Short Stuff: Oedipus Complex

The Oedipus complex is probably Sigmund Freud’s most famous theory – that every little boy or girl goes through a phase where they want to kill one parent and, well, do things with the other. Good thing Freud just made it up. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 0:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh, Chuck, Jerry, not Dave, but Dave. And this is short stuff.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, the one in which we continue to lay wood onto Sigmund Freud.

• 0:52Josh Clark?

  What?

• 0:52Speaker 02

  As a lot of people do.

• 0:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I mean, his, his spirit at least.

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, here's the deal with Sigmund Freud. He, and I think this, this thing that you put together from Britannica and Very Well Mind and Psych Central and Simply Psychology and other places.

• 1:09Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10Speaker 02

  I think it kind of nails it where like, maybe we should just think of Freud as kind of a, an innovative, perhaps even great mind and thinker and not like a rigorous scientist. Because a lot of the stuff in his psychoanalysis and in his theories was not, it was just stuff based on anecdotal things he saw in the cases he worked on. Sometimes just like a single case would make him say like, oh, well, here's what this is, I think.

• 1:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he would just theorize based on conjecture. He never applied the scientific method to any of his theories. He just thought and talked out loud and smoked cigars and he, he came up with interesting explanations, right? For. For things he observed, for like actual, real things. And one of the actual, real things that he observed is that a lot of times little kids are mean and hostile to one parent and can't be separated from the other parent. And he came to kind of recognize that usually they were attached to the opposite sex parent and were mean to the same-sex parent. And that formed the basis of what came to be known as the Oedipus complex,

• 2:19Josh Clark?

  which is far and away his most famous theory among a lot of very famous theories that he came up with. But just like all the other ones, it's essentially conjecture.

• 2:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, when you think, if you know nothing about Freud, you probably have made a joke about like, somebody wanting to sleep with their mother.

• 2:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, there's a word for that even.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, what is it?

• 2:42Josh Clark?

  I'm not going to tell you.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  So, we should just quickly go over the Greek myth of Oedipus, in which that was so named for. Oedipus was abandoned at birth and then fulfilled a prophecy, killing his father, the king, and marrying his mother, the queen, whom he did not know. Because he was abandoned at birth, that was his father and his mother. He ended up having four kids with his mother. And after learning this, Queen Jocasta hanged herself and Oedipus gouged out his eyes. Perhaps appropriate action.

• 3:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  In his case, at least.

• 3:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so grossed out, he gouged out his own eyes. And to be clear, to the Greeks, the point of this myth was not like, how gross is this? It was like, it was about how, like, the inevitability of fate and the inability of humans to like, change their fate or their destiny. Because he was, this was a prophecy that he ended up fulfilling despite trying really hard not to, right? Freud was like, I like that really gross part. I'm gonna use that to describe these feelings that little kids have toward their parents.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  I like the idea, though, that someone's writing this myth and they're like, oh, boys, I got one for you, this one's so gnarly.

• 3:57Josh Clark?

  Gnarly.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  What's it about? Oh, you just wait.

• 4:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'm not gonna tell.

• 4:01Speaker 02

  It's about, it's about destiny? Ah, whatever, sure.

• 4:04Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 4:06Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, I mean, that's where Freud picked it up was, I mean, it is perfectly suited in that, in that sense.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we'll describe from, kind of directly from the Simply Psychology website, what the Oedipus complex is, and it occurs during the phallic stage of development, ages three to six, in which the source of libido, or the life force, is concentrated in the erogenous zones of the child's body, and during this stage, children experience an unconscious feeling of desire for their opposite sex parent, and jealousy and envy toward their same-sex parent.

• 4:39Josh Clark?

  Okay, it makes sense, it's a little, hmm, it's a little jargony. I also found one from Encyclopedia Britannica, it's a little more layperson geared. They say the Oedipus complex in psychoanalytic theory is a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex, and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex, but it's a crucial stage in the normal development process, according to psychoanalytic theory at least.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, that part is pretty key, and what's also key is that Freud based this on a case, one case study of a four-year-old patient that he anonymized as Little Hans. Apparently Little Hans was brought in by his father and had recently seen the collapse of a horse pulling a heavy cart that really traumatized him.

• 5:28Josh Clark?

  That traumatized anybody.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Sure, and he developed a fear of horses.

• 5:31Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 5:32Speaker 02

  So Hans's father said, you know what, he's developed all these really specific anxieties, he feels really uneasy without mom around, and he's really fixated on male genitalia, especially horse genitalia.

• 5:48Josh Clark?

  And Freud was like, yes, yes, I see, very interesting.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:53Josh Clark?

  I'm sorry, everybody. So he basically said, this all just makes total sense, check this out, Hans's father, all of this comes from a foundational animosity that he has towards you, his dad, and the reason that he's afraid of horses, because the horses represent you, his dad, and he's afraid that you, his dad, are going to castrate him because he secretly wants to sleep with his mother, even though he's four years old. And Freud's sycophantic secretary jumped to his feet and started applauding uncomfortably loudly.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, which this, you know, if you went into a, you know, a shrink today and you heard something like this, you'd say, "Thank you for your time. I'll be going to see someone else."

