor and phallus. During the Oedipus complex, the child appears to move from its desire for the mother to recognize the Name-of-the-Father. In so doing, the metaphor (and signifier) used to signify the Name-of-the-Father alters from the mother to the father. In turn, the structure of the anchoring point (the phallus) alters away from the mother (who is the phallus) to the father (who has the phallus). With this, the child orientates itself toward the position that has the phallus: the masculine. This appears to support Butler’s claim that Lacan’s schema is inherently patriarchal: Not only are the terms that Lacan grounds his theory in related to the masculine (Father, paternal, phallus), but the infant’s ability to use meaning depends upon the adoption of the Name-of-the-Father and the movement from the maternal to the paternal, so that rather than desire a signifier that “merely” is the phallus, the infant desires one that actually has it.
Queer Theory, Psychoanalysis, and the Symptom: A Lacanian Reading
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2019
The Lacanian return to Freud, like all good repetitions, leads me back to another problem: transphobia in the clinic, in psychoanalysis, in queer theory, and, well, everywhere. I know of trans* people who have been told by psychoanalysts that they are “delusional,” “psychotic,” that they do not accept castration and that they have not resolved their Oedipal complexes. (I cannot help but write that no one resolves the Oedipal complex, not even Oedipus (who kills his father and marries his mother)—this is Freud’s ultimate point!) The pairing of transsexuality with psychosis, originally set in motion by Catherine Millot (1990) in Horsexe, not only propels transphobia in the clinic, but forecloses upon other, more nuanced, analytic readings of trans- subjectivity. Despite what I read to be the seeds of a psychoanalytically informed analysis of trans- experience in the Three Essays, the sexist, racist, and transphobic uses of Freud’s original works are tragic. Indeed, Susan Stryker’s chapter is an important addition to the collection. She calls contributors to task for the sex and gender normativity, and transphobias, built into their works.
Fathers Don’t Cry: On Gender, Kinship, and the Death Drive
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2020
Let us now recall the mythical boy of psychoanalysis, Oedipus: Oedipus who supposedly desires his mother and fears his father, and in surrendering to the fear becomes a little gendered, law-abiding man. But if you think about it, the Oedipal boy enters the Oedipal triangle a little man already. When the drama begins, he already has desire, and is already in rivalry with his father. How does it get to be this way? The Oedipus complex is of course an adult male fantasy, a projection, if you will, of patriarchy onto children. When psychoanalysis developed beyond Freud and when women began theorizing, its interest expanded toward what we came to call the pre-Oedipal period: a time where it is assumed that the mother–child relationship is primary, a time that supposedly precedes the father’s entry into the picture, and with him the institution of civilized conflict between desire and prohibition. Eventually, there came to be in psychoanalysis two distinct discursive registers, mapping two seemingly distinct developmental periods. A gender-neutral, mother–child relations discourse, addressing life’s beginning, and a gendered, family-triangle discourse, addressing what supposedly comes after. The Oedipal phase and its corresponding discourse were taken to kick in once the child acquires the ability to desire, and to comprehend, or at least become subject to, more complex relational structures. How desire emerges, leading to the handoff from pre-Oedipal to Oedipal, remained undertheorized.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Psychoanalysis
- Phallic Stage
- Psychosexual Development
- Castration Anxiety
- Penis Envy
- Neurosis
- Identification
- Electra Complex
- Freud'S Seduction Theory
- Incest Taboo