Ideas In Psychoanalysis: Oedipus Complex

'Ideas In Psychoanalysis' is a series of essays which explain psychoanalytical concepts, their relevance to everyday life and their ability to illuminate the nature of human society and culture.

There is a period in development when little boys want their mothers all to themselves, and little girls want only their fathers. This phase is the Oedipus Complex. Freud considered it the immovable foundation stone on which the edifice of psychoanalysis is based, the "shibboleth that distinguishes the adherents of psycho-analysis from its opponents". Yet neither he nor the other main interpreter of the concept, Melanie Klein, ever wrote a full account of their mature views.

Robert M Young offers an account of the Oedipus Complex in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and in Freud's life, the claims made for it and debates about it - especially among gay, lesbian and feminist opponents who dispute its ubiquity. He follows with an exposition of current views about the relationship between the Oedipal triangle in the family and ideas of self-knowledge, insight and identity.