Before explaining what, exactly, Freud meant by the Oedipus complex, one must first become familiar with the myth on which his now famous complex is based. Oedipus, who was the son of Laius and Jocasta, was a member of a family who had been cursed. Because of the curses of Pelops, Oedipus was destined to kill his father. Laius, the King of Thebes, went to the Oracle, and was told, “I will give you a son, but you are destined to die at his hands.” Once his son was born, he put a spike through his ankles and ordered him to be exposed. The servant was unable to kill the child; consequently, he brought him to a Corinthian shepherd. This shepherd in turn gave the child to the King and Queen of Corinth.
They named this child Oedipus, which means swellfoot, because of the injury to his ankles. Years later, at a party, Oedipus was jeered about not being the real son of his parents. He left the party and went to the Oracle. At the Oracle, he learned that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. Leaving the Oracle, he took the road to Thebes instead of the road back to Corinth. On the way to Thebes, he unknowingly kills his father. When he arrives at the gate to Thebes, he solves the riddle of the sphinx, and ends up marrying his mother. Once Oedipus comes to find he has killed his father and married his mother, he blinds himself.
Freud’s Oedipus complex is named after the Oedipus character in this ancient myth. Freud believed that the male child experiences the Oedipus complex because of strong, positive feelings developed for the mother. The child develops these strong feelings because the mother satisfies his needs. The father becomes a rival for the mother’s attention; subsequently, the father becomes a rival and the child resents him.
Freud developed this theory after having recurring dreams during his childhood. In these dreams, Freud’s mother was in a sleeping, peaceful posture, and two or more people with bird’s beaks on their faces were carrying her into the room. After carrying her into the room, the birdlike people placed her n a bed.
Freud free associated to this dream and discovered that the birdlike people symbolized death because they were like the Egyptian Funeral gods he had seen in the family Bible. The expression on his mother’s face in the dream was uncharacteristic of her, but very much like the expression Freud had observed on his grandfather’s face just before he had died. The figure carried into the room was a condensed figure symbolizing both Freud’s mother and grandfather. Further free association forced Freud to conclude that the dying grandfather symbolized a dying father, and that secretly he wished his father to be dead.
Freud then realized that although he consciously experienced love for his father, unconsciously he had been hostile toward him since early childhood. Still further free association revealed that the dream was sexual in nature. One of the things that led Freud to this conclusion was that in German, the word for sexual intercourse and the word for bird were very similar. The birdlike people, then, were also a condensed symbol, representing both death and sex. Freud concluded that because his mother had been his greatest source of sensual pleasure when he had first had the dream, she was the object of his sexual desire.
This concept plays a major role in Freud’s theory on religion. Freud believed that primitive religion began when brothers of a clan killed their father to possess the women of the clan. From the ensuing sense of guilt and sin emerges the conception of God as a Father who must be appeased and to whom atonement must be made. In fact, according to Freud, the Oedipus complex has inspired the beginning of not only religion, but also of all ethics, art and society.
To Freud, the killing of the father is a manifestation of the Oedipus complex.
“They hated their father, who presented such a formidable obstacle to their craving for power and their sexual desires; but they loved and admired him too. After they had got rid of him, had satisfied their hatred and had put into effect their wish to identify themselves with him, the affection which had all this time been pushed under was bound to make itself felt. It did so in the form of remorse. A sense of guilt made its appearance, which in this instance coincided with the remorse felt by the whole group. The dead father became stronger than the living one had been-for events took the course we so often see them follow in human affairs to this day .”(Totem, p. 177)
The brothers were jealous because the father, as the head of the clan, had all of the women. The other males of the clan were not allowed to have sexual relations with any of the women, and this caused them to be envious of the father. The males of the clan had desires for the women of the clan, who could all conceivably be their mothers.
Consciously, the brothers felt love for their fathers, while unconsciously the wanted him dead. After the death of the father, they felt a deep sense of guilt. This guilt was the principle reason for the creation of totemism. In the totem religion, the totem animal is worshiped and is the “father”.
If the totem animal is the father, then the two principal ordinances of totemism, the two taboo prohibitions which constitute its core-not to kill the totem and not to have sexual relations with a woman of the same totem-coincide in their content with the two crimes of Oedipus, who killed his father and married his mother, as well as with the two primal wishes of the children, the insufficient repression on the re-awakening of which forms the nucleus of perhaps every psychoneurosis.” (Totem p. 163)
The incest taboo that Freud constantly refers to, can be directly related to the myth from which he derives this complex. Incest was a great fear to the ancient Greeks. Oedipus stabs his eyes, causing himself to go blind upon learning he has committed such a heinous crime.
“They revoked their deed by forbidding the killing of the totem, the substitute for their father; and they renounced its fruits by resigning their claim to the women who had now been set free. They thus created out of their filial sense of guilt the two fundamental taboos of totemism, which for that very reason inevitably corresponded to the two repressed wishes of the Oedipus Complex. Whoever contravened those taboos became guilty of the only two crimes with which primitive society concerned itself.” (Totem p. 178)
Freud’s theory also plays on guilt; guilt is the reason for the beginning of religion.
“The claim of totemism to be regarded as a first attempt at a religion is based on the first of these two taboos-that upon taking the life of the first totem animal. The animal struck the sons as a natural and obvious substitute for their father; but the treatment of it which they found imposed on themselves expressed more than the need to exhibit their remorse. They could attempt, in their relation to this surrogate father, to allay their burning sense of guilt, to bring about a kind of reconciliation with their father. The totemic system was, as it were, a covenant with their father, in which he promised them everything that a childish imagination may expect from a father-protection, care and indulgence-while on their side they undertook to respect his life, that is to say, not to repeat the deed which had brought destruction on their real father. Totemism, moreover, contained an attempt at self-justification: ‘If our father had treated us in the way the totem does, we should never have felt tempted to kill him.’ In this fashion totemism helped to smooth things over and to make it possible to forget the event to which it owed its origin.” (Totem p. 180)
This is where Freud does not follow the myth so closely. Oedipus kills his father unknowingly, while the sons do it with the full knowledge that it is their father that they are killing. Because of intense guilt, the sons begin worshipping a totem animal. As time progressed, the guilt for killing their father becomes further and further removed.
“Totemic religion arose from the filial sense of guilt, in an attempt to allay that feeling and to appease the father by deferred obedience to him. All later religions are seen to be attempts at solving the same problem. They vary according tot eh stage of civilization at which they arise and according to the methods which they adopt; but all have the same end in view and are reactions to the same great event with which civilization began and which, since it occurred, has not allowed mankind a moment’s rest.”(Totem p. 180)
Freud’s theory of religion uses the Oedipus complex as a crutch. Freud bases his theory on the killing of a father and the guilt suffered after the murder. The killing of the father was supposedly due to the Oedipus complex, in some remote way. The parallelism of the Oedipus complex and Freud’s theory of religion can clearly be seen by the observer. Although Oedipus does not know that it was his father he killed, once he comes to the realization, he punishes himself. The brothers punish themselves by creating totemism. There are many things which also stand out in ones mind, when looking closely at the myth. Oedipus did not kill his father because his father was a rival for his mother’s attention, nor did he kill his father because he controlled all of the women. All and all, the Oedipus myth had a tremendous impact on Freud’s work. One can also see the prohibitions of totemism in many Greek myths. Incest is taboo throughout all of Greek mythology, yet fathers are killed time and again.
