The Dawn of the Oedipus Complex: A Tale of Two Letters

2021 ◽  
pp. 57-72
Author(s):  
Harold Blum
Keyword(s):  
1987 ◽  
Vol 32 (9) ◽  
pp. 832-832
Author(s):  
No authorship indicated
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-187
Author(s):  
Herman Westerink ◽  
Philippe Van Haute

Although Freud's ‘Family Romances’ from 1909 is hardly ever discussed at length in secondary literature, this article highlights this short essay as an important and informative text about Freud's changing perspectives on sexuality in the period in which the text was written. Given the fact that Freud, in his 1905 Three Essays, develops a radical theory of infantile sexuality as polymorphously perverse and as autoerotic pleasure, we argue that ‘Family Romances’, together with the closely related essay on infantile sexual theories (1908), paves the way for new theories of sexuality defined in terms of object relations informed by knowledge of sexual difference. ‘Family Romances’, in other words, preludes the introduction of the Oedipus complex, but also – interestingly – gives room for a Jungian view of sexuality and sexual phantasy. ‘Family Romances’ is thus a good illustration of the complex way in which Freud's theories of sexuality developed through time.


2018 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 184-197
Author(s):  
Claudia Jacobi

Abstract Literary criticism has mentioned some affinities between Guy de Maupassant’s literary work and Freud’s psychoanalysis, without ever reflecting on Maupassant’s literary anticipation of the Oedipus complex. The latter is particularly evident in the short novel Hautot père et fils (1889), which has not received much attention to date. The article aims to illustrate some evident parallels between Maupassant’s literary representation of a father-son conflict and Freud’s scientific approach. In doing so, it does not intend to deliver a demonstration of the emergence of Freudian concepts from naturalistic fiction. It shall rather be considered as a literary case study, which illustrates the discourse-historical process of transformation from the physiological paradigm of naturalism to the psychological paradigm of the arising psychoanalysis.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRANDON KONOVAL

The figure of Oedipus haunted the thought of Michel Foucault from the outset of his tenure at the Collège de France, in association with several key philosophical and historical projects, and enduring until the conclusion of his career. However, it was with Foucault's account of an “Oedipus complex”—one that operated “not at the individual level but at the collective level; not in connection with desire and the unconscious but in connection with power and knowledge” (“Truth and Juridical Forms,” 1973)—that Foucault was able to enlist Oedipus for a genealogy of “sexuality” and, furthermore, of “governmentality,” such as would increasingly preoccupy him through the mid- to late 1970s. Foucault's attention to classical texts—in particular the Oedipus Tyrannos of Sophocles and the Republic of Plato—thereby helped to clear a critical pathway through the conventional Marxism embraced by the “repressive hypothesis,” and to arrive at a Nietzschean genealogy of sexuality and power.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-454

Sons and Lovers (1913) is one of D.H. Lawrence’s most prominent novels in terms of psychological complexities characteristic of most, if not all, of his other novels. Many studies have been conducted on the Oedipus complex theory and psychological relationship between men and women in Lawrence’s novels reflecting the early twentieth century norms of life. This paper reexamines Sons and Lovers from the perspective of rivalry based on Alfred Adler’s psychological studies. The discussion tackles the sibling rivalry between the members of the Morels and extends to reexamining the rivalry between other characters. This concept is discussed in terms of two levels of relationships. First, between Paul and William as brothers on the one hand, and Paul and father and mother, on the other. Second, the rivalry triangle of Louisa, Miriam and Mrs. Morel. The qualitative pattern of the paper focuses on the textual analysis of the novel to show that Sons and Lovers can be approached through the concept of rivalry and sibling Rivalry. Keywords: Attachment theory, Competition, Concept of Rivalry, Favoritism, Sibling rivalry.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Gekle

The history of mental development on the one and the history of his writings on the other hand form the two separate but essentially intertwined strands of an archeology of Ernst Bloch´s thought undertaken in this book. Bloch as a philosopher is peculiar in that his initial access to thought rose from the depths of early, painful experience. To give expression to this experience, he not only needed to develop new categories, but first and foremost had to find words for it: the experience of the uncanny and the abysmal, of which he tells in Spuren, is on the level of philosophical theory juxtaposed by the “Dunkel des gerade gelebten Augenblicks” (darkness of the moment just lived) and his discovery of a “Noch-nicht-Bewusstes” (not-yet-conscious), thus metaphysically undermining the classical Oedipus complex in the succession of Freud. In this book, psyche, work and the history of the 20th century appear concentrated in Ernst Bloch the philosopher and contemporary witness, who paid tribute to these supra-individual powers in his work as much as he hoped to transgress them.


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