Essay Title:
1
Introduction
Hysteria” (1895/1955), Freud was concerned by the role sexuality played in human
development. It was during his early work that he realised hysteric female patients
seemed to have unconscious incestuous wishes towards their father, were unable
their psychical internal conflict. Freud hoped to cure this by the therapeutic effect
of psychoanalysis: the talking cure. This is known as Freud’s first model of the
It was this realisation which led him to believe that sexuality was not just an
aspect exclusive to the adult life, since most of these patients showed evidence of
reality. This in turn reinforced his idea that sexuality also lies in the realm of
around the concept of the Oedipus Complex, its relevance regarding human
psychic development and why it became one of the central concepts for
still warrants a pivotal position within psychoanalytic theory, as Freud thought it did.
2
The Oedipus Complex in Freud’s theory
Freud introduced his ideas on infantile sexuality in his “Three Essays on the
sexual function beyond the genital. In this paper he described the organization of
libido (sexual energy) by postulating the notion of libidinal stage. This was
organization of the libido under the primacy of one erotogenic zone, namely, any
region of the skin or mucous membrane capable of being the seat of an excitation
main point in this work is the difference between the sexuality of puberty and
adulthood, both organized under the genital primacy, and the infantile sexuality
which will have multiple aims and erotogenic zones to support them (oral, anal and
phallic). This notion about childhood is also known as the thesis of an originally
1973/1988). In this sense, it is also necessary to bear in mind that these stages of
development are of a psychosexual nature, meaning that sexuality and psyche are
two faces of one coin, where libidinal energy and psychic development influence
each other and they are both necessary for human health.
Having these ideas in mind due to the analysis of his patients, Freud also
realised by his own self-analysis that he had feelings of love for his mother
alongside a jealousy of his father, which conflicted with the affection he had for him
3
In reference to “Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles, Freud developed one of the
concepts that until the present has held a pivotal position in the theory of
was not his father's son. Oedipus went to ask the oracle about this matter. He was
given a prophecy that one day he would murder his father and sleep with his
mother. Because of this, Oedipus decided to leave his city and never return. While
traveling, he came to the crossroad where Laius was murdered, and encountered a
carriage which attempted to drive him off the road. This provoked an argument with
the travelers and Oedipus killed them, including a man who matched the
description of Laius. Years before, Laius and his wife Jocasta had given their baby
(Oedipus) to a shepherd, in fear of the prophecy she thought had never come true:
the child would kill his father. Now Oedipus finds himself married to Jocasta.
In 1897, Freud wrote to his friend Fliess: “we can understand the riveting power
of Oedipus Rex (…) the Greek legend seizes on a compulsion which everyone
recognizes because he feels its existence within himself”. Later in his “Three
Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” (1905/1949) he stated that “every new arrival
on this planet is faced with the task of mastering the Oedipus complex (p. 226). By
this point Freud was convinced that in a universal way among humanity, we all
have sexual wishes towards our mother while being infants and that it’s a
4
The universal character of this prohibition and thus, of his Oedipus Complex,
made him theorise around the question of how most cultures have stablished this
elements involving the Oedipus complex such as the prohibition against murdering
one’s ancestors – the father or his representatives – and the barrier against incest
– against marrying the father’s wife. However, the Oedipus complex is not born
afresh with each individual or each generation, and this idea led Freud to put
Freud established the initiation of the phallic phase around the third year of life of
the child, entering the path of the Oedipus complex by the realisation of sexual
means children are aware of the anatomic difference from an earlier stage in their
lives, however, within the phallic stage the libido is organized under the supremacy
of this organ, which brings new meaning to the fact of having a penis or not.
