Freud slips up

on Oedipus
Rex
Or, How I Met My Mother
Goals:
● Model what a discussion about a difficult
topic might look like
● Prepare you to lead your own Socratic
Seminar
● Uncover the full complexity of Freud’s
misunderstood (and extremely influential)
theories about Oedipus Rex
The Oedipus or
Oedipal
Complex
What do you know already?
Tell a partner...
 Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
and the division of the psyche (Greek for “soul”)
Pop Culture
Examples:
Forever Alone...
The Doors, “The End”
He went into the room where his sister lived, and, then he This is the end, my only friend, the end
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he It hurts to set you free
He walked on down the hall, and But you'll never follow me
And he came to a door, and he looked inside The end of laughter and soft lies
Father, yes son, I want to kill you The end of nights we tried to die
Mother, I want to... This is the end

C'mon baby, take a chance with us

C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us

And meet me at the back of the blue bus

Doin' a blue rock, on a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock, c'mon, yeah
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
This is the end, beautiful friend
The Oedipal Complex and Family Guy...
What did Freud
actually say?
The Interpretation of Dreams, Ch. 4
“[Oedipus’] destiny moves us only because it
might have been ours--because the oracle
laid the same curse upon us before our first
sexual impulse towards our mother and our
first hatred and our first murderous wish
against our father…”
Shocking, no?

Horrifying, no?
Thoughts?
 Freud’s
response to
your disgust...
Freud continued...
“...Here is one whom these primeval wishes
of our childhood have been fulfilled, and we
shrink back from him with the whole force of
the repression by which those wishes have
since that time been held down within us.”
Checkmate, Freud.
If you don’t like my theory, you’re simply
repressing and reacting to the primal disgust
at your own unconscious urges.
Thoughts?
Problems?
Inconsistencies?
Exceptions?
Problems:
● Overemphasizes our sexual desires as the
sole impetus for decisions
● Overemphasizes heterosexual desire
● Negates our choice / free-will
How do we
respond?
Left with options:
1. Dismiss Freud completely
2. Reconceive the story as a “fairy tale” that describes
figuratively the desires of humans
3. Adapt his theories to modern conceptions and
sensibilities
4. Oedipus as psychoanalysis itself
Option 1
● Miss out on complexities of his
thoughts
● Arrogant/Naive to dismiss one
of the world’s most influential
thinkers
 Option 2: Fairy Tale vs. Reality
Literal reading vs. Figurative Reading
Option 3: The influence of family connections
Nurturing and Authority Conflicts
Option 4: Oedipus as Psychoanalysis Patient
Freud later said:
“The action of the play consists in nothing other than the
process of revealing, with cunning delays and
ever-mounting excitement--a process that can be
likened to the work of a psychoanalysis…”

i.e. “the subject refuses to know what he (unconsciously)

knows and furthermore that this process of
paradoxical-in-ignorance is enacted by the use of one’s
language” -Charles Segal, Harvard Professor
 Tell your partner about textual
examples of Oedipus as a pysche /
mind that is discovering truths
about itself
Examples of “Freudian slips”:
1. Oedipus refuses to “hear” the truth from Teiresias
2. Gives details about himself that he doesn’t recognize
as the truth
3. Prologue: A “single robber” instead of “many robbers”
4. Fight for Laius as if “for my own father”
5. He and Laius possess a wife of “common seeding”
and children “in common”

*Ambiguous and Complex Language conceal the Truth*

 Enjoy this?
Preparation for leading your own
discussion...
Procedure
1. Answer all numbered questions on front
side
2. I’ll number you off
3. Work with similar number to prepare
backside on your own number
4. Prepare to lead a small group discussion
next “Literature day”
Documents:
Graphic Organizer

Questions for Socratic Seminar

Sources