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Psychoalysis In Oedipus

Decent Essays

Sophocles’ “Oedipus’’ is a renowned tragedy which hasn’t lost its bite even to this day. It has multiple alternate titles including “Oedipus the King’’ and “Oedipus Tyrannous”. In the play Oedipus, king of Thebes, having heard that his city is being ravaged by fire and plague, sends his brother-in-law Creon to find a remedy from the oracle of Apollo at Delphi. When Creon returns Oedipus commences to investigate the death of his predecessor, Laius, and discovers through various accounts that he himself was the one who had unknowingly killed Laius and then wed his own mother, Jocasta. In reaction to this news, Oedipus is mortified to the fullest extreme - mutilating his eyes, and leaving the court. Jocasta commits suicide, and the tragedy takes its full course. Sigmund Freud, a renowned father of modern psychology, cerebrates this, as in his view his psychoanalysis illuminated the relevancy and power of the play, rather than the other way around. Sophocles is able to reflect the edifications of psychoanalysis in “Oedipus”. Freud’s Oedipus Complex is very consequential in Sophocles’ “Oedipus’’ for giving a psychoanalytical reading on it. The Oedipus complex was his theory of mind, and as such he asserted that present day mental illnesses were related to this complex. The Oedipus complex is predicated on Freud’s observation that children are seen commonly to have fallen in love with one parent and developed an abhorrence for the other. According to Freud, Oedipus

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