Oedipus wrecked: Freud's theory of frustrated incest goes on the defensive - Sigmund Freud

Science News, Oct 19, 1991 by Bruce Bower

Poor Oedipus Rex. Twice he has achieved royal status, only to have the red carpet rudely pulled out from under him. First, as described in a play written by the 5th century B.C. Greek dramatist Sophocles, Oedipus triumplhantly ascended to the throne of ancient Thebes. Master of all he surveyed, the new king then hit rock bottom. Upon learning that he had unwittingly killed his father and married his mother, Oedipus gouged out his own eyes.

Much later, Sigmund Freud honored the tragic king by dubbing the central theory of psychoanalysis the Oedipus complex. Freud proposed that all toddlers direct their first sexual longing at the opposite-sex parent and consequently aim their first feelings of intense rivalry toward the same-sex parent. Healthy psychological development requires a resolution and redirection of these urges, the Viennese psychiatrist asserted. Dressed in his Freudian finery, Oedipus strutted into the 20th century and seized the imaginations of psychoanalysts, social scientists, artists, writers and other observers of the human condition.

Now, however, the Oedipus complex shows its own flair for tragedy, as it falls from grace among many of Freud's intellectual progeny and faces empirical challenges from psychologists and other researchers influenced by Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

"The Oedipus complex clearly has waned in popularity and credibility, both within psychoanalysis and within the culture at large," contends psychiatrist Bennett Simon of Harvard Medical School in Boston. Simon describes psychoanalytic "confusion and disagreement" over the Oedipus complex in the July-September JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN PSYCHOANALYTIC ASSOCIATION.

Evolutionary psychologists and anthropologists, who view social behavior as the outgrowth of evolution by natural selection, generally respect Freud's intellectual contributions but consider the Oedipus complex a misguided explanation of conflict between parents and children. Natural selection -- the preservation in a species of genetically based traits that best contribute to the survival and reproduction of individuals and their genetic relatives -- has produced typical forms of parent-child conflict that have nothing to do with incestuous desires, according to evolutionary investigators.

The Oedipus complex produced unease and dissension among psychoanalysts almost from the start, Simon points out. Freud first laid out the basis of the theory -- without mentioning Oedipus by name -- in The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. He then elaborated the concept in works such as Totem and Taboo (1913), in which he proposed that the little boy's urge to kill his father and mate with his mother stemmed from one or more incidents of actual father murder carried out by Stone Age men. Ancient homicides of fathers by sons -- an idea since rejected by anthropologists -- ushered in incest taboos, religion and culture, Freud argued.

In perhaps his most controversial Oedipal formulation, Freud described different paths of healthy sexual and moral development for girls and boys. Oedipal urges lead to castration anxieties in boys, who then resolve the dilemma by turning to the father for moral and religious guidance, resulting in a strong "superego," or conscience, he maintained. Freud made no secret of his difficulty in explaining female development, but suggested that girls experience penis envy, which creates anger at the mother and a subsequent turn to the father. Without the intense unconscious push males get from Oedipally derived castration fears, the female superego ends up weaker than that of males, Freud posited.

By the late 1920s, some prominent psychoanalysts questioned the alleged inferiority of the female conscience and downplayed the role assigned to the Oedipal complex. Freud's closest protege, Otto Rank, noted the "anti-Oedipal" tendency displayed by children trying to keep their parents together when divorce loomed, and cautioned against the rigid application of the Oedipus complex to individual patients. One current schools of psychoanalytic thought rejects Freud's assertion that the Oedipus complex occurs universally, arguing instead that psychologically disturbed parents sometimes stir up incestuous and intensely competitive feelings in their children.

Other psychoanalysts cast off conflict and sexuality as the prime Oedipal movers and shakers. For instance, psychiatrist E. James Lieberman of George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., contends that Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex" emphasizes themes of family love and altruism, not the hostility and fear described by Freud. In the play, Oedipus grew up with adoptive parents whom he dearly loved, and only left them when told of his incestuous and homicidal fate by an oracle, Lieberman observes. At the time of his departure, Oedipus did not know that the oracle's prophecy referred to his biological parents.

"Legal or biological paternity needs a human relationship to give it significance," Lieberman writes in the June HARVARD MENTAL HEALTH LETTER. "Oedipus really loved his [adoptive] father. The moral of the drama is that honest, loving family ties are the best defense against dire prophecy and the greatest security in an uncertain world."