Sigmund Freud 's ' Oedipus Complex ( Schultz & Sydney P. 42 )

Oedipus Rex, an ancient Greek tragedy authored by the playwright Sophocles, includes many types of psychological phenomena. Most prominently, the myth is the source of the well-known term Oedipal complex, coined by psychologist Sigmund Freud in the late 1800s. In psychology, “complex” refers to a developmental stage. In this case the stage involves the desire of males, usually ages three to five, to sexually or romantically posses their mother, and the consequential resentment of their fathers. In the play, a prince named Oedipus tries to escape a prophecy that says he will kill his father and marry his mother, and coincidentally saves the Thebes from a monster known as the Sphinx. Having unknowingly killed his true father Laius during his

Freud believed human behavior was not consciously controlled, and credited three parts in the mind to any psychological activity. These are called the unconscious, the preconscious and the conscious. Personality too was given three parts, the id, the super ego and the ego. Freud believed these parts in our mind have their individual parts to play in the way we go about life. He also stated the only way to work through conflicts that arise from our subconscious and unconscious mind is through dream analysis and psychoanalysis. Other key concepts in psychodynamic theory are the psychosexual stages of development, anxiety, defence mechanisms, and free association.

In order to completely understand Oedipus and his actions, we must first understand the basics of Freud’s theories. One of the most well known aspects of Freudian theory is the Oedipus Complex. We can already see a relationship between the Oedipus

Freud proposed the psychological structure of personality to include three systems called the id, the ego, and the superego. At birth, the id is the original system of personality and is ruled by the pleasure principle. It is driven towards satisfying instinctual needs. The ego can be described as a mediator between ones instincts and their surrounding environment. The ego is ruled by the reality principle, using realistic and logical thinking to formulate action plans for satisfying needs. The superego includes a person’s moral code and strives for perfection, not pleasure. Psychic energy is distributed between these three systems creating dynamics of personality. This psychic energy is what determines behavior (Day, 2008).

"It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father." - Sigmund Freud(Clark, 122)

The psychological positivism theory concentrates on all of the mental aspects of why an individual commits a crime, and associates it with their intelligence, personality, learning, and criminal behaviour. It looks at the determinations, thoughts, intentions and reactions of criminals and all that contributes in the criminal behaviour. Explanations of criminal behaviour were explained by looking at the work of Sigmund Freud (1956-1939). He established the psychoanalytical model in which he believed that a human progresses, early in life. Freud discusses that the human personality has three sets of interacting forces. These include the id, the ego and the superego. These are three components in a human personality that pledge them to behave in the manner they do and make individuals they are. Firstly Freud believes that humans are born with their id. He suggests that the id holds importance for personality. The id allows a new-born to get its desires met by crying. Freud mentions that the id is set on getting pleasure and the id wants whatever feels good despite the circumstances. In addition to this Freud had mentioned the second component of the personality develops. This is known as the ego, it understands feeling and emotions of others and takes them into account. Freud then suggest that the ego meets the needs of the id, at the same time looking at the reality of the condition. Lastly Freud mentions that when a child is five the development of the third personality

Freud’s theory of Oedipus complex has brought a lot of controversies in modern psychology and literature while some critics opine Freud’s concept of Oedipus complex deserves a great deal of appreciation. When Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) proposed that the Oedipus complex was psychologically universal, he provoked the evolution of Freudian psychology and the Psychoanalytic treatment method.¬¬¬¬¬¬¬ Certain contemporary psychoanalysts agree with the idea of the Oedipus complex to different degree. Hans Keller proposed it is so "at least in Western societies"; and others consider that ethnologists already have established its temporal and geographic universality. Nonetheless, few psychoanalysts disagree that the "child then entered an Oedipal phase which involved an acute awareness of a complicated triangle involving mother, father, and child" and that "both positive and negative Oedipal themes are typically observable in

