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The fact that most men sublimate this feeling, and instead identify with their father to obtain the maternal figure in the form of another woman, is the reason the Oedipus myth was generated in the first place.
Freud's theory was popular not only 'on the couch' but in literary theory. Ernest Jones suggested that it is the reason Hamlet cannot bring himself to kill his uncle: "Now comes the father's death and the mother's second marriage. The long 'repressed' desire to take his father's place in his mother's affection is stimulated to unconscious activity by the sight of some one usurping this place exactly as he himself had once longed to do… the two recent events, the father's death and the mother's second marriage . . . represented ideas which in Hamlet's unconscious fantasy had for many years been closely associated" (Jones 98-99).
Regardless of the merit of Freud's theory, Freud's understanding of Oedipus as a kind of primordial 'everyman' whose actions could be applied to everyone from a neurotic to Shakespeare's Hamlet, is not a true literary understanding of Oedipus' character. Oedipus, a king and a wise man in the original Greek tragedy, is presented as an extraordinary figure brought low by fate and given a uniquely horrifying fate (Mitchell-Boyask 2002). It was Freud who suggested that the unique nature of Oedipus' character and the horrors inflicted upon this unhappy man by the gods were not so unique...
The Oedipus story, according to Freud, is a tale of why there is an incest taboo, not hubris.
Works Cited
Dunkle, Roger. The Classical Origins of Western Culture, the Core Studies 1 Study Guide.
Brooklyn College Core Curriculum Series. Brooklyn College, the City University of New York, 1986.
Jones, Ernest. "The Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery:
A Study in Motive." The American Journal of Psychology. January, 1910
Mitchell-Boyask, Robin. Study Guide for Sophocles' Oedipus the King. Department of Classics,
Temple University. Updated 25 September 2002. March 3, 2010.
http://www.temple.edu/classics/oedipus/index.html
Perelberg, Rosine J. "Murdered father; dead father: Revisiting the Oedipus complex."
International Journal of Psychoanalysis. August 2009. Retrieved through
FindArticles.com. March 3, 2010. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7581/is_200908/ai_n39229862/
McManus, Barbara F. "Unity of Action in Oedipus the King." November, 1999.
http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/oedipusplot.html
Works Cited
Dunkle, Roger. The Classical Origins of Western Culture, the Core Studies 1 Study Guide.
Brooklyn College Core Curriculum Series. Brooklyn College, the City University of New York, 1986.
Jones, Ernest. "The Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery:
A Study in Motive." The American Journal of Psychology. January, 1910
http://www.temple.edu/classics/oedipus/index.html
FindArticles.com. March 3, 2010. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7581/is_200908/ai_n39229862/
http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/oedipusplot.html
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