she wanted. He did what she demanded, but he also rejected her sexually.
There is another aspect to Robert's problem. His bodily rigidity must be interpreted as a sign that he was scared stiff. I worked with him long enough to know that it was true. But, he didn't feel it. Of course, being emotionally dead he didn't feel much. Nevertheless, it was necessary to find out of whom he was afraid and why.
Robert says that he was raised as Little Lord Fauntleroy. I saw him as a prince. His mother took the role of the queen. The situation would require that his father be the king, but he didn't carry off that role. Instead of being on top, he pushed his son into that position. The boy was to achieve what he couldn't. The prince was to take his place and become king. But, much as the father may have desired to see his son outshine him, it was only natural that he would also feel resentful and angry at being displaced and downgraded. When two males compete for the same female, the fight can be deadly. But a son is no match for a father and is terrified to make a real challenge. He must back off, admit defeat, and give up his sexual desire for his mother. He accepts psychological castration and, thereby, removes himself as a competitor and threat to his father.
The oedipal situation is now resolved. The boy can grow up and conquer the world, but on a sexual level he still remains a boy. Robert was aware that on one level of his personality he still felt immature, not fully a man. Emotionally, he remained a prince.
In a subsequent chapter I will discuss the treatment of the oedipal problem. First we need to understand the problem both as a cultural phenomenon and as the result of family dynamics. In the next section we will look at the Oedipus legend in some detail to see how closely these cases parallel the myth.
The Oedipus Legend
Oedipus was a prince, the son of Laius, king of Thebes. When he was born, his father consulted the oracle at Delphi about his son's future. Told that when the boy grew up, he would kill his father and marry his mother, Laius, to avoid this calamity, had the boy staked out in a field to die of exposure. Oedipus was saved by a shepherd who took pity on him and brought him to Corinth, where he was adopted by Polybus, king of Corinth, who raised him as his own son. Because his foot was inflamed from being tied to the stake, he was given the name of Oedipus, which means “swollen foot.”
When Oedipus grew to manhood, he, too, consulted the oracle at Delphi to learn his destiny. And he was told that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Since he believed Polybus to be his father, Oedipus decided to avoid the fate predicted by the oracle by leaving Corinth to seek his fortune elsewhere. On the road to Boeotia he was accosted by a traveler who ordered him out of his way. A quarrel ensued, and Oedipus struck the man with his staff, killing him. Not knowing who his victim was, Oedipus proceeded to Thebes. When he arrived, he learned that the city was being terrorized by the Sphinx, a strange monster with the face of a woman, the body of a lion, and the wings of a bird. The Sphinx posed a riddle to any traveler she caught. Those who failed to answer correctly were devoured.
Creon, who was ruling the city since the death of his brother Laius, had promised the crown and the hand of the widowed queen Jocasta to anyone who would free the city from the ravages of the monster. Oedipus undertook the challenge and confronted the Sphinx. To the question “Which animal walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening?” Oedipus answered, “Man.” In his infancy he crawls on all fours, in his maturity he walks on two legs, and in the evening of his life he walks with a cane. When the Sphinx heard this answer, she threw herself into the sea and was drowned. Oedipus returned to Thebes, married the queen, and ruled the city for more than twenty years. From their union came two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. Oedipus’ reign in Thebes was prosperous, and he was honored as a just and devoted sovereign.
In Greek mythology there is often some tragedy in the life of the hero. For example, both Hercules, the great destroyer of monsters, and Theseus, who slew the Minotaur, perished tragically. Among others, Erichthonius, who as king of Athens introduced the worship of Athene and the use of silver, was killed by a thunderbolt from Zeus. The hero's achievement, which is supported by one god, offends another. His superhuman exploit makes him appear godlike. The gods are notoriously jealous. The hero must pay a price for his hubris, since he is a mortal after all.
Oedipus is regarded as a hero for his conquest of the Sphinx. The Erinyes, as the fates were called, were lying in wait. A terrible plague ravaged the city of Thebes. There was drought and famine. When the oracle at Delphi was consulted, he said that the scourges would not cease until the murderer of Laius was discovered and driven from the city. Oedipus vowed to find the culprit. To his surprise, his investigations revealed that he was the guilty one. He had killed his father on the highway to Thebes and, unwittingly, had married his mother.
Overwhelmed by shame, Jocasta hanged herself. Oedipus put out his own eyes. Then, accompanied by Antigone, his faithful daughter, he left Thebes and became a wanderer. After many years he found a final refuge in the town of Colonus near Athens. There, reconciled to his fate and purified of his crimes, he disappeared mysteriously from the earth. The implication is that he was taken to the abode of the gods, as befits a Greek hero. Having provided a last haven for Oedipus, Colonus became a sacred place.
The legend relates the end of this unhappy family. Oedipus’ two sons had agreed to share the rulership of the kingdom alternately. But when the time came for Eteocles to turn the power over to his brother, he refused. Polyneices gathered together an army of Aegeans and laid siege to Thebes. In the course of the battle the two brothers slew each other. Creon, who then became ruler of the city, decreed that Polyneices should be treated as a traitor and his body left unburied. Antigone defied the decree out of love for her brother and buried him with honors. For this disobedience she was condemned to be buried alive. Her sister Ismene shared her fate.
Looking back to the cases of Margaret and Robert, we can see that their lives did not parallel the history of Oedipus. Neither was guilty of the crimes of incest and parental murder, despite the fact that both were involved in oedipal situations in their childhood. How they avoided the fate of Oedipus is explained by Sigmund Freud, the first person to recognize the importance of the oedipal situation and the significance of the Oedipus story for modern man. In the next section we will examine the psychoanalytic view of the development of the Oedipus complex.
The Oedipus Complex
Freud was drawn to the story of Oedipus because he believed that the two crimes of Oedipus, the killing of his father and the marriage to his mother, coincide with “the two primal wishes of children, the insufficient repression or the reawakening of which forms the nucleus of perhaps every psychoneurosis.”2 This nucleus became known as the Oedipus complex. Earlier, Freud had written, “It may be that we are all destined to direct our first sexual impulses towards our mothers and our first impulses of hatred and violence towards our fathers, our dreams convince us that we were.”3 If this were so, then the fate of Oedipus would be the common fate of all mankind. Freud recognized this possibility, for he said, “His fate moves us because it might have been our own, because the oracle laid upon us the very curse that rested on him.”4
In psychoanalytic thinking all children are considered to go through an oedipal period, from about the ages of three to seven. In this period they have to deal with feelings of sexual attraction to the parent of the opposite sex, and jealousy, fear, and hostility toward the parent of the same sex. The complex also includes varying amounts of guilt associated with these feelings. Otto Fenichel says, “In both sexes, the Oedipus complex can be called the climax of infantile sexuality, the erogenous development from oral eroticism via anal eroticism toward genitality.”5
It is important for our study to understand what is meant by infantile sexuality and how it differs from the adult form. The term “infantile sexuality” actually refers to all sexual manifestations from birth to about six years of age. The erotic pleasure a baby derives from nursing or