Carl Gustav Jung (a.k.a. C.G. Jung) was born in 1875, in Switzerland, and worked closely with Freud for many years, he learned many things from him in this time. Eventually Jung split from him because his ideas and concepts of psychoanalysis began to differ from those of Freud. Jung was a convectionist, unlike Freud who was a reductionist. Jung saw dreams as a way to come up with solutions to problems you are facing in your waking life. Jung took Freud’s one technique of “free association” and expanded on it. Unlike Freud, he saw this concept as being extremely important. He thought that the dreamer’s thoughts and opinions on what the dream could mean are even more important than anyone else’s, including many times an expert. Dreams, to Freud, are a way of interacting with your unconscious. Carl Jung’s methods to interpreting dreams could be a very important step to help people lead happier and healthier lives. He believed that the manifest content in our dreams is just as important as the latent content when it comes to interpreting our dreams. Freud took a very hands on approach when interpreting people’s dreams, but Jung put forth less information from himself because he thought dream interpretation relied heavily on the dreamer himself. A college student who is experiencing nightmares consistently may visit a psychologist who knows about the meanings of dreams. A psychiatrist who believes more in Freud’s ways may take the dream as being

Both Freud and Jung provided important and interesting theories on dreams; encompassing their functions, their roots, and their meanings. Freud looked at dreams as a result of repressed memories, particularly repressed sexual memories from our childhood. Jung however, believed that dreams delved beyond sexual repression during younger years, to other problems, be it trauma, anxiety etc. Jung also believed dreams changed predominately through middle adult years, while Freud believed the opposite. There is little empirical evidence to reinforce either Freud or Jung’s theories, however, their contributions to the study of dreams in psychology cannot be lessened or denied.

Freud’s structural and topographical model of personality, revolves around the id, ego and superego (McLeod, 2008). As a newborn, I was born with my id which allowed me to get my basic needs met. As an infant, I would cry if I was hungry or tired or just wanted to be held, I did not think of anyone else. The second part of my personality started around when I was three years old, and according to Freud this is when I began to develop my ego. An example of this would be if I was hungry I would want to satisfy my id, but at the

Freud described humans as having three essential components that built personality. The three components were the id, the ego, and the superego. He described the id, as being what governed an infant’s drive to overcome their primitive biological desires. According to his theory infants had no other goal than to release the tension that built up when their

Freud developed the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, which argued that personality is formed through internal conflicts among three fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego. According to this model of the psyche, the id is the set of uncoordinated trends; the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role; and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego (Wikipedia, 2017).

By analyzing dreams, Freud believed that it could lead to understanding the most mysterious part of the human body: the brain. He viewed dreams as the unconscious mind making an endeavor to resolve a conflict regardless of when the conflict arose (Freud, 1900, p.577). Freud eventually developed a theory that the symbols and images in dreams may only be the front for multiple connotations, linking icons in dreams to parts of the body and biological drives. The dreamer may “find the top part of a clarinet in the street or the mouth-piece of a tobacco-pipe” in response to stimuli from male sexual organs (Freud, 1900, p.111). Freud argued in many of his early works that many latent dreams are sexual in nature. These connections separated Freud from his colleagues, such as Carl

Jung made some major contributions in psychotherapy. Jung was the first to say that a therapist himself must be analyzed (Storr, 1991). Unlike Freud who had his patients lie on a couch, Jung suggested that face to face contact with a patient was essential (Storr, 1991). He wanted to see his patients face. He also saw patients less times a week then Freud did (Storr, 1991). He stated that he did not want his patients to stop living their normal everyday lives. Dreams were an important aspect of Jung’s psychotherapy. He dedicated a great deal of time and work on the interpretation of dreams

In his book, Modern Man In Search Of A Soul, C.G. Jung gives a layperson insight into his ideas on dream analysis. Jung's primary objective in this book is to educate the reader as to what a psychoanalyst does when analyzing a patient's dreams. The principal message in the section of the book centered on dream analysis is that dreams should never stand alone. Dreams are meaningless in a vacuum, but on the other hand when put against a strict set of rules, they are oftentimes misunderstood. The unconscious is a fluid entity and cannot be handled either in isolation or with a static set of guidelines. Dreams are reflections of the unconscious and can represent many different things inside of