The Psychological Concepts of Oedipus Complex - Essay Example

A dream in their very early years made drastic changes in his life. He had a dream that he enjoyed an evening with his mother in a nearby park. Though he has often visited the park with his mother and father, he found nothing more than just a visit. But later, it has given him greater passion and pleasure to go to the park with his mother than he felt in visiting with his father. The dream’s effect was more evident when he felt that his mother should always accompany him to school. Their mother was that times more than his friends around, and he found proud to go to school hanging on his mother’s hand.

Why couldn’t he find pleasure to go to school with his father as he found it with his mother? It was, perhaps, a question he asked himself several times. He had no answers, until when he was interviewed and debated about Oedipus Complex. He remembered that he obeyed his mother more and he went outside in childhood times along with his mother more than he did with his father. Some family people around his house called him ‘mother’s boy’ as he couldn’t get away from his mother even a single night.

He felt it surprising when I told him that all of us, as is the case of our fate, direct our sexual impulse toward our mother and our first hatred as well as our first murderous wish against our father (Freud, p. 478). According to the psychoanalytic theory, there is usually a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex, and the infant or child unknowingly is influenced by a sense of rivalry with his parent of the same sex.

Did you have the same sorts of dreams thereafter? My friend tried to remember any such dreams thereafter, but he didn’t seem to have such dreams. As he is so grown up now, he has no such feelings except he feels anxiety about the past remembrance. In my interview with him, I observed that he developed a true sexual object-cathexis with his mother. He realized that his father was standing between him and his mother and he tried to replace his father (Palacios, p. 51).
How do you love your mother and what specific aspects or images or objects come to your mind when you think of your mother? Though my friend felt it was quite a straightforward question, his answer showed me that Oedipus Complex that a child develops in early childhood can impact his life-long. When he thinks of his mother, talks about her love and affection for him, and goes with her in his private car, his mind often touches the dream that he had several years ago. The dream, though little he remembers about it, still comes to mind as a still object.

Oedipus Complex, as Idema (p. 28) emphasized, erupts amid childhood and puberty revives many of the intense emotions associated with the original experience. My friend’s experience can be reckoned to be an example of the Oedipus Complex, but my concerns were the impact of his dream throughout his life and that he didn’t feel rival with his father. Sigmund Freud and almost all psychologists who followed Sigmund’s theory have stressed that the child would feel rivalry to one parent of his sex. Read More