"The symbolic role of the Œdipus
The desire: It's different from the need for what is not really mitigated forever. It's unknown anyway how to respond forever. The child desire to be everyting for its mother: it searches what its mother may want to satisfy her. Its desire is to be the desire of its mother. The basic need is, in the symbolic level, the phallus. Original Desire: to merge with mother.
Pathologic Case: If mother responds fully to this demand, the child becomes the object of the mother. It will never be the subject. It's entry to the psychosis
The Law of the Father: Father will be here a mediator. He will intervene as privative, separating the Child from its mother. He prohibits the Child from merging with its Mother ("Don't sleep with your mother!" It's the prohibition of the incest) and restrains the mother to adapt herself to her Child. This prohibition is called: the Law of the Father. In order to effectuate this, the role of Father should be recognised by the Mother, then by the Child. The place of separator should thus already exist in the spirits of the Mother. The Father can be tyrannic, submissive, fickle or faithful, nevertheless, the Mother should recognise him as separator (and not as genitor). This Parental role should exist in the spirits of the Mother from the beginning. The Child himself, will discover this at the age of the Oedipus.
The Child passes the status of what-is the Phallus of its Mother to what-it-should-have. It give up also its desire ® It's a symbolic castration. Its true desire will be pushed away in the Inconscient (original repression). It assume here a sacrifice. This Prohibition goes to free the Child, because from hence separated from its Mother, It could dispose of himself. It goes to be oriented to the future and be engaged in the pursuit of affective objects further and further away from the initial objective.
By the prohibition, the child enters in culture. It becomes member. It's included in a family structure. There cannot be a coincidence between the places of alliance and of kinship. This law of limitation preserves the family, assure the generations against the continuous competition and oblige the individual to go to search elsewhere its relations ® Law of communication and of beginning of the clan. The child live, at the age of the Oedipus, a psychologic puberty fundamental for the conservation of the cultural order. It passes from an individual history to a collective history, because it knows its right position in the society, its rights and its limits."
Functions of the Oedipal conflict
• /1 The child passes from a relation of dual object to a relation of triangular object. This is the adult relation, especially genital relation.
• /2 By the prohibition of the parricide and the prohibition of the incest, the child passes from the nature to the culture. It's submissive to the common social law, law of exchange and of prohibition.
• /3 It accedes to the difference of sexes thanks to the identification to its Parent at the same time with himself. The identification is rendered on the morphologic and psychic plans. It recognises by the same occasion the Other as different.
• /4 A part of the child's personality goes to assume this prohibition and this identification. It's the Superego, heir of the Œdipus. Its the internalization of the parental prohibitions and social exigences, censor of the future adult. Once formed, the Superego will go the replace the parents in the social life. It will return continuously in conflict with the drives, and will draw the guilt.
• /5 Upcoming of the ego ideal: It's a idealised model where the subject searches to conform the result of the identification to the idealised parents. This is a very narcissistic example, substitute of all the power of the child (from "I can all" to "I will can all"). The Ego is compared to an ideal, allowing us to surpass ourselvous.
Last edited by pluiepoco; 12-13-2005 at 12:51 PM.
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