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Psychoanalysis
and Art
by Adams p 74
--Pre-oedipal events--
including loss of love or abandonment, the period of toilet
training, and the sight of the female genitals--can contribute
to oedipal castration fear.
Positive oedipal
constellation --
In the so-called
negative constellation, the boy identifies with his mother and
becomes, in fantasy, his father's passive love object.
By 1923, in The
Ego and the Id, Freud had recognized that the Oedipal complex
operated bisexually--that is, the negative and the positive
constellations interact in every case. Although the boy
is hostile to his father, he also loves him, which sets us an
ambivalent relationship. In the 1928 essay "Dostoevsky and Parricide,"
Freud described the bisexuality of the Oedipus complex as hightened
in neurosis and in creating creative individuals. Whether the
positive or negative constellation predominates, however, the
boy fears castration—in the former as punishment and in the
latter as a prerequisite for his feminine identification. [boldface
added]
In girls--the fantasy
that castration has already taken place precedes and paves the
way for the Oedipus complex; the girl's positive Oedipus complex
requires a change in object from mother to father that corresponds
to renouncing the clitoris as the primary genital zone in
favor
of the vagina. …These discovery shed a new light on the importance
of the girl's pre-oedipal stage and helped to explain her
tendency to remain attached to her mother. …the complexity
of female development, the likelihood of a prolonged Oedipus
complex, and the greater flexibility of the superego compared
with males.
Possible argument
for Freud—
- penis—social construct
- his emphasis on
bisexuality—his formulation of the Oedipus complex is a construct
and that all people are bisexual.
- he does not talk
about biology or neurology, but psyche and imago
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