https://youtu.be/ABODEx4A9ms


The Oedipus Complex is one of the strangest and most counter-intuitive concepts in psychoanalysis. First formulated by Freud in 1899, and taking its name from the mythical Greek tragic hero Oedipus (who in the eponymous play by Sophocles unknowingly sleeps with his mother and then kills his father), it suggests that every child goes through a phase, normally between the ages of three and five, of physically desiring its opposite sex parent while wishing to do away with, or kill, its rivalrous same-sex parent.


Expressed bluntly like this, the Complex tends to arouse immediately puzzlement, ridicule - or disgust children aren’t generally to be witnessed expressing any kind of sexual desire and we are unlikely to remember anything in our own lives remotely resembling what Freud insistently describes as a universal truth.


However, the explanatory power of the Oedipus Complex is likely to increase - as is often the case with Freud’s ideas - the less literally we take it, in other words, the more we view it as providing us with an overall picture of the genesis of human sexuality rather than as a concrete event in a given child’s mind.


We might think of the Oedipus Complex as offering us a guiding narrative about how we come, through the varied experiences of childhood, to have our own distinctive approach to sexuality. The Complex shines a light on a range of questions - How confident do we now feel in our powers of attractiveness? - Are we disgusted or broadly at peace with our sexuality? - Do we think that other people are likely to reject or accept our advances? - How much are we intimidated by our desires? What is telling is that a huge range of responses are to be found here some of us labour under critical degrees of shame and terror. Others have no particular difficulty making our appetites known and acting on them in reciprocal situations.


Sex may be a source of exceptional joy - or the locus of boundless masochism and paranoia. With Freud’s ideas in mind, rather than imagining that we actually wanted to sleep with anyone as children, we might say that we went through a phase of exploring what it might mean to prove attractive to a man or a woman.


Importantly, we did so in the form of a game, one in which we no more wanted things to become real than we would - when we played pirates or jungle explorers in the kitchen - have wished to join an actual Caribbean drug cartel or a trip down the Amazon. Little boys and girls will, in a limited way, try out what happens if they attempt to charm mum or dad; at a given point, they might pull a highly endearing smile and say they want to spend the rest of their life with only one parent, or send the other one away or muse that it might be nice if they could have a little wedding ceremony with one parent only.


And here - for better and for worse - the games can unfold very differently according to the emotional maturity of the parent. In an optimal scenario, when a small child initiates a game, the adult will be exceptionally careful neither to shame nor to excite them. They won’t say ‘Don’t be so silly’ or ‘How repulsive’. They won’t get furious or punishing. They will be resolved enough about their own sexuality not to take fright at its first echoes in their child. They will notice what’s going on, smile indulgently and go along with the game just long enough for the child to feel acknowledged and heard. And yet they will naturally not do anything remotely seductive back. They will, with great kindness, ensure that the game always stays very much a game.


So much is, however, liable to go wrong. There are mothers and fathers too fragile internally to allow a child to flex their faculties of attraction; they get bitter or snide, dismissive or angry; there can only be one chief or one queen bee. There are parents too deeply swallowed up in cares and depression to allow themselves to be charmed. And then there are parents whose loneliness and confusion means they mistake a child’s game for some form of genuine desire for sexual contact - with all the obvious tragic life-long repercusions that ensue.


If we as adults have difficulties around sex, we might - with Freud’s Oedipal concept in mind - ask ourselves some of the following - How much did I, as a child, feel able to charm my mother or father? - Did they seem to take pleasure in my existence? - Were they angry, sad or simply elsewhere? - Was my same sex parent able to tolerate my games or did they respond with bitterness or bullying? - Concurrently, how much did my parents give me a sense that they knew boundaries and would stop any game when it needed to be stopped?


Freud understood that adult mental health depends on the early expressions of our desire having been handled with particular skill by those around us without excessive punishment or licence, without neglect or enticement, without anger or shame. The healthy adult is someone who can feel potent without being terrified or guilty. Their games went well; now their reality can follow suit.


Freud’s Oedipal Complex becomes a source of valuable insight once we separate it from its more literal formulations. It might show us why sex has ended up a lot more complicated for us than it should ever have been.



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내가 이해한건 프로이트의 오이디푸스 컴플렉스 이론에 의하면 어렸을때에도 섹슈얼리티(성적 표현? 성적 욕구? 성 지향?)가 있다. 따라서 어렸을때 아이들은 자신의 이성 부모로 부터 동성 부모를 제거하려고 한다. 이것을 부모가 잘 케어해 주지 못했다면 성인기의 성생활에 문제를 줄 수도 있다. 인데 디테일이 캐치가 안된다. 누가 설명좀.