Dr ali ahmad
Voter (50+ posts)
Sigmund Freud's Theory of Oedipus Complex
LONDON: Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, is a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a simultaneous sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex.
The term 'Oedipus complex' was first coined by Sigmund Freud in 1899 in The Interpretation of Dreams. It explains a boy's feelings of romantic love for his mother and jealousy and anger towards his father. According to Freud, the boy wishes to possess his mother and replace his father, who the child views as a rival for the mother's affections.
The name "Oedipus" refers to Oedipus Rex, the classic Greek play by Sophocles, which tells the story of Oedipus, who is abandoned at birth by his parents, King Lauis and Queen Jocasta. He later comes back and, as foretold by prophecy, kills his father and marries his mother before finding out his true identity. Freud saw in the play an archetypal dynamic being played out, and so coopted the character's name for his description of psychoanalytic theory.
According to Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages of development, Oedipus complex occurs in the third — phallic stage (ages 3–6) — of the five psychosexual development stages: (i) the oral, (ii) the anal, (iii) the phallic, (iv) the latent, and (v) the genital.
According to Freud, the child is born with a quantity of libido (sexual desire) that needs to be "cathected" or invested into objects to achieve satisfaction. If this libidinal energy builds up, it leads to frustration. According to Freud, at birth children are "polymorphously perverse," In other words, their libidinal drive has no particular object of cathexis. Children take pleasure from the stimulation of any part of the body. Later on, as part of the maturation process, the libido chooses specific objects, passing through several stages associated with different parts of the body.
The oral stage is the stage when the infant's mouth on the mother's breast is the primary focus of the libido. Whilst the primary aim of feeding is nourishment, the child also enjoys the pleasure of sucking.
The anal stage is the second stage at around two years old, centering on the anal zone, the ability to control one's own bowels pleases both the parents and, through either holding or evacuating, also creates a sensation of pleasure for the child.
During the third, or phallic, stage at around three or four years old, the object of libidinal cathexis becomes the genital zone. One of Freud's more controversial claims was that children discover masturbation during this period. At this stage, children of both sexes undergo the phallic stage. There is no difference yet between boys and girls.
Finally, at around five or six, the child enters into the phase of the Oedipus complex.
The traditional paradigm in a child's psychological coming-into-being is to first select the mother as the object of libidinal investment. During the male phallic stage, the young boy loves his mother and identifies with his father. However, as the libido becomes cathected in the genital zone, the boy's love for the mother becomes more exclusive and sexualized.
The boy directs his libido (sexual desire) upon his mother, and directs jealousy and emotional rivalry against his father — because it is he who sleeps with his mother. Moreover, to facilitate union with mother, the boy's id wants to kill father (as did Oedipus), but the pragmatic ego, based upon the reality principle, knows that the father is the stronger of the two males competing to possess the one female.
Consequently, the identification with the father becomes rivalrous. At this point, Freud conjectured, the boy sees the female genitals and surmises that she has been castrated.He fears that if he arouses the father's anger as a consequence of desiring his mother, the father might castrate him as well. This "castration anxiety" causes the son to retreat from his desire for the mother. The castration complex essentially ends and replaces the Oedipus complex. The boy retreats in fear from his desire to replace the father; he represses his desires and the Oedipus complex disappears. After the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, under the influence of infantile amnesia, the child goes through a latency period until reaching puberty.
After the repression of the Oedipus complex, when the boy renounces the mother as object, he will either identify with the lost object or strengthen his identification with the father, depending on the relative strength of the masculine and feminine tendencies in the boy.
The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on—in the form of conscience.
The superego, the moral factor that dominates the conscious adult mind, has its origin in the process of overcoming the Oedipus complex. Freud considered the reactions against the Oedipus complex the most important social achievements of the human mind. In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, a child's identification with the same-sex parent is the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex and of the Electra complex. This is a key psychological experience that is necessary for the development of a mature sexual role and identity.
The analogous stage for girls is known as the Electra complex in which girls feel desire for their fathers and jealousy of their mothers. She discovers the boy's external genitals and feels castrated and blames the mother, weakening the early cathexis. Her attention turns to the father and she also feels envy, what Freud called "penis envy." She desires her father and envies her mother, what is called the "Electra complex" after the Greek myth of Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who helped plan the murder of her mother after she cuckolded her father.
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Dr Ali Ahmad
Email : [email protected]
Date: 14 January 2016
Posted from WordPress for Android
LONDON: Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, is a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a simultaneous sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex.
