21st Century Oedipus: A Blind

¶ … 21st Century Oedipus: A Blind Ex-King or a Besotted Four-Year-Old?

The name "Oedipus" (originally a King of ancient Thebes who was both blessed and cursed in his lifetime) has existed in the public domain since the first performance of Sophocles' play Oedipus the King [also called Oedipus Rex, in approximately 431 B.C.) ("Oedipus the King by Sophocles"). However, early in the 20th century, the Viennese "Father of Psychoanalysis," Sigmund Freud, increased Oedipus's "name recognition" when he called his own groundbreaking new theory of early childhood development, that of a child's "falling in love" with the parent of the opposite sex, and wishing then, figuratively speaking, to kill the "rival" parent, at about age four, the "Oedipus Complex." Further, as Hartocollis (June 2005) states:

Freud (1954) formulated the idea for the first time near the end of the Nineteenth century in a letter to his friend Wilhelm Fliess, attributing it to his self-analysis and indirectly to the Oedipus myth as presented in Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex.

From a 21st century perspective however, Freud's "Oedipal Complex" theory has both simplified and distorted the reputation of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex: the man and the play.

Today Freud's "Oedipus Complex" is well-known. However (ironically) far fewer people today know much, if anything, about the historical (and tragic) Oedipus, a prideful ancient king unknowingly responsible for a plague throughout his kingdom that ceased only when terrible secrets of his birth were revealed through a prophesy. In Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus the King (Barnet et al. 986-1027), the title character cannot catch a break. As the play opens, the kingdom he has married into and rules, Thebes, is ravaged by a terrible plague, and Oedipus, a prideful King, despairs of ever being able to help his people. Later Oedipus receives the unwelcome knowledge from the blind prophet Tiresias that as a baby he was abandoned by his parents and left to die, since his father, Laius, had heard prophesy that his son would otherwise kill him (lines 508-26).

When the baby Oedipus is handed over to a kindly shepherd, to do with him as he pleases, the infant's ankles have been bound so tightly that he develops swollen feet (the literal Greek meaning of the word "Oedipus"), and walks, forever after, with a limp. Only as King of Thebes does Oedipus learn of the terrible prophesy of his birth: he would grow up to kill his father (whom, as it turns out, was Laius, murdered on the road by an unknowing Oedipus) and marry his mother (Jocasta) whom he indeed married, and who is now both his wife and his mother. This turn of events, obviously, is much different than what Freud implies, very generally, within his "Oedipus Complex" theory.

Given Oedipus's unfortunate beginnings, it might be safe to assume his characteristic pride was necessary for his early survival. As a grown man and King, however, Oedipus's pride blinds him to inevitable truths about himself (Freud's same argument about the human unconscious, and how that blinds humanity to any personal memories of the "Oedipus Complex."

Sophocles's Oedipus, however, is not at all the Oedipus of Freud's famous theory. It is Freud's more modern Oedipus, that of psychosexual theory, not literature, that will continue to capture our imagination. After all, Sophocles also wrote other, equally compelling tragedies, Trachiniae; Antigone, and Ajax, to name a few. But one of these are household words today, as is the name "Oedipus."

Although strictly literal aspects of Freud's "Oedipus Complex" were experienced by the hapless real-life King of Thebes (a king named Oedipus really once lived, and Sophocles's play is supposedly based on his life), in truth the real Oedipus killed his father (Laius) purely by accident (when he was much older than four) and then married his mother, Laius's widow Jocasta, purely by accident as well. Further, Sophocles's Oedipus killed Laius on the roadside, and married Jocasta, Laius's widow, without knowing either was related to him by blood ("Oedipus the King by Sophocles"). In the play, Oedipus's reaction, once he learns these truths of prophesy, is one of horror. For us, Oedipus's reversal of fortune is tragic, and, in fact, according to Aristotle (Aristotle's Poetics) represent the very definition of tragedy, that is, when a series of incidents (e.g., the plot of a play, such as Oedipus or Hamlet) "causes fear and pity, and this happens most of all when the incidents are unexpected and yet one is a consequence of the other."

Pioneer psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was fascinated by the story of King Oedipus, as Sophocles depicted him within Oedipus the King, as a work of literature. Clearly, however, Freud also recognized how Sophocles's story, at least in a literal sense if not a figurative or psychological one, paralleled his particular new theory of early childhood development, that at the four-year-old stage, a child "falls in love" with the opposite sex parent and wishes, then, to kill the same-sex parent in order to destroy a rival. Freud made the name "Oedipus" far better known than it would otherwise have been.

Without Sophocles's play, of course, there would be no term like "Oedipus Complex," to describe today's best-known (theoretical) stage of early childhood development. However, Freud's theory is also very far from the story of Oedipus and his unfortunate fate, as told by Sophocles. Therefore, to think of King Oedipus only in terms of the Oedipus Complex of Freudian fame, is to seriously distort what we know of Oedipus through Sophocles' play. Be that as it may, however, the name "Oedipus" today is recognized much more as part of the term "Oedipus Complex" than as a tragedy by Sophocles.

Toward that result, Freud took considerable (psychological) license with the original Oedipus story when he wrote, in 1940 (An outline of psychoanalysis. Standard ed., 23, qtd. In Hartocollis, June 2005):

The ignorance of Oedipus is a legitimate representation of the unconscious state into which, for adults, the whole [early childhood development experience] has fallen; and the coercive power of the oracle [i.e., fate, in today's terms]... A recognition of the inevitability of the fate which has condemned every son to live through the Oedipus complex. (pp. 191-192) An outline of psychoanalysis. Standard ed., 23, qtd. In Hartocollis, June 2005)

Further, as Freud (1900) states:

In my experience the chief part in the mental lives of all children who later become psychoneurotics [sic] is played by their parents. Being in love with the one parent and hating the other are among the essential constituents of the stock of psychical impulses which is formed at that time and which is of such importance in determining the symptoms of the later neurosis.... This discovery is confirmed by legend that has come down to us from classical antiquity: a legend whose profound and universal power to move can be understood if the hypothesis I have put forward in regard to the psychology of children has an equally universal validity. (The Interpretation of Dreams. (Standard ed., 4, pp. 260-261, qtd. In Hartocollis, June 2005)