The teaching of the Oedipus complex: on making Freud meaningful to university students by unveiling his essential ideas on the human condition.

Abstract

The author describes an approach that she has developed to the teaching of Freud's Oedipus complex to university psychology students (both graduates and undergraduates). The approach is based on the notion that Freud's theories become meaningful to students when they can find in them important and interesting statements regarding the human condition, and when they see that they can use these statements to gain a more in-depth understanding of seemingly simple concrete life circumstances and events. In the course of this description the author focuses on two basic statements that are embedded within Freud's comments on the male Oedipus complex. These statements go beyond simple portrayals of the Oedipus complex as founded on castration anxiety and pertain to love and fear and how we grow in our attempts to deal with their inherently conflictual nature. This approach entails a shift away from more schematic and distant forms of teaching the Oedipus complex as well as other aspects of the psychoanalytic theory that are common and problematic in universities today.