Sigmund Freud's Analysis Of The So-Called Oedipus Complex

In strengthening the importance of adapting to the ‘good mother’ script, a crucial role was played by psychoanalysis. As it will be shown, psychology has been instrumental in constructing the ways in which motherhood is seen, and in maintaining mothers in their current social position. Moreover, psychoanalysis is a useful tool which can be used to show how we acquire our heritage of the ideas and laws of human society within the unconscious mind.

One of the most known and debated psychoanalytic approaches to the mother-child relationship is the one used by Sigmund Freud in his analysis of the so-called Oedipus complex. In his discussion, Freud stresses how the part played by the mother in the first stage of development of her offspring has

By configuring for mothers a much more significant role in society at large, the main exponents of this movement provide a challenge to the mother figure outlined by Freudian psychoanalysis. French feminist Luce Irigaray, for instance, stresses the importance of mother-child separation after the initial phase of complete dependence of the infant on the maternal figure, during which she constitutes ‘the feeder and food’ of the newborn. According to Irigaray, maternal self-sacrifice can be evaluated positively only insofar as the mother sacrifices herself to fulfil her child’s needs, rather than holding the child within her power. However, the detachment from the maternal figure is seen as a necessary stage in order to prevent the child from developing feelings of ‘emotional suffocation, paralysis and loss of identity boundaries’. In fact, a prolonged mother-child dyadic relationship can culminate into anxiety of engulfment, especially into girls, who may fear the identification with the maternal figure, and develop what Adrienne Rich calls ‘matrophobia’. In the eyes of the child who feels threatened by maternal oppression, paternal authority appears as the only alternative to escape from the mother’s clutches. In order to free themselves from the engulfing mother, children deliberately decide to submit to father law. The offspring reject their relations with the

In her work The Reproduction of Motherhood: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978), Chodorow affirms that the first phase of mother-child duality, during which the mother acts as ‘external ego’ for her children, and makes ‘total environmental provision’ for them, must be followed by one in which the newborn starts recognising the mother as a separate entity to enable the child’s development of self. The acknowledgment of this separateness is made possible by the frustration of expectations of primary