• 6:41Josh Clark?

  You could actually probably file suit for something like that.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, you probably could. But at the time, this turned out to be like the foundational legacy of Freud's psychoanalysis, which is just, you know, bananas to think about.

• 6:54Josh Clark?

  Should we talk about girls first and take a break, or a break and then girls?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Uh, let's talk about girls.

• 7:00Josh Clark?

  Okay, because there are such things as girls, and Freud was like, "Well, I guess I should probably talk about the girls, too." He didn't come up with the name "electrocomplex," that was Carl Jung, but he did take the Oedipal complex and apply it to girls, and basically said, "Same thing, but do the old switcheroo with the parents. The girls want to sleep with their father and they hate their mother." But the whole thing is not to do with castration anxiety, it's penis envy in girls.

• 7:28Speaker 02

  That's right. And what I mentioned is the first key, and by the way, I realize how creepy that sounded when I said, "Let's talk about girls."

• 7:36Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  By the way, a minute.

• 7:38Josh Clark?

  I didn't take it that way.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Okay, good. His proposal was, and this is very key, was that a kid that does not undergo this experience of the Oedipal complex will not fully mature sexually, and they will be stuck for life. They're going to be stuck identifying with the opposite sex parent, and they will never be able to have a normal, socially acceptable love life and desires for people who aren't in their family.

• 8:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he basically said that an incomplete development through the Oedipal complex is the basis of homosexuality. That's how he would have put it at the time. And then the other problem of it is you're stuck in that portion of your development, doomed to forever, like, go through it, even though you're never going to get past it. And he said that guys like that turn out to be real Norman Bates types. And all of his colleagues were like, "Who is Norman Bates?" And Freud was like, "Just wait, just wait, because he's going to knock your socks off when he comes along in the early 60s."

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Uh, I guess we take our break now?

• 8:42Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be back right after this.

• 9:05Josh Clark?

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• 9:14Speaker 02

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• 9:27Josh Clark?

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• 10:07Speaker 02

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• 11:21Josh Clark?

  Okay Chuck, so we're back. So the big question is, is all of this weird gross stuff correct?

• 11:30Josh Clark?

  Answer me.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Well, most psychologists today and the world of psychology as a whole are pretty bashful about even talking about this. They're like, can we just kind of forget all that stuff? We've moved on. It's completely discredited. Most of Freud's theories are pretty discredited at this point, but that's not to say that there isn't some support for this still.

• 11:56Josh Clark?

  No, there have been papers that have come out that seem to very strongly support the presence of Freud's Oedipus complex. And one came out in 2009. It was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. And it made international news when it was published because they studied the similarities, the physical characteristic similarities between men's mothers and their wives. And they measured everything as jaw length. They did everything. And they were coming up with correlations in like the 92nd percentile. So essentially like photocopies between mom and wife. And they were like, see, guys really want their

• 12:38Josh Clark?

  moms. What you gonna do? Dog's gonna hunt kind of thing. And like I said, it made international news. And luckily, some other scientists were like, let me see your data. And went through and they're like, this does not support your conclusions at all.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, here's the thing. I'm gonna go out on a limb. Hold on to your hats. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, I've seen plenty of examples where kids end up...

• 13:09Speaker 02

  Married to someone that is maybe in some way like, like a really good parent that they had of the opposite sex, or maybe of the same sex even. I don't necessarily think like it's the looks thing, but like if you're like a really awesome dad and you're like super fun and funny and you know, maybe you have a certain job like, and your daughter goes on to marry somebody who's got like a great sense of humor and is maybe have a similar interest as something your father did, like I think that can be a thing. I don't think it's always a thing. But it's just sort of when you're raised with a parent that you look, look up to and love and admire, you may seek out people like that in your life. And I think that's kind of all that is.

• 13:52Josh Clark?

  I think similarly, and maybe even more frequently or commonly, people inadvertently or unconsciously seek out people who are like their parents in the worst ways.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, or, or sometimes completely seek out the opposite.

• 14:07Josh Clark?

  Yes, but that's more conscious.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe so. But yeah, I see what you mean for sure.

• 14:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So again, there have been, there was another paper in the eighties that studied rats that basically it said like, yes, these rats at least have Oedipus complexes that carry on. So luckily, psychology came up with some other stuff that says like, okay, kids do stuff like this when they're young. We don't think it's the Oedipus complex. And luckily, things like attachment theory, which we did an entire episode on, that was pretty good.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:39Josh Clark?

  Have come along.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Way less creepy.

• 14:40Josh Clark?

  Way less creepy. They've come along and offered pretty good structures for understanding child development that is just much less icky than, than Freud's.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  So you're just gonna summarize that rat study? You're not gonna talk about rat ejaculation?

• 14:54Josh Clark?

  Do you want me to?

• 14:55Speaker 02

  No, I think we should just leave that right there.

• 14:58Josh Clark?

  Okay, cool. So I think more than ever, short stuff is out.