Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The importance of repression
- 3 Thinking, speaking and repressing
- 4 Language, politeness and desire
- 5 Oedipal desires and Oedipal parents
- 6 Remembering to forget
- 7 Words of unconscious love
- 8 Repressing an oppressed identity
- 9 Ideological implications
- References
- Subject index
- Name index
5 - Oedipal desires and Oedipal parents
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The importance of repression
- 3 Thinking, speaking and repressing
- 4 Language, politeness and desire
- 5 Oedipal desires and Oedipal parents
- 6 Remembering to forget
- 7 Words of unconscious love
- 8 Repressing an oppressed identity
- 9 Ideological implications
- References
- Subject index
- Name index
Summary
Repression might be the basic idea of psychoanalytic thinking, but, as Freud developed his ideas, he became increasingly convinced that the Oedipus Complex provided the central theory. With the discovery of this complex, he believed that he held the key to understanding human behaviour. As he wrote in ‘Totem and taboo’, not only did the complex constitute ‘the nucleus of all neuroses’, but ‘the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus Complex’. All the problems of social psychology, he continued, were proving soluble ‘on the basis of one single point – man's relation to his father’. It was because of the Oedipus Complex, argued Freud, that the child becomes ‘civilized’. If humans did not undergo this experience as children, they would develop little moral or social sense. Thus, Freud made big claims for the Complex.
At root, the Oedipus Complex is a theory about the way that children acquire a conscience and moral sense. The Complex, according to Freud, explained the need to repress. Without a conscience, there would be little requirement to drive away shameful thoughts. Indeed, without a sense of shame, there could be no shameful thoughts. As Freud wrote in his essay ‘On narcissism’, ‘for the ego the formation of an ideal would be the conditioning factor of repression’. Only a person with moral standards – an image of the ‘ideal’ – can be offended by their own thoughts.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Freudian RepressionConversation Creating the Unconscious, pp. 104 - 140Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999