Freud, Klein and the Oedipus Complex - Essay Example

Freud, Klein and the Oedipus Complex Introduction “It is often said that Freud discovered the repressed child in the adult and Klein discovered the repressed infant in the child” (Daniel, 1992 p. 18). The contributions made by Freud and later Klein to psychosocial analysis have proven to be invaluable for the psychological world. This paper will explore the Oedipus Complex as coined and initially developed by Freud and then later advanced by Klein. It will assess both the similarities and the differences in the theories of Klein and Freud and examine criticisms aimed at both. The development of the Oedipus Complex from Freud until now will be stated in a bid to assess whether it holds the validity it once did. Essentially it will be argued that Klein brought Freud’s work into a more applicable realm, particularly in terms of children, and that hence she made it more applicable and less susceptible to criticism. Historical, Social and Economic Context of the Oedipus Complex The Oedipus Complex embodies the metaphor based on the father and son rivalry in their attempt to gain possession of the mother. The term was borne of the Greek mythological character named Oedipus who killed his father and married his mother, which led to inevitable tragedy (Sophocles, 1991). The leading forefather of the Oedipus Complex theory, Freud, claimed that the Oedipus Complex was a universal occurrence inherent in all humans. It essentially began as his Seduction Theory, an account of the sexual seduction of children which was abandoned as Freud turned his attention to the Oedipus Complex (Birken, 1988 p. 83). Freud’s work displays a clear reaction to the existence of irrational political powers in Europe, and his interpretation of such powers as being related to unconscious and damaging mental causes that had ravaged Europe during that period. Freud thus sought to create a way in which the unconscious could be controlled by the conscious and that rationality that was connected to the latter. This was considered to be rather a radical notion during the middle of the 20th century, particularly because other cultural aspects had focused on releasing such unconscious processes, powers and thoughts (Weiming, 1985 p. 122). Additionally, embodiment of Darwin’s theory of evolution is evident in Freud’s theory and his claim that humans suffer from both incestuous erotic and survival instincts. According to Freud, humans dampen their incestuous instincts in order to allow survival to prevail, because only species with the best traits survive through natural selection, and inbreeding causes faulty genes which jeopardises survival (Darwin, 1998). It is not difficult to see how Klein and Freud influenced each other; they had a similar Jewish background and Freud was the favourite as the oldest child of eight: he had a special relationship with his mother, while his relationship with his father was strained and distant. Relevant also are allegations made that Freud had a sexual relationship with his sister-in-law. Klein on the other hand was alleged to have been an unplanned and unwanted child and was thus given little attention or affection from her parents. Klein lost her siblings, blaming herself for one of their deaths, and then later lost a son as well as her marriage. Her relationship with her daughter was almost non-existent. Freud’s Oedipus Complex Freud’s theory on the Oedipus Complex is based centrally around the notion that children between the ages of 3 and 6 years “have intense loving feelings towards one parent and seek to possess that parent exclusively” (Young, 2001 p. 3). Fraud sought to explore the effects of sexual trauma on the personality and was inadvertently “drawn further and further back into the past”, ending finally in the early years of childhood (Freud, 1953 p. 17). His destination at such an early age caused him to unveil the phantasies of the child which stood alongside the practical realities bringing to light the sexual life of the child (Freud, 1957 pp. 17-18). Freud described the oedipal phase of childhood as a development stage in which the individual comes to term with the traumas he/she suffers as a result of the triangular relationship between the child and his/her parents. The child experiences sexual desire for the parents while simultaneously suffering the threat of castration; the whole experience is defined by and inextricably linked to the relationship between the parents and the child (Freud, 1997 p. 109). As has already been stated, the child between the ages of 3 and 5 years enters the phallic stage of development, “when the penis takes on a special significance for both boys and girls” (Boswell, 2001 p. 81). However, young boys experience different standards of the Oedipus Complex to girls, and it is necessary to thus distinguish between the two. Boys often manifest sexual desires in connection to the mother, which thus causes them to experience intense emotions of jealousy towards the father which can extend to murderous feelings. These emotions develop into phantasies and the child begins to want “exclusive access to” his mother (Young, 2001 p. 6). Because this desire for constant access and attention comes into direct conflict with the access granted to the father (and other siblings), thus arise the feelings of violent jealousy towards the father. Freud states: “falling in love with one parent and hating the other forms part of the permanent stock of the psychic impulses