Oedipus Complex for Dummies and Anti-Dummies

Oedipus Complex for Dummies and Anti-Dummies By R.T. Groome for the Sclinic Course 2013 (first draft)   On Saturday, we had made the difference between the Representational and Non-representational entry into the Oedipus by comparing it to the difference between the painting of Corbet's Origin of the World and Masson's over-painting. We further compared this difference in the paintings of Velasquez and Picasso (see web-image). We stated further that following the insight of the moderns from Breton to Picasso, non-representational painting is far from being 'abstract', but should be called concrete: "there are blues, greens, tracings, marks, … none of which are abstract". On the contrary, the rules and regulations for the achievement of a representation – perspective drawings – are abstract[1]. We proposed that what was required to make these distinctions clear was a theory of the tableau that would go beyond a theory of representational painting. Drawing on these insights, here, we begin by outlining the habitual 'dummy' version of conceiving the Oedipus complex in the mode of figural representation. Once the aporias and paradoxes of this representational manner of proceeding has been exposed, we will present with precision in Part II the non-representational Oedipus in the manner of Freud and Lacan. I – Representational-Dummy Version of the Oedipus and its Critique I – Pre-Oedipal[2] 1) A baby is born and nurtured. 2) The baby is dependent upon an object to satisfy his needs and wishes. 3) The baby is fed. Oral stage (21 months) 4) The baby recognizes this feeding object  – a breast, bottle, etc. belongs only to it. 5) The baby is toilet trained Anal Stage. (18months –3 years). 6) There is no distinction between self and other at this stage. i.e., the baby does not distinguish between these objects as belonging to himself or another[3]. 7) The object – a breast, for example – is then identified with someone who will be later called his mother. 8) The baby both seduces and is seduced by the mother in the nurturing process. 9) The baby comes to believe he is the unique object of affection of his mother and she is the unique object of affection for him.[4] 10) The child begins to discover sexual difference as having or not having a penis. Phallic Stage  (3-5 years) as determining being a boy or girl. II – Oedipus Complex 11) The child's decisive experience occurs at the Phallic stage when the desire of the baby is oriented towards an object choice of the parent of the opposite sex and a rivalry with the parent of the same sex. 12) The Male Oedipus Complex begins when the baby boy desires to possess his mother and is in rivalry with his father. 13) The second stage of the Male Oedipus is introduced when the baby boy abandons his desire for the mother and positively identifies with the father. 14) The Female Oedipus Complex begins when the baby girl desires to possess her father and is in rivalry with her mother. 15) The second stage of the Female Oedipus is introduced when the baby girl abandons her desire for the father and positively identifies with the mother. III– Critique of the Representational-Dummy Version

No doubt, the explanation above was unsuccessful; but not simply because my version was not the same as yours, but because the problem of representation is itself at fault.  The paragraphs below situate the beginning of a critique of the Representational-Dummy version of Oedipus.

1) The Oedipus complex was invented by Freud to explain the achievement of a sexual identity. If we begin with the Representational-Dummy version where the identities are already established – male/female, father/mother, adult/child – then the Oedipus Complex becomes null and void. 2) Habitually, the Dummy version assumes the sex of the child is established biologically with the possession of a penis or not (male or female), while the gender of the child is acquired through culture and education. This is a false reading of both the phallus in Freud and the Oedipus Complex. The careful reader should follow the argument from Essays on Sexuality (1905), On Narcissism (1914), to Infantile Genital Organization (1923) in order to get a tighter grip on what distinguishes the penis from the phallus and what distinguishes the Oedipus complex from the assimilation of a cultural norm. Just as Oedipus is not an effect of culture, the phallus is not a biological penis. 3) If a child has a penis, this means nothing more than the child has a penis. It does not establish the Freudian theory of sexual identity since both female and male in Freud have the phallus.  Moreover, the sexual arousal of the penis can not, at the time of the writing of this paper, be determined according to the laws of biology and endocrinology: See Bancroft, Sexual Arousal, Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, 2002.  It is clear that a symbolic dimension is implied 'from the beginning' in the consideration of sexual functioning in the human. 3) The careful reader will notice that the Masculine and Feminine Oedipus Complex does not exhaust the possible combination of attitudes of the child toward the mother and father.  For example, the boy could identify negatively with the mother and choose the father as the object of desire; while the girl could identify negatively with the father and choose the mother as object of desire. The addition of these two supplementary cases produces what has habitually been called the homosexual cases. a) If this Dummy manner of proceeding is accepted, then the Oedipus Complex is taken as a normalization of sex into the Heterosexual, while the Homosexual are the perverse exceptions to the rule. b) If this Dummy manner of proceeding is accepted, then one has read the Oedipus Complex in a manner that goes against the theory of Freud not to mention Lacan. Summary: If a child is identified from the beginning as male because he has a penis, then the following misreading has occurred: 1) The Oedipus complex is null and void since sexual identity has been determined before hand or as a simple effect of cultural rules. 2) The Oedipus complex has been reduced to a normative set of rules and a normalization of the child in terms of culture. 3) The Phallus has been reduced to the penis and a biological function. 4) Homosexuality has been reduced to a perversion and Heterosexuality the norm. 5) The child has been reduced to an object, where the problem of narcissism, the child's relation to its image, is no longer accounted.   Part II – Non-figurative version for Anti-Dummies (to be continued in the Sclinic of PLACE 2013)