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Sigmund Freud's Oedipal Complex

Decent Essays

Time period is everything, people in the two thousands are more reserved in thoughts than people were in eighteen and nineteen hundreds. This exemplifies why Sigmund Freuds making of the Oedipal Complex is outrageous. Freud’s ideas of a child’s development is very graphic and disturbing to our modern day intellect, but fit the norm of early 1900’s society
Oedipus the King, written is 440 B.C., by Sophacles has fascinated audiences for many years. However, Sigmund Freud came up with the ‘Oedipal Complex’ based off of this play that has caused plenty of controversy. He believed that, based of Oedipus the King and the attraction Oedipus had to his mother, that all children share the same desire towards the opposite sex parent. From that one instance, he created an entire complex that graphically lays out a child’s development.
It is possible for a child to be attracted to their opposite sex parent at some point in time. But, taking it as far as Freud did in stating that the child wants to diminish the other parent is absurd. Clearly, he misinterpreted the text because that is not at all what happened in Oedipus the King. Oedipus did not intentionally kill his father nor marry his mother. These events occurred due to the fate of Oedipus, which he could not alter. He was separated from his parents at birth and did not find out till the end of the play who they were.
Oedipus the King, became the King after he solved the riddle of the Sphinx. He was then asked to save the city

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