which arise in early childhood, and are of such importance as the material of the subsequent neurosis” (Freud, 1997 p. 109). However, the father poses a threat to the child, which causes the child to abandon feelings of sexual desire towards his parents, causing him to cease viewing his mother in a sexual manner. The forbidding role of the father provides the basis for the superego in that it embodies his “prohibition against incest” (Freud, 1923 p. 110). This forming of the superego additionally allows the child to develop a sense of morality and conscience, which for Freud is the “resolution” or “dissolution” of the Oedipus Complex (Boswell, 2001 p. 81). The Oedipus Complex in terms of young girls is somewhat different in that they do not fear the castration threat posed by the father; the girl rather develops penis envy which causes her to shun her mother due to her lack of penis. The girl thus turns to the father in an attempt to seek the penis and the power it signifies. Freud explains that young girls never fully resolve their Complex, and rather adapt to a situation of compromise. This penis envy occurs before the child is aware of the different genitalia possessed by men and women; during the phallic phase, the penis is the only genital, signifying omnipotence in those who have a penis (Boswell, 2001 p. 81). As the child gradually develops to overcome his/her phantasies in relation to the parents, he/she is able to break free from their authority. This enables the child to mentally develop and recognise the beneficial facet of their parents’ unity, thus causing them to “contain possessive and hostile feelings” (Young, 2001 p. 4). The child is thus able to restrict his violent or incestuous desires because he has grown to recognise the rules of society which forbid such behaviour. According to Freud, children who have not been able to achieve full withdrawal from their parents’ authority have thus also not been able to fully or partially withdraw their affection from them. This causes relationship problems in later life and the inability to socialise or form healthy relationships: women in particular “make cold wives and remain sexually anaesthetic” (Freud, 1962 p. 93). Indeed, individuals who have not been able to fully resolve their Oedipus Complex develop into problematic adults who are often immature, manifest problems in their relationship with their parents and are unable to control their impulses (Young, 2001 p. 5). Oedipus Complexes which have not been fully resolved are evident in the person’s falling in love with a person who is often many years their senior; Freud claims that “even a person who has been fortunate enough to avoid an incestuous fixation of his libido does not entirely escape its influence” (1962 p. 94). From Freud to Klein Klein heavily built upon Freud’s theory of psychosexual development, drawing direct influence from his findings, whilst at the same time developing and adding to them. Klein also digressed from some aspects of Freud’s Oedipus Complex. Klein essentially claims that the ability of an individual to form relationships in their adult life is primarily dependent upon good internal objects, which are based on the individual’s early experiences with their mother, and whether they view internally as good or bad (Jarvis, 2004 p. 109). Klein built upon Freud’s theory by applying it to children (most of Freud’s subjects were adults). By watching children play and talk, Klein developed a method by which she could interpret and analyse their phantasies as well as their internal conflicts (Klein, 1997 p. 16-17; Segal, 1979 p. 42). Whilst playing, the child “forms a transference” thus causing the play to become “symbolic of unconscious phantasy...equivalent to free association in adults” (Daniel, 1992 p. 16). According to Klein, children from a very young age possess a form of intuitive knowledge and awareness of sexuality (1984 p. 187-188). However, this knowledge and awareness is threatening to the child and causes emotions of jealousy felt towards either the father or a new sibling. The child begins to guard itself against such emotions by a process of splitting their inner view of the parents into good and bad. Even a combined parental figure in the child’s inner view can be split into good and bad; if this occurs the Oedipal phase is unable to begin. In order for the child to enter the Oedipal phase, it must be able to distinguish between male and female; it is an inherently important phase of the child’s development. In the early oral phase of the child, Oedipal tendencies begin to emerge according to Klein (1984 p. 210-212). The child feels aggression, guilt and fear as well as love. The child forms inner figures which are dependent on their experiences with each parent and based on these introjections they project or communicate with their parents in reality. The interaction between the inner figures and the real parents is a continual and alternating interaction between the good and bad figures and the good and bad emotions. Feelings of frustration and/or guilt inevitably emerge through some experience. If the ego is not developed or strong enough to cope with such feelings, the development of the child’s ego is stunted and the child cannot enter the Oedipal phase (Klein 1997b p. 57). Because the Oedipal phase has not been entered, resolution is not possible and the child thus fails to acquire the requisite distinctions between genders, thus causing it to not fully develop its ability to think. Such