The term 'Oedipus complex' was first coined by Sigmund Freud in 1899 in The Interpretation of Dreams. It explains a boy's feelings of romantic love for his mother and jealousy and anger towards his father. According to Freud, the boy wishes to possess his mother and replace his father, who the child views as a rival for the mother's affections.
The name "Oedipus" refers to Oedipus Rex, the classic Greek play by Sophocles, which tells the story of Oedipus, who is abandoned at birth by his parents, King Lauis and Queen Jocasta. He later comes back and, as foretold by prophecy, kills his father and marries his mother before finding out his true identity. Freud saw in the play an archetypal dynamic being played out, and so coopted the character's name for his description of psychoanalytic theory.
According to Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stages of development, Oedipus complex occurs in the third — phallic stage (ages 3–6) — of the five psychosexual development stages: (i) the oral, (ii) the anal, (iii) the phallic, (iv) the latent, and (v) the genital.
According to Freud, the child is born with a quantity of libido (sexual desire) that needs to be "cathected" or invested into objects to achieve satisfaction. If this libidinal energy builds up, it leads to frustration. According to Freud, at birth children are "polymorphously perverse," In other words, their libidinal drive has no particular object of cathexis. Children take pleasure from the stimulation of any part of the body. Later on, as part of the maturation process, the libido chooses specific objects, passing through several stages associated with different parts of the body.
The oral stage is the stage when the infant's mouth on the mother's breast is the primary focus of the libido. Whilst the primary aim of feeding is nourishment, the child also enjoys the pleasure of sucking.
The anal stage is the second stage at around two years old, centering on the anal zone, the ability to control one's own bowels pleases both the parents and, through either holding or evacuating, also creates a sensation of pleasure for the child.
During the third, or phallic, stage at around three or four years old, the object of libidinal cathexis becomes the genital zone. One of Freud's more controversial claims was that children discover masturbation during this period. At this stage, children of both sexes undergo the phallic stage. There is no difference yet between boys and girls.
Finally, at around five or six, the child enters into the phase of the Oedipus complex.
The traditional paradigm in a child's psychological coming-into-being is to first select the mother as the object of libidinal investment. During the male phallic stage, the young boy loves his mother and identifies with his father. However, as the libido becomes cathected in the genital zone, the boy's love for the mother becomes more exclusive and sexualized.
The boy directs his libido (sexual desire) upon his mother, and directs jealousy and emotional rivalry against his father — because it is he who sleeps with his mother. Moreover, to facilitate union with mother, the boy's id wants to kill father (as did Oedipus), but the pragmatic ego, based upon the reality principle, knows that the father is the stronger of the two males competing to possess the one female.
Consequently, the identification with the father becomes rivalrous. At this point, Freud conjectured, the boy sees the female genitals and surmises that she has been castrated.He fears that if he arouses the father's anger as a consequence of desiring his mother, the father might castrate him as well. This "castration anxiety" causes the son to retreat from his desire for the mother. The castration complex essentially ends and replaces the Oedipus complex. The boy retreats in fear from his desire to replace the father; he represses his desires and the Oedipus complex disappears. After the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, under the influence of infantile amnesia, the child goes through a latency period until reaching puberty.
After the repression of the Oedipus complex, when the boy renounces the mother as object, he will either identify with the lost object or strengthen his identification with the father, depending on the relative strength of the masculine and feminine tendencies in the boy.
The super-ego retains the character of the father, while the more powerful the Oedipus complex was and the more rapidly it succumbed to repression (under the influence of authority, religious teaching, schooling and reading), the stricter will be the domination of the super-ego over the ego later on—in the form of conscience.
The superego, the moral factor that dominates the conscious adult mind, has its origin in the process of overcoming the Oedipus complex. Freud considered the reactions against the Oedipus complex the most important social achievements of the human mind. In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, a child's identification with the same-sex parent is the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex and of the Electra complex. This is a key psychological experience that is necessary for the development of a mature sexual role and identity.
The analogous stage for girls is known as the Electra complex in which girls feel desire for their fathers and jealousy of their mothers. She discovers the boy's external genitals and feels castrated and blames the mother, weakening the early cathexis. Her attention turns to the father and she also feels envy, what Freud called "penis envy." She desires her father and envies her mother, what is called the "Electra complex" after the Greek myth of Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, who helped plan the murder of her mother after she cuckolded her father.
......................................................
......................................................
Dr Ali Ahmad
Email : [email protected]
Date: 14 January 2016
Posted from WordPress for Android
Last edited by a moderator:
