The Chinese totem of dragon and the greek myth of oedipus: a comparative psychoanalytic study

Abstract

By drawing upon Freud’s provocative interpretation on the psychological foundation of ethical and cultural development, I hope to shed a new light on the meanings and origins of dragon worship in early China and its intriguing analogy with the Greek myth of Oedipus. As I will demonstrate, the psychological condition for the Chinese dragon worship compares well to the psychological syndrome underlying the Greek myth of Oedipus. The two aspects of the Oedipus complex, namely the father complex and repressed incest wishes, boil down to the ambivalent attitude toward the father and the tabooed sexual object. They are both present in the Chinese dragon worship. As a conclusion of my study, I will present a unified interpretation on these two aspects of the Oedipus complex in the Chinese dragon worship. At the same time, I will also make out certain distinctive features of the early Chinese solution to such psychological syndrome that are beyond universal psychoanalytic determinations.