children only possess the full ability to feel and are thus not able to employ perception, emotion and thought simultaneously. In such cases the child acquires the ability to repair the self which aids the child in preserving the good figures internally resulting in positive phantasies. Essentially, the child feels envy as a result of its being excluded from the sexual activities of the parents; this exclusion causes the child to learn and develop which eventually results in the “potential for warmer and more generous relationships” (Boswell, 2001 p. 79). Klein and Freud: A Comparison Klein essentially revised Freud’s theory, though she agreed with Freud on many aspects. Freud and Klein were agreed on the concept of the boy manifesting a desire for his mother, causing him to experience fear and thus shun the father. They also agreed that children experience phantasies about the genitals of their parents as well as their own, which formed the basis for their desires and fears. Freud and Klein were also agreed on the assumption that the superego is made of “internalised parental objects” (Boswell, 2001 p. 82). Klein however greatly developed Freud’s theory in many ways, and arguably updated its application somewhat, expanding its use on many levels. Primarily, Klein shifted Freud’s focus of psychosexual theory away from his restrictive focus on “scientific vision” (Jarvis, 2004 p. 108). She instead focused less on phantasy and sought empirical corroboration of the connection between insufficient object relations and atypical perceptions of body elimination, on which evidence does exist (Corgiat, 1999). Rather than the anxiety position described by Freud, Klein suggested that the child rather establishes a depressive position, which causes them to progress into the Oedipal stage. This stage is resolved when the child begins to experience love and affection for both parents rather than Freud’s resultant fear of the parent who is of the same sex of the child and thus seen as powerful and authoritative (Klein, 1946). Similarly, Klein’s theory is based on the child’s desire to acquire what the mother has (particularly fertility), rather than Freud’s basis of sexual desire felt towards the mother. The child for Klein experiences feelings of anxiety towards the body of the mother because it is combined with the penis of the father. This desire to have what the mother has causes the child to want to ‘enter’ the mother to discover what she possesses (through the child’s phantasy), which is met with undesired retaliation from either the father or the mother or both parents and result in feelings of guilt. Having a more grave effect on the girl than the boy, she would thus turn to the penis of the father for support in order to ease her guilt and anxieties: “this would be crucial for her sexual development” (Boswell, 2001 p. 85). Alternatively, the child will divert its interest from the mother, thus causing the child to develop “an interest in the external world” (Daniel, 1992 p. 19). This is distinguished against Freud’s use of the father as an authoritative, forbidding figure, which causes the child to refrain from incestuous actions, in that Klein portrays the father as supportive rather than prohibitive for the child. For Klein, the child would learn to let go of violent, sexual and incestuous phantasies as a way of seeking redemption, whereas Freud described the child as halting such phantasies though fear of violent retaliation. Klein’s resolve of the Oedipus Complex is based on concern and love for the parents, whereas Freud’s resolve is based on terror and fear. Klein additionally placed psychoanalytic theory in “an object relations perspective” (Jarvis, 2004 p. 112), which caused her to criticise Freud’s exaggeration of the father’s role in the child’s Oedipal stage and focus more on the central role of the mother and her relationship with the child. For Klein, the mother “forms the basis for all loving, lasting reparative relationships in the future” (Daniel, 1992 p. 18). Klein also managed to expand Freud’s approach towards unconscious phantasies of children; she claims that children realise their phantasies through play activities, which in turn enables them to resolve their conflicts. She increased the importance of unconscious phantasies which enabled her to unveil how children develop their internal or psychic worlds from birth (Daniel, 1992 p. 13). This was a huge step forward as early theorists considered that children at young ages could not have transference or developed enough egos to analyse and interpret (A Freud, 1927). Klein iterated that Oedipal phantasies can and do occur in children at a much younger age than Freud initially considered. This enabled her to conclude that traumatic experiences in very early childhood have the potential to delay the onset of the Oedipal Complex phase and thus its resolution (Klein, 1989). Criticisms of the Oedipus Complex Freud faced a lot of criticism because during the time his theories emerged, children were not supposed to be viewed or expressed as sexual, and this caused a lot of tension in the psychoanalytic and public sphere. Perhaps the biggest criticism of Freud’s version of the Oedipus Complex is aimed at his connotation that gender identity is naturally linked to psychoanalytic theory. Young claims that Freud’s theory is too preoccupied with and to closely linked to “specific body parts”, causing it to be “too concrete and restrictive” (2001 p. 58). Building on this critique, feminists claim