Oedipus Complex

From Encyclopedia of Sex and Sexuality

One of the cornerstones of psychoanalytic theory is the Oedipus complex, the name given by Sigmund Freud to one of the key psychosexual stages of development in boys. According to Freud, the oedipal stage of development is characterized by intense attachment to the mother and rivalry with the father. It is accompanied by feelings of guilt over these incestuous desires and a fear of castration as retribution at the hands of the father. Freud also formulated the more complicated electra complex in girls, in which love of the mother, the initial love object, dramatically shifts to love of the father. In girls the Electra complex is accompanied by the same feelings of guilt and fears of retribution.

The name Oedipus refers to the classical Greek legend in which Laius, king of Thebes, was warned that an as yet unborn son would kill him. When, Jocasta, the queen, gave birth to a son, the king ordered the infant to be left exposed to die on the side of a mountain. The infant was found and adopted by King Polybus, who raised him as his own son. As a grown man, Oedipus met Laius and slew him during a quarrel. As Oedipus traveled on, he came upon the Sphinx, who asked him to solve the “riddle of life.” As a reward for solving the riddle, Oedipus was made king of Thebes and married his mother, Jocasta. But the gods punished him for this incestuous relationship; in the tragic ending Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus blinds himself with the brooch used to hold together her queenly robes (see also Freud, Sigmund).