It was not until 1910 that Freud gave the name of Oedipus Complex to these
ideas, appearing as a concept for the first time in his work “A Special Type of
Choice of Object Made by Men”, describing at first only the “positive” form of the
According to this positive form of the complex, the boy will be born into an
undifferentiated relationship with his mother and will develop strong feelings of love
5
for her. When the young boy enters the phallic phase he attributes an important
value to his penis. He will then fear its loss when facing the reality that girls don´t
possess one and then theorise this may be due to castration. The young boy
realises his father has a stronger sexual organ and that the reality is his mother
does not belong to him but to his father. In this way the father becomes a rival,
however the boy fears he will be punished by his father for desiring his wife, and
this may lead to his father castrating him. It is this castration anxiety that will force
the young boy to internalise the prohibition of incest and understand he will have to
wait, become bigger and stronger, and look for a female partner outside of his own
family. At the same time, girls are also born with a desire for their mothers and
when facing the fact that they have been born without a penis (castrated), they turn
against her for giving them a damaged body. This will force the young girl to turn to
her father who owns a phallus and make a rival out of her mother. The little girl
then changes her love object and searches for her father who has a penis to give
to her, wishing that he can repair the error her mother made. When she realises
this is not possible, she recognised her castration, gives up the desire for a penis
and by displacement she will now wish to have a baby with her father. For this
matter she will change the erotogenic zone as well, from the clitoris to the vagina,
during adolescence as a container for the wished for penis (Vega, 2015).
The threat of castration will then mean the entry into the Oedipus complex
for girls and its dissolution for boys. This, according to Freud, will have significant
differences for each sex in them building the structure of their personality, by the
6
“In girls the motive for the demolition of the Oedipus Complex is lacking. Castration
has already had its effects (…) it maybe slowly abandoned or dealt with by
repression, or its effects may persist far into women´s normal mental life. I cannot
evade the notion that for women the level of what is ethically normal is different
into the ego (Freud, 1924/1962a) by the realisation of being an excluded third in
relation to the parental couple and the repression of their incestuous sexual
wishes: “the object-cathexes are given up and replaced by identifications (…) the
libidinal trends belonging to the Oedipus Complex are in part desexualized and
sublimated and in part inhibited in their aim and changed into impulses of affection”
(Freud, 1924/1962a, p. 176-177). This will mean facing reality, being able to
develop a structured mind ruled by internal conflict, consolidate sexual identity and
their place in generational order (Pretorius, 2017). Therefore the formation of the
Freud (1924/1962a) also thought that the Oedipus Complex needed more
arguing that “if the ego hasn’t achieved much more than a repression, the complex
will persist in an unconscious state in the id and will later manifest in pathogenic
7
children will be able to enter the latency period, understood as that which starts at
the dissolution of the complex to the onset of puberty and where a desexualisation
Pontalis, 1973/1988). These sublimations will help the individual to invest in new
activities such as learning and peer interactions, both essential for the initiation of
school.
in terms of the relevance the way children face the threat of castration has for their
describe how it is possible that by facing or not facing the reality of being lacked
and excluded from the parental couple, the subject could end up developing a
neuroses would be the healthiest outcome from the Oedipus Complex because
neuroses involves the acceptance of symbolic castration and therefore, the entry
So far this essay has stated how Freud came to develop his ideas on the
Oedipus Complex and why it has been given such an important position within
sexual nature of the human being from birth and it has been a clinically relevant
8
attempt to theorise around the process within which all humans develop, through
After Freud, many other psychoanalytic authors have written about his ideas on
the Oedipus Complex to agree with them, criticise them or to provide additional
perspectives. Among the criticism made around his model, it has been said that
there may be a sense of determinism and cultural bias to it, along with current
London in 1926 and developed most of her theory in England, claimed to follow
Freud’s ideas. However, she came to be certain that the Superego was present in
the child´s psyche long before Freud proposed, and for that matter, the Oedipal
Situation had to take place before he thought it did as well. In this sense, for Klein,
the Oedipus Complex described by Freud was the final stage of a conflict that had
started soon after birth, since for her its “tendencies are released in consequence
of the frustration the child experiences at weaning (…) they receive reinforcement
through the anal frustrations undergone during training in cleanliness” (Klein, 1928,
Stage, given that she thought children were well aware of both sexual organs and
9
Regardless of Klein’s differing perspective regarding the Oedipal Situation, she
still recognised the importance of a resolution around these issues, in order for the
young boy and girl to develop. For her, the giving up of one of the parents is an act
of love and reparation reached within what she called the “Depressive Position”,
allowing the child to see his parents with both their good and bad attributes. By
doing this, the child can introject good objects; deal with the loss brought by being
an excluded third, and have a less severe Superego that now serves as guidance
(Stojkovic, 2017).
