Hi there guys!
So this marks my first post about something psychological.
Probably not easing my way into this, as quite a few people who don't study psychology won't know how to pronounce the word "oedipus", and quite a few of us who are studying it still have a hard time simply spelling the word. Though difficult to understand quite a lot of the time, I find Freud's theories to be quite intriguing, and hope you guys feel the same.
Before jumping into the short story mentioned in the title, I'll give a little background. The Oedipus Complex is a very well known Freudian theory. Most people know about it and don't even realise. It is the theory that, put simply, all little boys love their mothers and want to be with them, and are jealous of their fathers. Not all that simple, as I will discuss a bit further in a moment (I apologise for any incorrect or lacking information, I am only a second year after all), but at least you'll know where the story is coming from.
The Oedipus complex is in conjunction with Freud's theory of infantile sexuality¹. Our infantile sexuality, is at the core of our psyche. It is something we do not lose with age, but instead learn to deal with using our own developed structures of the mind. Within this infantile sexuality, is a desire; also referred to as a wish. However, this desire or wish is not accepted in our society, or indeed psychological world. As we develop, we leave the stage of the Oedipus complex, and move on to that of the Super-ego. However, in order to do so we must learn to repress our desire. It must become the wish we wish we didn't wish. Essentially a desire we wish we didn't have. In order to deal with having this desire, we hide it from ourselves in the unconscious. We do this with one of the unconscious processes of the neurotic, namely repression.
This is where we begin to link into the short story by Frank O'Connor². The jealousy of the father figure in the Oedipus complex is simply a symbol of the restriction of desire. It limits the child's capacity to achieve his desire or wish. In actual fact, it is simply anything that takes the mother's attention and priority away from the son. It can be something as simple as a phone call. The boy has an imaginary fallacy, in that he presumes the mother feels the same need to only have her son. That she also feels that the world should consist of just the two of them. The mother of course doesn't feel this way in reality. She does usually give the son her undivided attention for the most part, but will inevitably be distracted by something that will limit his desire.
This limitation is ultimately what brings the child out of the oedipus complex, and develop them psychologically to the super-ego. This is where the child itself will set the limitations for the desire by using repression and making the wish unknown to themselves. This must be done for the individual to develop their infantile sexuality within their psyche. This is the structure we form and use all our lives to deal with this desire, and the limitations we create for it. Otherwise, individuals never pass from the desire for the mother. Their desires in life do not become their own, but instead become connected to the mother's and feel a need to always pertain to her desires and wishes, even after she is gone.
My Oedipus Complex focuses around this Freudian theory in the form of a story of a young boy called Larry. His father is away fighting in the First World War, and Larry is left alone with his mother. He has his morning routines of getting into bed with his mother and telling of what he would like to do that day. He goes for walks with his mother and more, and it seems they always spend their days together, the boy usually getting his way. When the father comes home for short times Larry doesn't seem to mind much, as it is never for long and never gets in the way of his time with his mother.
However, Larry's father comes home one day and changes out of his uniform. They go out all together and Larry finds his father less interesting without his usual attire and fleeting nature.
One night the mother and father are in deep discussion, and Larry tries to interrupt so he can speak to his mother. She tells him to be quiet, which he passes off as a remark she says when they have boring guests over and is being civilised. So he continues to talk, until told not to interrupt their conversation again. This is where the limits begin to set in.
The father takes Larry for a walk, and he doesn't approve at all of the way his father walks. He doesn't stop when Larry wants to, but instead when he meets older men about his age to chat. Larry was so bored by one instance that he began to pull and shout at his father to make him move on. Larry suggests that his mother would usually give in to him at this stage, but his father instead simply grins down at him, or says his poor behaviour if continued will result in being spanked. Larry says that he has never met a more self-absorbed man.
The scenes go on with Larry and his father continually finding themselves battling for the mother's attention. One night while being tucked into bed by his mother, Larry asks if got can take his dad out of the army, could he also send him back. His mother said the war is over, and God doesn't create wars, only bad people. At this Larry feels a little cheated and unimpressed with God.
After some time of not being allowed talk to his mother in the morning about his plans for the day, Larry gets very frustrated by his father's presence. One morning he intentionally kicks his father awake. His mother picks him up to bring him back to bed, which causes him to scream in protest. He ran to a corner of the room and continued getting his point across. His father called him a "puppy" and told him to shut up which shocked Larry. His father finally set down the boundaries and spanked his son.
Larry realised his father was beginning to win. He couldn't understand why as he thought his father held nothing that could make his mother attracted to him. He decided it must have something to do with being an adult and giving of rings. He resigned to biding his time.
Larry's mother soon had a second son which he thought he would love. In actual fact, the new born took up all his mother's attention, leaving Larry out on the lurch. He thought the child was over demanding and a show off. He would pinch his little brother while he slept during the day, which caused his mother to spank him. Larry felt his mother was doing far more of that since this new boy.
In contrast, his father was beginning to be nicer to Larry, until one night he awoke to find his father lying by his side in bed. His mother was in the other room trying to stop his little brother from crying. Larry realised that his father had been replace by the new baby, just as Larry had been replaced by his father. He felt sympathetic for him, and snuggled into his father's arms.
It is a quirky and clever way of portraying the development of a child through the Oedipus Complex. As we cannot tell the child's feelings during this stage of psychological develop, it is a great angle to interpret the story from. Also though simplifying, it is a very good way to remember the components that make up the Freudian theory.
I'll post a link at the end of the blog to a website where you can read the short story for yourself!
Well reader(s), if you've made it this far, thank you very much for reading my first³ blog post. I hope you enjoyed this. Don't worry, not all of my posts on here will be so confusing and long.
Hopefully my next blog will be up before next week, and I'll probably be talking a little bit about the Tet1 gene where studies have shown with increased function they can overwrite bad memories! Now that's pretty interesting, I think.
That's it for now, thanks so much for stopping by you guys!
Until next time, happy reading.
Jen
Footnotes:
¹ The explanations and examples given about the Oedipus complex and Infantile Sexuality will be from a male perspective. Freud first believed that it was the same psychological development regardless of sex, but later went on to state otherwise.
² I apologise for the somewhat winding nature of this post; psychoanalysis is a subject I can never seem to find a beginning or end piece of the rope, but simply a puzzling knot that seems forever unsolvable. Extremely interesting all the same.
³Really it's my second blog post. However, we can ignore the minor details.
http://www.cyc-net.org/cyc-online/cycol-0201-oconnor.html
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