Oedipal Allen


I think that it is so incredibly interesting to see how certain things in our childhood can effect and shape who we are as adults. For example if your mother ate a lot of a certain food while she was pregnant with you, odds are you are going to like that food too. We are conditioned at a young age to be closer to our mothers than our fathers. After all, our fathers are primarily the ones who go out and work to provide for the family while the mother stays, for the most part, at home and raises the children. We spend much of our childhood with our mothers. Through breast-feeding, learning how to walk, talk and tie our shoes, our mothers are always there for us. Since we spend nine months inside our mother's womb growing, and developing, of course we recognize it to be the safest and most comfortable place. According to the Oedipal complex, we spend our lives trying to replicate that feeling of being in the womb, the comfort, the warmth. As we develop and grow up our motives change and our pursuit transforms from this innocent motive to a motive with a sexual drive behind it. We become envious of our fathers for being able to share that intimate act of love with our mothers and therefore have to eliminate him in order for our motives and pursuits to be fulfilled. I can understand where one would argue this explanation in defense for a character like Oedipus' action of killing his father and uniting with his mother. I can understand why boys mature into men who become jealous of what their fathers get to share with their mothers; however, my question is then do girls develop into women who envy the intimacy that their mothers share with their fathers? If so why is this because the father does not carry the daughter inside of him during the pregnancy period and isn't it the mother who is most present during the early "oedipal phase" which consists of libidinal and ego development?

No comments:

Post a Comment