The role of pre‐oedipal and oedipal factors in psychic life

Abstract

The Oedipus complex, a basic concept in Freudian theory, is an essential factor in the constitution of the human subject. It plays a key role in the structuring of the personality and in the orientation of desire. It is the oedipal triangular structure that precedes the pre‐oedipal situation (in a logical, not chronological, order), and not vice versa. The oedipal structure exists before the infant's biological birth. It is present in the parents' desires and identifi cations, which inexorably fall upon each subject. That is why the author believes that it is necessary to leave behind a solipsistic reading of the nuclear complex of neuroses‐a reading that is based solely on Oedipus's drive nucleus‐and take a joint and comprehensive view of Laius's and Jocasta's histories and traumatic experiences, which were invested in their son. Among these three vertices, a dynamic set of forces emerges whereby a basic, original unconscious fi eld phantasy is created that bears a unique narrative and an invisible and hermetic web made of passions and beliefs, scandals and secrets. This phantasy gives shape to an unrepeatable oedipal structure in each subject, a structure that articulates with the effects of the narcissistic and fraternal dynamic and may determine the subject's fate. This paper develops the following issues: 1) Oedipus, victimizer or victim? 2) the generational confrontation as dynamic fi eld; and 3) neuroses with a preponderance of dualistic relationships.