Essay from "A World of Ideas"- Freud: The Oedipus Complex

                In the anthology “A World of Ideas”, one of the selected pieces is Sigmund Freud’s “The Oedipus Complex”. Sigmund Freud, who lived from 1856-1939, is generally regarded as the father of modern psychiatry. He is famous for use of dream analysis and the unconscious in determining one’s mental state. This carried into the “Oedipus Complex”, a work about the repressed desires of infants.

                Freud begins his discussion by pointing out that the main difference between psychoneurotics and normal people is simply that the minds of psychoneurotics have not progressed beyond what he calls the Oedipus complex. Named after Shakespeare’s Oedipus who kills his own father and then marries his own mother, the Oedipus complex describes the desire that a boy has to have sexual relations with his mother and kill his father. Initially, such a claim would seem absurd and almost certainly mentally insane.

However, Freud explains how by appealing to audience’s innate (but subconscious so unaware) Oedipus complex, Shakespeare’s plays resonate with all. Another parallel is drawn with Hamlet, whose father has been killed by the very same man who is now with Hamlet’s mother. In an analysis of the play, it is suggested by Freud that he does not kill the man according to his father’s ghost as he represents the repressed desires that Hamlet had as a child. Freud describes that the criticism that “we couldn’t even dream” of such a thing is indeed correct; it is so monstrous that our mind does not prepare to defend itself against it.

Written in a spatial context based off of personal thoughts and old plays, “The Oedipus Complex” was written for the general public and perhaps more specifically to those psychoneurotics that he discussed, who were stuck at a sexual development many had when they were only infants. The main purpose was to describe to readers a phenomenon that he claims we are not made aware of, something present in what he calls our “subconscious”.

Freud certainly achieves his purpose through several devices. One of the most prevalent is his use of the royal “we”. This implies primarily that we as human beings are all the same and experience common ideas and moments. In addition, although this might seem generally accepted, his own personal additions to the piece add a lot of credence and insight into this rather complicated and unusual idea. For example, he anticipates the thoughts of readers and then attempts to answer them accordingly.