Freud - Complete Works (562 page)

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3399

   There can be no doubt that the
Oedipus complex may be looked upon as one of the most important
sources of the sense of guilt by which neurotics are so often
tormented. But more than this: in a study of the beginnings of
human religion and morality which I published in 1913 under the
title of
Totem and Taboo
I put forward a suggestion that man
kind as a whole may have acquired its sense of guilt, the ultimate
source of religion and morality, at the beginning of its history,
in connection with the Oedipus complex. I should be very glad to
tell you more about this, but I had better leave it on one side.
Once one has begun on that topic it is hard to break off; and we
must go back to individual psychology.

   What, then, can be gathered about
the Oedipus complex from the direct observation of children at the
time of their making their choice of an object before the latency
period? Well, it is easy to see that the little man wants to have
his mother all to himself, that he feels the presence of his father
as a nuisance, that he is resentful if his father indulges in any
signs of affection towards his mother and that he shows
satisfaction when his father has gone on a journey or is absent. He
will often express his feelings directly in words and promise his
mother to marry her. It will be thought that this amounts to little
compared to the deeds of Oedipus; but in fact it is enough, it is
the same thing at root. Observation is often obscured by the
circumstance that on other occasions the same child will
simultaneously give evidence of great affection for his father. But
contrary - or, as it is better to say, ‘ambivalent’ -
emotional attitudes, which in adults would lead to a conflict,
remain compatible with each other for a long time in children, just
as later they find a permanent place beside each other in the
unconscious. It will also be objected that the little boy’s
conduct arises from egoistic motives and gives no grounds for
postulating an erotic complex: the child’s mother attends to
all his needs, so that he has an interest in preventing her from
looking after anyone else. This also is true; but it will soon
become clear that in this situation as in similar ones the egoistic
interest is merely affording a point of support to which the erotic
trend is attached. The little boy may show the most undisguised
sexual curiosity about his mother, he may insist upon sleeping
beside her at night, he may force his presence on her while she is
dressing or may even make actual attempts at seducing her, as his
mother will often notice and report with amusement - all of which
puts beyond doubt the erotic nature of his tie with his mother. Nor
must it be forgotten that the mother devotes the same attention to
a little daughter without producing the same result and that the
father often competes with her in looking after the boy and yet
fails to gain the same significance as she does. In short, the
factor of sexual preference cannot be eliminated from the situation
by any criticism. From the standpoint of egoistic interest it would
be simply foolish of the little man not to prefer to put up with
having two people in his service rather than only one of them.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3400

   As you see, I have only described
the relation of a
boy
to his father and mother. Things
happen in just the same way with little girls, with the necessary
changes: an affectionate attachment to her father, a need to get
rid of her mother as superfluous and to take her place, a coquetry
which already employs the methods of later womanhood - these offer
a charming picture, especially in small girls, which makes us
forget the possibly grave consequences lying behind this infantile
situation. We must not omit to add that the parents themselves
often exercise a determining influence on the awakening of a
child’s Oedipus attitude by themselves obeying the pull of
sexual attraction, and that where there are several children the
father will give the plainest evidence of his greater affection for
his little daughter and the mother for her son. But the spontaneous
nature of the Oedipus complex in children cannot be seriously
shaken even by this factor.