that Freud’s theory, because of its restrictive application, is not able to allow psychoanalytic theory to contribute effectively to the daily struggles and strife of females in society. Feminists have major problems in agreeing with Freud’s nature of the female sexuality, and his statement that individuals are female or male by nature. On the contrary, feminists argue that female identities are not formed by nature; they are rather formed by society, and thus Freud’s theory wrongly claims that everything is predetermined by nature (Gallop, 1982; Irigaray, 1974). Critics also claim that Freud’s theory is too restrictively focused on sexuality, and due to the birth of his theories from the observation of neurotic adults, they cannot be aptly applied to children. It is of course important to note in response to this criticism that child observations have contributed much to Freud’s theories, increasing their credibility. Indeed, Klein’s work and direct observation of children sought to quieten this criticism. Feminists mainly focus on Freud’s contention that females, because they lack the externally visible genitals of males, experience some form of lacking or insufficiency and as a result develop a feeling of inequality as well as penis envy. The physical superiority of men overpowers women, causing them to never fully resolve their Oedipus Complex. It is claimed that women do not thus experience complete segregation from her mother, and unlike Freud, her relationship with her father is dependent upon her relationship with her mother. This causes the female to form close and valid relationships with other women, which takes her beyond Oedipal development, causing her to focus more on internal than external object relationships (Chodorow, 2001: 87-89; Chodorow, 1989 p. 73-74). While this is not a direct criticism of Freud’s theory, it is an alternative approach to his contention that women never fully resolve their Oedipus Complex. Criticisms aimed at Klein mainly focus on her claim that children have intricate internal worlds from birth; Stern, for example claims that this is too advanced and not a real depicted of the limited capabilities of children from such a young age (1995). Similarly, Jarvis claims that “Klein overestimated the importance of internal mental events at the expense of that of real-life experiences” (2004 p. 112). Developments of the Oedipus Complex after Freud and Klein have actually tended to discredit the theory, though some do admit to a semi-universal version of the theory. Some disagree altogether that the child enters the Oedipal phase based on “an acute awareness of a complicated triangle involving mother, father, and child” (Gabbard, 2010 p. 11). More modern versions of the Oedipus Complex do recognise conflict between the child and its parents, though they do not put this down to sexual possession or desires and as a result the theory is not entirely reliable in terms of predicting and explaining adult behaviour. There is indeed evidence of the growing lack of support for Freud’s theory, as many consider that it is “defunct” of “disproven” or even “simply found unnecessary” in modern times (Grose, 2010 p. 123). Nevertheless, those who still consider Freud’s theory to be relevant disagree as to what age the child enters the Oedipal stage, though many argue that it is much earlier than Freud suggested (Bland, 1998). Modern approaches to the theory have sought to ease the inherent problems in Freud’s approach, particularly in terms of his subjective method of collecting information, his overemphasis of sex and the suggestion that his personal experience caused him to interpret his observations in a biased manner (Street, 2008; Afroz, 2009 p. 4). Approaches thus sought to explore social motivations as opposed to Freud’s sexual motivation in relation to the Oedipus Complex; an approach which is ongoing today (Fromm, 1959). Conclusion & Personal Critique There is little doubt that Freud’s Oedipus Complex laid the vital foundations for later developments in psychosocial theory, particularly in terms of its application to children. While more recent criticisms, particularly feminist attacks on the theory, hold ground in many respects, it cannot be denied that Freud laid the major base elements of the theory, allowing developments to be made in terms of its application and specific content. Klein essentially made great advances in the theory, and as a result it has been rendered more applicable on a sounder basis (Klein, 1997). It is however plausible that the fixation of the theory on sexual desires of children underestimates the potential social content of the Oedipal phase, and is rather narrow in its interpretation of female nature in terms of penis envy. There is however little denial of the remarkable rigour with which it entered the psychological world and its relevance will continue to apply and develop despite (and because of) its critics. References Afroz, T 2009, ‘Social Explanation of Oedipus Complex: A Psycho-Analysis of Human Behaviour’ TMC Academic Journal, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 8-18. Birken, L 1988, ‘From Seduction Theory to Oedipus Complex: A Historical Analysis’, New German Critique, no. 43, pp. 83-96. Bland, J 1998, ‘About Gender: The Oedipus Complex’. Source: http://www.gender.org.uk/about/01psanal/11_oedip.htm. Accessed: 28-11-2011. 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Young, RM 2001, Oedipus Complex: Ideas in Psychoanalysis, Icon Books, Cambridge. Read More