The Oedipus Complex as a Termed by Sigmund Freud

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Table of Contents

Front of Card
Back of Card
Evaluation
Works Cited

Front of Card

Play: “Oedipus the King”, 430–420 BC

Author: Sophocles (497/496 BC – 406/405 BC)

Central Character: Oedipus, King of Thebes, who came to the city as a stranger after the former King’s death and became a hero after saving the people of Thebes from the Sphinx. He left his hometown to escape the prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother. He is a proud but self-sacrificing man who is willing to do anything to save his city from the plague.

Other Characters: Jocasta, King Laius’s widow, Queen of Thebes, the wife of Oedipus and, as it turns out, his mother; Creon, Jocasta’s brother and Oedipus’s brother-in-law, a loyal and morally-centered character;Teiresias, the Oracle who is asked to reveal the truth about the plague.

Setting: The King’s Palace, Thebes, Ancient Greece.

Narrator: The Chorus serves as the Narrator.

Events in Summary:

Oedipus, the King of Thebes, is asked by the priest and his followers to save the city from the plague.
Oedipus sends Creon to the Oracle to learn how to stop the plague, and Creon reports that they need to find the murderer of the former King, Laius.
Tiresias, the famous seer, is summoned to help, and claims that Oedipus himself is the cause of the plague; Oedipus accuses Creon and Tiresias of plotting against him.
Jocasta tells Oedipus about a prophecy that her and Laius’s son would kill his father and that, to escape the prophecy, they left the child in the woods; therefore, not all prophecies come true.
A Messenger arrives to say that Oedipus’s father is dead; however, when Oedipus asks about his mother, the Messenger tells that he was a gift from a Shepard and his parents adopted him.
They all realize that the Shepard was the same man who witnessed Laius’s death.
The Shepard is summoned and confirms that the prophecy is true.
Jocasta commits suicide; Oedipus blinds himself and leaves the palace; Creon becomes the King of Thebes.

Tone: Grave, as the sad and shocking truth is discovered by the characters; tragic and sympathetic, as the readers and the author seem to empathize with Oedipus and Jocasta.

Back of Card

Style: The dominant style is dramatic irony, characterised by the readers’ ability to learn crucial facts about the plot before the characters. While the main characters mostly use prose monologues, the Chorus chants its narrative using Strophe and Antistrophe structures.

Irony: The whole tragedy is ironic, as the plot revolved around Oedipus’s attempts to find the murderer of Laius, but until the very end, he does not suspect that he himself is that murderer and the cause of the plague. Irony is also manifested in the characters’ desire to escape their fate and the prophecies, which eventually come true for all of them.

Theme: Inevitable fate and free will.

Symbols: Eyes, both with sight and blind: being blind, Tiresias can see the evils that are about to happen to Oedipus, while Oedipus himself is blind to the truth.

Oedipus’s feet: pinned together when he was a child, they remained scarred for the rest of his life, symbolizing the fate’s mark and the constraints set on his life by the prophecy.
The Crossroads symbolize the fact that decisions made by characters have important consequences, and that, although fate is inevitable, different choices are still possible.

Evaluation: A powerful story that addresses a wide range of human emotions, from compassion and love to anger and a sense of justice. Thought-provoking as it makes the readers reflect on the matters of fate and free will.

Evaluation

Sigmund Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in the Moravian town of Freiberg in the Austrian Empire (now the city of Příbor, Czech Republic). In 1859, Freud and his family moved to Leipzig and then to Vienna, where he graduated with honors from the gymnasium. In 1873, he entered the medical faculty of the University of Vienna, graduating from it in 1881 and receiving the title of doctor of medicine. Because of the need to earn money, he could not stay at the department and entered the Physiological Institute, and then the Vienna Hospital, where he worked as a doctor. In 1885, Freud received the title of a docent in neuropathology and given a scholarship for a scientific internship abroad. In 1885-1886, he studied in Paris with the psychiatrist Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière clinic.

Under the influence of Charcot’s ideas, he came to the conclusion that unobservable dynamic traumas of the psyche can be the cause of psychiatric disorders. Upon his return from Paris, Freud opened a private practice in Vienna, where he used the method of hypnosis to treat patients. At first, the method seemed effective: in the first few weeks, Freud achieved instant healing of several patients (Kennedy and Gioia). However, there were failures as well, and he eventually became skeptical about hypnotic therapy. From 1896 to 1902, Sigmund Freud developed the foundations of psychoanalysis. He substantiated an innovative dynamic and energetic model of the human psyche, consisting of three systems: the unconscious, the preconscious, and the conscious (Kennedy and Gioia). Freud’s works had a tremendous impact on pre-existing ideas about the human psyche and the interactions between people, laying the foundation for the formation of new groundbreaking ideas and psychological theories.

Many of Freud’s ideas and theories are interesting and highly influential. For example, he claimed that most of people’s actions, thoughts, and behaviors are motivated by unconscious desires and repressed memories of past experiences. He proposed that many problems can be addressed by discussing these experiences and making them conscious through talk therapy. Freud also treated women who suffered from hysteria and were not taken seriously by medical professionals at the time (Hopkins). He used his ‘talking cure’ with different types of patients, from women with depression to World War I veterans with PTSD, and it was helpful in many cases (Hopkins). The visibility he created for his patients allowed convincing the medical establishment that many psychological disorders were real. However, many of his ideas seem harmful or useless at best; for example, he considered homosexuality to be “a developmental glitch” (Hopkins para. 4). In addition, it seems that Freud took the idea of the “unconscious mind” too far, ascribing deep meanings connected to sexual desires to everything. Moreover, he believed that one’s ancestors’ traumas had an ongoing negative impact on that individual’s psychology, which definitely seems incorrect and misleading.

The Oedipus complex is arguably among the most well-known ideas proposed by Freud. In its simplest definition, the complex describes a child’s desire to become sexually involved with the parent of the opposite sex, and their jealousy and hatred directed towards the parent of the same sex (Hopkins). It can be argued, however, that this theory is much more complicated, and requires further consideration. For example, in his works, Freud admits that both boys and girls are initially more attracted to their mothers, as she is usually the parent who provides the required love and care. Moreover, the idea of sexual attraction is not as straightforward as may seem. At the Oedipal stage, children want to somehow possess their mother or father; they want to get satisfaction from the parent of the opposite sex and spend as much time with them as possible.

Personally, I partly agree with Freud’s Oedipus complex, but I only consider it beyond the context of sexual attraction. However, I believe that young children at the Oedipal stage have not yet developed the awareness required to understand the concept of sexual desire and satisfaction. They might develop a habit to cling to a parent of the opposite sex. There might also be competitive feelings and jealousy caused by the fact that that the ‘favorite parent’ often focuses on their spouse, the parent of the same sex. Therefore, for me, the Oedipus complex is more about love and exclusion, and hatred that weaves itself into the triangle between the child and their parents. I also agree with other elements of the Freudian model; for example, the statement that the father is often the authority figure. Finally, I agree that the Oedipal triangle can cause many conflicting feelings of love, hate, and anxiety connected with the discovery of the child’s hostile feelings.

Works Cited

Hopkins, Jim. “Freud and the Concept of Mental Health.” Health, vol. 12, no. 2, 2019, pp. 251-281.

Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 14th ed., Pearson Education, 2015.

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The Oedipus Complex as a Termed by Sigmund Freud

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