   When other children appear on the
scene the Oedipus complex is enlarged into a family complex. This,
with fresh support from the egoistic sense of injury, gives grounds
for receiving the new brothers or sisters with repugnance and for
unhesitatingly getting rid of them by a wish. It is even true that
as a rule children are far readier to give verbal expression to
these
feelings of hate than to those arising from the
parental complex. If a wish of this kind is fulfilled and the
undesired addition to the family is removed again shortly
afterwards by death, we can discover from a later analysis what an
important experience this death has been to the child, even though
it need not have remained fixed in his memory. A child who has been
put into second place by the birth of a brother or sister, and who
is now for the first time almost isolated from his mother, does not
easily forgive her this loss of place; feelings which in an adult
would be described as greatly embittered arise in him and are often
the basis of a permanent estrangement. We have already mentioned
that the child’s sexual researches, with all their
consequences, usually follow from this vital experience of his. As
these brothers and sisters grow up, the boy’s attitude to
them undergoes very significant transformations. He may take his
sister as a love-object by way of substitute for his faithless
mother. Where there are several brothers, all of them courting a
younger sister, situations of hostile rivalry, which are so
important for later life, arise already in the nursery. A little
girl may find in her elder brother a substitute for her father who
no longer takes an affectionate interest in her as he did in her
earliest years. Or she may take a younger sister as a substitute
for the baby she has vainly wished for from her father.

   This and very much else of a
similar nature will be shown to you by the direct observation of
children and by the consideration of clearly retained memories from
childhood uninfluenced by analysis. From this you will conclude
among other things that the position of a child in the family order
is a factor of extreme importance in determining the shape of his
later life and should deserve consideration in every life-history.
But, what is more important, in view of this information which can
be so easily obtained, you will not be able to recall without a
smile the pronouncements of science in explanation of the
prohibition of incest. There is no end to what has been invented on
the subject. It has been said that sexual inclination is diverted
from members of the same family who are of the opposite sex by the
fact of having lived together from childhood; or, again, that a
biological purpose of avoiding inbreeding is represented
psychically by an innate horror of incest. In all this the fact is
entirely overlooked that such an inexorable prohibition of it in
law and custom would not be needed if there were any reliable
natural barriers against the temptation to incest. The truth is
just the opposite. A human being’s first choice of an object
is regularly an incestuous one, aimed, in the case of the male, at
his mother and sister; and it calls for the severest prohibitions
to deter this persistent infantile tendency from realization. Among
the primitive races still living to-day, among savages, the
prohibitions against incest are even very much stricter than among
ourselves, and Theodor Reik has only recently shown in a brilliant
work that the puberty rites of savages, which represent a re-birth,
have the sense of releasing the boy from his incestuous bond with
his mother and of reconciling him with his father.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3401

   Mythology will teach you that
incest, which is supposed to be so much detested by humans, is
unhesitatingly allowed to the gods. And you may learn from ancient
history that incestuous sister marriage was a sanctified injunction
upon the person of the Ruler (among the Egyptian Pharaohs and the
Incas of Peru). What was in question was thus a privilege forbidden
to the common herd.

   Mother-incest was one of the
crimes of Oedipus, parricide was the other. It may be remarked in
passing that they are also the two great crimes proscribed by
totemism, the first socio-religious institution of mankind.

   But let us now turn from the
direct observation of children to the analytic examination of
adults who have become neurotic. What help does analysis give
towards a further knowledge of the Oedipus complex? That can be
answered in a word. Analysis confirms all that the legend
describes. It shows that each of these neurotics has himself been
an Oedipus or, what comes to the same thing, has, as a reaction to
the complex, become a Hamlet. The analytic account of the Oedipus
complex is, of course, a magnification and coarsening of the
infantile sketch. The hatred of the father, the death-wishes
against him, are no longer hinted at timidly, the affection for the
mother admits that its aim is to possess her as a woman. Should we
really attribute such blatant and extreme emotional impulses to the
tender years of childhood, or is analysis deceiving us by an
admixture of some new factor? It is not hard to find one. Whenever
someone gives an account of a past event, even if he is a
historian, we must take into account what he unintentionally puts
back into the past from the present or from some intermediate time,
thus falsifying his picture of it. In the case of a neurotic it is
even a question whether this putting back is an entirely
unintentional one; later on we shall have to discover reasons for
this and have to do justice in general to the fact of
‘retrospective phantasying’. We can easily see, too,
that hatred of the father is reinforced by a number of factors
arising from later times and circumstances and that the sexual
desires towards the mother are cast into forms which must have been
alien as yet to a child. But it would be a vain effort to seek to
explain the whole Oedipus complex by retrospective phantasying and
to attach it to later times. Its infantile core and more or less of
its accessories remain as they were confirmed by the direct
observation of children.

Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis

3402

   The clinical fact which meets us
behind the form of the Oedipus complex as it is established by
analysis is of the highest practical significance. We learn that at
puberty, when the sexual instinct first makes its demands in full
strength, the old familiar incestuous objects are taken up again
and freshly cathected with libido. The infantile object-choice was
only a feeble one, but it was a prelude, pointing the direction for
the object-choice at puberty. At this point, then, very intense
emotional processes come into play, following the direction of the
Oedipus complex or reacting against it, processes which, however,
since their premisses have become intolerable, must to a large
extent remain apart from consciousness. From this time onwards, the
human individual has to devote himself to the great task of
detaching himself from his parents, and not until that task is
achieved can he cease to be a child and become a member of the
social community. For the son this task consists in detaching his
libidinal wishes from his mother and employing them for the choice
of a real outside love-object, and in reconciling himself with his
father if he has remained in opposition to him, or in freeing
himself from his pressure if, as a reaction to his infantile
rebelliousness, he has become subservient to him. These tasks are
set to everyone; and it is remarkable how seldom they are dealt
with in an ideal manner - that is, in one which is correct both
psychologically and socially. By neurotics, however, no solution at
all is arrived at: the son remains all his life bowed beneath his
father’s authority and he is unable to transfer his libido to
an outside sexual object. With the relationship changed round, the
same fate can await the daughter. In this sense the Oedipus complex
may justly be regarded as the nucleus of the neuroses.

   As you may imagine, Gentlemen, I
have passed very cursorily over a great number of considerations of
both practical and theoretical importance connected with the
Oedipus complex. Nor shall I enter into its variations or its
possible reversal. Among its remoter connections I will only give
you a further hint that it has turned out to have a highly
important effect on literary production. In a valuable work Otto
Rank has shown that dramatists of every period have chosen their
material in the main from the Oedipus and incest complex and its
variations and disguises. Nor should it be allowed to pass
unnoticed that the two criminal wishes of the Oedipus complex were
recognized as the true representatives of the uninhibited life of
the instincts long before the time of psycho-analysis. Among the
writings of the Encyclopaedist Diderot you will find a celebrated
dialogue,
Le neveu Rameau
, which was rendered into German by
no less a person than Goethe. There you may read this remarkable
sentence: ‘Si le petit sauvage était abandonné
à lui-même, qu’il conservât toute son
imbécillité, et qu’il réunît au
peu de raison de l’enfant au berceau la violence des passions
de l’homme de trente ans, il tordrait le col à son
père et coucherait avec sa mère.’¹

   But there is something else that
I cannot pass by. The reminder of dreams given to us by the mother
and wife of Oedipus must not be allowed to remain fruitless. Do you
recall the out come of our dream-analyses - how the wishes that
construct dreams are so often of a perverse or incestuous nature or
reveal an unsuspected hostility to those who are nearest and
dearest to the dreamer? At that time we gave no explanation of the
origin of these evil impulses. Now you can find it for yourselves.
They are allocations of the libido and object-cathexes which date
from early infancy and have long since been abandoned as far as
conscious life is concerned, but which prove still to be present at
night-time and to be capable of functioning in a certain sense.
Since, however, everyone, and not only neurotics, experiences these
perverse, incestuous and murderous dreams, we may conclude that
people who are normal to-day have passed along a path of
development that has led through the perversions and
object-cathexes of the Oedipus complex, that that is the path of
normal development and that neurotics merely exhibit to us in a
magnified and coarsened form what the analysis of dreams reveals to
us in healthy people as well. And this is one of the reasons why I
dealt with the study of dreams before that of neurotic
symptoms.