Oedipus and Freud. In exploring Sophocles tragedy, Freud creates his own myth expanding on this through his theory that the origins of the legend of Oedipus lie in primeval dream-material.
1. Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
From p.262 “If Oedipus Rex moves a modern audience…” to p.264 “The attempt to harmonize divine omnipotence with human responsibility must naturally fail in connection with this subject-matter just as with any other.”
Freud’s consideration of the Greek myth of Oedipus Rex forms a basis for his exploration of dreams as wish-fulfillment, a reflection of our subconscious drives. His dream-theory recognises dreams as ‘the royal road to the unconscious’ and he applies the same reading to art, including literature, arguing that it is not the visible or ‘manifest’ content but the concealed (‘latent’) content which needs to be interpreted. Freud opens this exploration of the Oedipus myth confidently with a subordinate clause of condition. He argues that because Sophocles’ protagonist ‘moves a modern audience’ as he did the original Greek audiences, it cannot be because of the ‘contrast between destiny and human will.’ In developing his argument, Freud acknowledges that arbitrary fate can be and is dismissed in other modern dramas, supporting his comment with a reference to Grillparzer’s Die Ahnfrau, a nineteenth century drama. Consequently, Freud establishes that the impact of the Oedipus myth on contemporary audiences lies in the essential ‘nature’ of the exemplification of this contrast between free will and predestination. For Freud the force of the drama lies with the interpretation of its signifiers and the degree of empathy that Oedipus’s fate evokes. The destiny of King Oedipus, Freud argues, ‘moves us only because it might have been ours’. He draws on the classical analogy to create kudos for his argument, and uses it to explore psychoanalysis, the status of sex in society and our most fundamental relationships. The latter comprises a certain emotional ambivalence in the love/hate he holds for both his father and mother. Thus, his re-interpretation of the myth provides us with the Oedipus complex (wherein the term ‘complex’ is borrowed from Jung) as an integral part of his dream-theory and consideration of a male child’s development. Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex was shocking in its Victorian context but it facilitated the recognition of childhood as a critical period of development in identifying sexual and unconscious influences. It supported Freud’s revolutionary theory of psychoanalysis concerning the structure of the personality as id, ego and superego.
