Oedipus Complex in Literature Works

Abstract

In psychoanalytic theory, Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy's desire to sexually possess his mother (Freud.1900). In the course of his psychosexual development, the complex is the boy's phallic stage formation of a discrete sexual identity; a girl's analogous experience is the Electra complex. Freud first mentioned the Oedipus complex in 1897. After his father's death, he began to make self-analysis, then the formation of the concept. The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, it is the official presentation of the concept. Oedipus complex has always been a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory. In classical, Freud's psychoanalytic theory, the child's identification with the same-sex parent is the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex and of the Electra complex; his and her key psychological experience to developing a mature sexual role and identity. Sigmund Freud further proposed that girls and boys resolved their complexes differently — he via castration anxiety, she via penis envy; and that unsuccessful resolutions might lead to neurosis, paedophilia, and homosexuality. Hence, men and women who are fixated in the Oedipal and Electra stages of their psychosexual development might be considered mother-fixated and father-fixated as revealed when the mate (sexual partner) resembles the mother or the father. This paper uses analysis and comparison method, through comparing the prototype of the Oedipus complex in Greek mythology, the similarities and differences between Oedipus King and the literatures contain the Oedipus complex--Hamlet, Sons and Lovers, Thunderstorm and A Dream of Red Mansions. It discusses the main reason for the formation of their differences. It further reveals the Oedipus complex which impact on generations and promote the study of it.