The Oedipus experienced by the boy
If nearly 3 years seem to him the sensations of pleasure connected to the penis, the child will have sudden conscience of the sexual relations susceptible to trigger them. It assimilates the relations to what he imagines to happen between the father and the mother. He continues to be attached to its first object of love, the mother, but this attachment is not whole. It's ambivalent. He may seduce her. He meets himself the rivalrousness to his father, which model becomes rival. From this rivalrousness, comes the fantasized threat and anguishing castration. Hostility also towards the mother who needs him a lot (in different stages) counters a little in exchange what he esteems. Rivalrousness against the father, jealousy of his power, of this rights. There mixes with love, the attachment: this affection plus the fear of castration la castration reaches a "inverse Oedipus" where paradoxically, there are phases during which, he seduced the father and rejected the mother (making this impression of "complicity" between men). Homosexual Position. Being in good terms with the father will undeniably minimize the fear of castration. It's the identification on the father who will allow the son to get out of the Oedipus. The threat of castration is the sanction of father in the rivalrousness which opposes to the son for the possession of the mother. If free of this situation, the child would give up to the sexual satisfaction with its mother. The boy leave out of the Oedipus complex of the fact of threat of castration. By identifications to the mother and to the father, the child builds up its own personality. The part of identification to the father will guide him to search how is it (but he does not know it either) a woman out of the family circle.
There thus is Oedipus desire first, tempered by the fantastic threat of castration. The anguish is overcome thanks to the identification to the father, putting an end to the Oedipus.
The Oedipus experienced by the girl
For the girl as for the boy, mother is the first object of libidinal investment. But contrary to the boy, it's anguish of castration which did enter the girl in the Oedipal process. There is change of love object. The ambivalence of the girl to her mother is more stressed than that of the boy to his father. (later on, the relations between women are always more complicated, while the relations between men are simpler). The agressivity of the girl to her mother is elaborated in the course of weaning experience, allowing simpler inversed Oedipus. At the same time of desire of owning a penis, appears the reject to her "castrated" mother. Then this is transformed into reject of the love desire of having a penis like her father, then evolving into love desire of having a child of her father in place of the penis that she doesn't have. Mother is thus a rival and an object of identification. Phenomena more complicated, stronger. Sentiments very mixed in respect of her mother, presence of culpability. The Oedipus stays longer because there not any exterior threat to oblige herself to stop seducing her father. She will give up by identification to her mother, allowing her to live in her female personality.
In the girl, the Oedipus complex doesn't appear for all and its effects are felt in all her life as woman. The Oedipal child(imaginary child) is a fantasy that will rest longer in her. This kind of Oedipus stays indeed a problem, risking to immerse the girl in an endless demands for amorous harms, or in a insulted renouncement or again to reject herself to the first loves to her mother.
It's noted that for the boy, the anguish of castration guides himself to put an end to the Oedipus complex. It forms in some sort of, a point of realisation. In the girl on the contrary, the anguish of castration forms kind of point of departure.
Last edited by pluiepoco; 12-13-2005 at 10:31 AM.
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