For Donald Winnicott, another British analyst who first followed Klein’s view but
eventually developed his own theory, the determinant would be the capacity of the
child to conceive his oedipal ideas as fantasies, which will depend on a good
enough relationship with his environment (real parents) (Fernandez, 2012). This
capacity to distinguish reality from fantasy will only be possible with a sense of
separateness of the child from their primary care giver, namely, the mother, which
can only be possible if his environment allows him the chance of facing reality by
Both these authors, however different they may seem in their thinking,
recognise the importance of a sense of difference towards the parents and the
necessity of an experience of loss and frustration in order for the child to continue
10
present. Contemporary Freudians including Rose Edgcumbe and Marion Burgner,
would address the importance of bearing in mind not only the phases of drive
development, but also the levels of object relationships these involve. In their paper
Aspects of Phallic Development” (1975) they acknowledge the fact that for Freud
phallic and oedipal came together whereas they believe a difference can be made
admiration of the object and the dominancy of one-to-one relationships, where the
triangular rivalry is not present, and the oedipal phase proper where this rivalry is
operating. This contribution involves the idea of two phases ruled by the same
drive organization, but a radical difference “with regard to relationships to self and
Conclusion
The importance of the Oedipus Complex as Freud understood it and thus for
psychoanalytic theory, is that it is given the place of being the one process through
which human beings come to develop a structured mind, a sense of sexual identity
and particularly, the internalisation of social rules, morality and empathy among
other aspects. In other words, a successful path through the complex transforms
This essay has also provided some ideas around criticism and perspectives
well as contemporary authors. This revision concluded that although the Oedipus
11
Complex has been understood in different ways by different thinkers, they all agree
most psychoanalytic theories, development would not be possible if the child does
throughout history and this essay has taken the stance that it still deserves a
knowledge and our current historical and cultural context. However, it still seems
necessary to consider that for every child to enter the social world, they must
months of life and see themselves in their lacked condition, in order for them to
build reciprocal relationships with others. This essay proposes, based on the
revision provided, that the latter is given by a progressive separation of the initial
dyad mother-baby, which usually involves a third, namely the father or any other
12
References
Dör, J. (1997). Introduction to the reading of Lacan: the unconscious structured like
Freud, S. (1949). Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, In J. Strachey (Ed. and
to the Psychology of Love I). In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.). The Standard
XI, pp. 163-176). London: Hogarth Press (Original work published in 1910).
13
Freud, S. (1955). Studies on hysteria. The standard edition of the complete
(Ed. and Trans.). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1895).
Sigmund Freud, (1923-1925): The Ego and the Id and Other Works,
published in 1924).
between the Sexes. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.). The Standard Edition of
Ego and the Id and Other Works, (Volume XIX, pp. 241-258). London:
Quinodoz, J. (2005). Reading Freud (1st ed.). In David Alcorn (Ed. and Trans.)
file:///C:/Users/fer/Downloads/PPCD%20Mod2%20Lec7%20OC%207.3.17.pd
f.
14
Sophocles, & Grene, D. (2010). Oedipus the King. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
from: file:///C:/Users/fer/Downloads/Kleinian%20view%20of%20OC.AFC.pdf
de Psicología, UBA.
15