Freud\'s Oedipus Complex

1 Pages 346 Words

I was interested when I found out that we were supposed to read Oedipus Rex because for awhile I was in a psychoanalyses group where we would talk about our lives and hear about other people’s lives. In many of those sessions the psychologist would mention the Oedipus Complex, but I had no idea what it was about. After awhile I found out that it had something to do with the son being in love with the mother, or the daughter with her father, or that a man look for characteristics in a woman that remind him of his mother.
While reading the play I had trouble understanding many of the words, so watching the play was crucial for my understanding. The only thing in the play that I didn’t like is how the facts start to come up, but it took so long for Oedipus and Jocasta to figure out what had happened. Teiresias tells Oedipus he is the killer, and Oedipus still does not remember about what had happened at the place where three roads meet. That for me sounds almost impossible.
Freud explains his theory of a child’s emotional conflict with the parents thus: “If Oedipus Rex moves a modern audience no less than it did the contemporary Greek one, the explanation can only be that its effect does not lie in the contrast between destiny and human will, but is to be looked for in the particular nature of the material on which that contrast is exemplified.” Furthermore, he makes another good point in saying that Sophocles’ work absolves men from any amoral responsibility and justifies the occurrence of the crimes as the gods’ will, as predicted by the oracle of Apollo.
Thus, Oedipus Rex is a prime tragic play that has been studied and deconstructed by many philosophers and thinkers such as Freud for the complexity and depth of its work, finding in it explanations for human behaviors. The play describes so well human nature and the inevitable fate of man despite the concept of free will....