"Spectator" Conference for Personal Problems

The Oedipus Complex

[The SPECTATOR Conference offers to readerd a service of advice on personal problems in which they would like impartial help. The Editor has appointed a committee,- the members of which are themselves engaged in the practical work of life ; in one way or another they have met, and are meeting, a great variety of problems in their own experience. They do not wish to be regarded as authorities ; but they give their good will and their knowkdge to all questions which are referred to them. Readers inquiries are dealt with in strict confidence ; they are seen only by members of the Conference, and they are answered by private correspondence. Letters should be addressed to the Conference on Personal Problems, clo The SPECTATOR, 13 York Street, Covent Garden, W.C.2.] ONE of the most important concepts of modern psychology is Professor Siegmund Freud's concept of The Oedipus Complex. In many of the letters we receive we are faced with situations of great strain between children and parents, or between men and women ; and often our advice could be most brief and useful if we could rely upon an understanding of this motive. We may hold that Professor Freud has mis- interpreted his evidence. For daily use his concept is almost as dangerous as illuminating. Divested of caricature and set in its proper light, however, it is of the greatest importance.

Children are under the necessity-of learning to understand the world around them. As far as they are able, they must arrive at a judgment on all their experience. It is natural for them to see the relation of their fathers and mothers as the type of marriage and the pattern of adaptation between the sexes. It is the pattern, too, for their forecasts of their own lives. Father and mother are also husband and wife ; and it is from their adjustment that children gain the first and most lasting impression of what it is like to be grown up.

Many children feel endangered in the presence of this straAnge and difficult world. Often they feel that they can only be safe if their mothers are entirely at their own disposal. They cry in the dark ; they cry when they are left alone ; and they use their crying to summon support and comfort. Mother must be at hand ; she must be entirely their own. But Father, too, has claims upon Mother's attention and affection. The children envy his part in the home and regard him as an interloper. They conceive a wish to oust him from his position and guarantee for themselves an exclusive right to their mothers.

This is no fable. Such wishes rise naturally ; and in one form or other will probably be found in the experience of every Child. It may also happen that the wish, even in childhood, takes on the symbolisni of marriage. They reproach their mothers for having married father ; they wish to have them wholly to themselves, and it seems to them that this condition will be reached if father were out of the way and they them- selves could marry mother. The wish will plainly be all the more prominent where the father is of a dominating and assertive disposition. He has proved his strength by winning the mother for himself. The child envies his freedom and power, and wishes to supplant him.

In these circumstances the child often conceives death- wishes against his father and fantasizes a future when he is free to marry his mother. All the ideas, feelings, and experi- ences which centre round these wishes, Professor Freud has called The Oedipus Complex. It will no doubt seem revolting to many people to imagine-that such promptings may underlie the mind of a child. This is especially likely to be true with those who think that parents are only to be seen by children as unapproachable and divine ; and at the same time, by some extraordinary trick of self-persuasion, regard children themSelvei ' as wholly innocent, unworldly and—lifeless. PsychOlogical experience, however, has" almostalviays drawn out some such picture of childhood jealousy of the father.

This deSire to arrogate the privileges of the father is not accepted quite easily by the child. He feels that his aim is beyond him, and his fantasies are accompanied by deep feelings of guilt. They are dismissed, by the child himself,

as horrifying. He is so Shocked by his imaginings that he tries to put them out of his mind. They are not wholly resotved by such " repression." The child does not reconcile himself with his position any better by his feeling 'of guilt ; and discontent, jealousy, over-attachthent to the mother and hatred of the father may persist in other forms.

The Oedipus Complex then continues to work unconsciously in adult life ; and the whole situation may be pictured in terms of adult sexuality. A man may so far attach himself to his mother that he fears all other women, and can still only look to her for his model of married life. No one is as good as his mother. He will only marry if he finds a woman who is her equal. By his exacting demands upon the other sex he avoids facing his situation as an adult. Hand-in-hand with these abnormal impulses, of which, indeed, he is probably unconscious, goes a general withdrawal from life ; and, very often, a morbid self-reproach and brooding ; general shyness and hesitation ; blushing, stammering, and fears of punish- ment.

The same situation, when it occurs with daughters, takes a different colour. It is then the mother who must be sup- planted in the affections of the father ; and what is termed a

fixation on the father takes place. Father becomes the ideal man, and it is his qualities which the woman feels as the pre-requisites for a husband. This corresponding situation Professor Freud has named The Electra Complex. It is just as disabling for a life of adult responsibilities. If the father was harsh and overbearing, peculiar difficulties will arise a woman may then demand of her husband qualities of " masculinity " which she finds very distressing when her

fantasy is realized. •

To most people with experience of children, Prof. Freud's interpretation will seem, not so much false, as unreal. It is far more useful to see it as a power situation : the sexual clothing is always figurative. A man with an unconscious Oedipus Complex can only be given a better orientation to life when he sees that he has been measuring himself against the unattainable. He has been desiring to possess the for- bidden : and often the desire only occurs because it is so obviously forbidden. In other words he has been displaying infantile traits of obstinacy and greed. He has never yet learned to love in any real sense. What he calls love is only a demand to possess something that is denied him. Dis- interested affection, the affection which grows by giving and serving, has hitherto escaped him.

Men and women who are not sure of their own value fre- ' quently try to measure themselves by the apparent strength of their desires. They can then gain a double reassurance : first, that they have unusually strong and unmanageable instincts, secondly that the battle they wage against them is unusually heroic. By keeping up temptation and resistance they are able to avoid the real problems and tests of life.

With such people it is necessary, as Dr. Stekel has pointed out, to convince them of the harmlessness of their - fantasies which often only scare them and hold thein in check. They then use theSe childish fantasies in order that they may always possess a memento of their vileness, and they compare themselves with others, with the result that they become obsessed with a feeling of their inferiority."

For most men and women the crisis of growing up in soul is very difficult. For some the process is slow. Their illus.., ioas fall away over a long period of years, and it is only step by step that they learn wisdom. For others their awakening is sharp and catastrophic, They so far accumulate mistakes that fate itself seems to grow impatient with them and forces them suddenly to open their eyes. Some unfortunate people remain all their lives, in. the position of children, seeing. all their experiences in childish forms,, It is these in Whent the Oedipus Complex is most poyierful. They .,have never found out that other people are alive, besides themselves and their parents. They have no equals.

&Air Powiisit.