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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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