By Lida Prypchan
In 1897, Freud began what may be called the most heroic act of his life: the psychoanalysis of his own unconscious.
The ancient oracle of Delphi, who said "Know thyself," has since ancient times led philosophers and thinkers to try to pursue this goal, but their inner resistance did not allow any to reach it as deeply as did Freud. The unconscious, the existence of which had already been speculated on, was still shrouded in darkness. Heraclitus's words still stood: "The soul of man is a far off land that cannot be approached or explored." It is not known all at once. It involves slow intuition. Freud senses that he needs to self-analyze himself in order to advance in his research. For three or four years his neurotic suffering increases, but in the end he achieves greater serenity and stability, which causes him to feel free to continue his research with unwavering energy. Two types of research arise that are closely related to his own analysis: the interpretation of dreams and the study of child sexuality.
As Freud progresses in his research, he begins to recognize, through himself, the basis of the existence of a certain child sexuality. He believes to have discovered that as a child he felt excessive love for his mother and jealousy of his father. His knowledge of Greek literature immediately reminded him of the tragedy of Oedipus Rex, which he interprets as an undeniable affirmation of his thesis.
Oedipus, son of the king of Thebes, Laius, and his wife, Jocasta, is the protagonist of this Greek legend, in which Oedipus kills his father, unaware that he is his father, and marries his mother, unaware that she is his mother, has two children with her and, upon learning that he married his mother, tears his eyes out. This act of pulling his eyes out to Freud represents Oedipus’s desire to atone for his guilt.
According to Freud, the oedipal stage occurs between three and six years of age, even in abnormal people. This stage is characterized by excessive love of the mother, jealousy of the father, who is seen as a rival, confusion as he admires and loves his father, but he observes him with jealousy, as a rival. The oedipal complex is resolved through the father and son becoming close in order to have greater communication and identification. By becoming closer with his father, the boy assimilates the image and behavior of his father, resolving his conflict.
According to Freud, all boys without exception go through this stage and drag certain reminiscences of the Oedipus complex into adulthood. But to the extent that this complex is resolved, the individual will find themselves closer to or further away from being normal or being neurotic. The Oedipus complex has to be suppressed. But while a normal person needs to make little effort to resolve this conflict, an affected individual will be forced to deploy most of their energy to fight it. Freud considered that the Oedipus complex was the basis for neurosis and the cause of much unconscious anxiety of guilt. It can be explained as follows: the child feels guilty about harboring contradictory and destructive feelings toward his father; this is accentuated since the child admires and loves his father; in his mind he fears that the retaliation from his father when he learns of his feelings will be to castrate him. The child therefore feels great anxiety regarding being caught and castrated, as well as regarding losing his mother and the love and attention of his father. Everything is solved depending on the relationship that the child manages to establish with his father. If afterward the father and son become closer, the child goes about resolving his conflict. While if there are family conflicts, the child will seek even more refuge in the mother figure and will distance himself from the father figure, the conflict remaining latent. The father figure is very important in this stage for the child, as up to that time the child only possesses a primitive conscience: he does what is right, if it goes against what his impulses dictate, only out of fear of punishment from the outside. Thus upon the child identifying himself with his father, he imitates, assimilates and absorbs the behavior, norms and prohibitions of the father, thereby forming his own conscience.
Freud, therefore, realized nonetheless that many of the difficulties in the process of development of a child, in an earlier stage, could be determinant regarding the subsequent solution of the Oedipus complex.
Achieving the adequate solution of the Oedipus complex depends on several factors. The innate formation of the child is important. Extreme reactions to the child's behavior during this stage tend to cause disorders. Parents who are excessively punitive or lenient with their children's feelings do not help them in solving their emotional problems.
Strict laws cannot be established on how to treat children in this stage of their development.
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