Freud and the Oedipus complex
How convincing do you find Freud's description of the Oedipus' stage of development? The idea of infantile sexuality has always been central to Freud and very early he has started to work on a basic theory for the Oedipus complex: the desire for the parent of the other sex and hostility towards the other.The first name chosen is 'nuclear complex', then 'paternal complex'.It is only in 1910 that the term 'Oedipus complex' is first used. In a first approach that doesn't give a clear answer of the difference between the boy and the girl, by linking the Oedipus complex to the castration complex, breaks the symmetry between male Oedipus and female Oedipus and gives a real dimension to the psychoanalytic theory. But this difference in the psychic development of the boy and the girl shouldn't withdrawn the fact that for the boy as much for the girl, the first love object is the mother.Pre-genital sexuality is a major fact in childhood and adult sexuality is mainly based on it. According to Freud, the child has different stages of development before puberty; each one is part biological, cultural and shaping one's identity. He has widely written about the omnipresence during childhood of a sexual urge, essentially
But repressed desires and guilt are present in his consciousness; his parents threaten him with castration and this creates boundaries that he can't ignore. This is called the 'inverse Oedipus' of the female one. On the opposite side, for the girl, the complex of castration is a starting point. auto-erotic, firstly oral (the child is sucking his mother's breast), then anal (development of erogenic), and finally phallic within which the Oedipus complex starts to develop. It would be because the girl can't find in the father any feminine identification in which her Oedipus would resolve. This position which puts the father as an object of desire places the mother as a rival and object of identification. The game of the identifications leads to the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, given that the child forms his identity by borrowing different elements from his mother and father's personalities. For the boy, the complex of castration leads him to the Oedipus complex and represent an issue, an end. The process is therefore the following: the rejection of the mother as castrated, the desire to have a penis like the father and also to have a child from him. This part of identification to the father leads him to find like him a woman likely to 'treat' his penis as phallic equivalent. According to Freud, for the girl, the Oedipus complex never disappears and it has effects in the women's mental life. The phallic stage is followed by the complex of castration, the penis becomes the centre of game: either as a threat of imaginary castration as a punishment by the father, in the rivalry that opposes them for the possession of the mother; or as an imaginary castration in the case of a feminine identification to the mother, in a position of a passive submission/homosexual seduction of the father. " He shows his penis to his mother and meets the rivalry of his father, first a model, now a rival. This identification to the father also develops his 'super-ego'. These repressed wishes and fantasies would usually find relief in masturbation, which is an important stage of pre-puberty development.
Common topics in this essay:
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oedipus complex,
complex castration,
seduction father,
desire mother,
imaginary castration,
boy girl,
castrated mother,
hostility towards,
identification father,
object mother,
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Acceptance Essays
