Newly constructed...May 14th, 2011...
The concept of 'The Oedipal Complex' should be, for the most part, not that hard to understand with 'overly abstracted, pansexual' hardline Freudian psychoanalytic interpretations being held up like red flags -- danger, danger! Be careful here of over-Freudian-misinterpretation, misuse -- and the potential for theoretical/therapeutic abuse!
Let me define and describe The Oedipal Complex as this -- our earliest childhood love and/or love-hate role models that we 'introject' inside us to become 'internalized love templates', or more paradoxically and probably universally relevant, our 'love-hate-(attraction-repulsion)-templates' that can be divided into seven types that effectively stay with us our whole life and mainly dictate the type of 'love object' or 'transference figure' we are attracted to with 'evolutionary modifications and changes' along the way that are partly dictated by 'here-and-now' circumstances as well as the original childhood love-hate-attraction-repulsion templates mentioned above. This definition and description isn't too far removed from what Freud wrote in 'The Dynamics of The Transference' (1912) as described in his first few introductory paragraphs.
On a concrete level, there are as many unique, specific types of 'Oedipal Complexes' as there are people but here are seven major different classification types that are worth distinguishing from each other.
1. A 'Maternal Oedipal Complex' (MOC) where we are attracted to someone who subconsciously reminds us of our mother -- in this regard, our 'mother' is our 'early childhood love object-transference figure and makes up our 'internal love template' which we then 'project' and/or 'transfer' (or 'projectively transfer') onto someone in our present day adult environment who reminds us of our mom;
2. A 'Paternal' Oedipal Complex (POC) where we have developed a 'childhood love template' of our father who we then 'project' onto or into someone in our present day who we subconsciously view as being similar to our father -- i.e., a 'paternal love object-transference figure' (This type of 'projection' -- like all types of projection -- can be 'contactful' or 'distorted' or anywhere in between;
3. A 'Reverse-Maternal Oedipal Complex' (RMOC) where we are attracted to someone who we subconsciously perceive as having the 'opposite' characteristic(s) of our mother -- and 'project' this childhood role model into a present-day love-object-transference figure';
4. A 'Reverse-Paternal Oedipal Complex (RPOC) where we are attracted to someone who we subconsciously perceive as having the 'opposite' 'characteristic(s) of our father -- and project this childhood role model into a present-day love-object-transference-figure;
5. A 'Female-Non-Mother Oedipal Complex' (FNMOC) where we are attracted subconsciously to some other early childhood female role model (a sibling, a neighbour, a teacher, a stranger, a friend...) -- and 'project' this childhood role model into a 'present-day version of this 'lost' childhood love-object-transference-figure';
6. A 'Male-Non-Father-Oedipal Complex' (MNFOC) where we are attracted subconsciously to some other early childhood male role model -- and 'project' this childhood role model into a 'present-day version of this childhood love-object-transference-figure';
7. A 'Mixed Female and/or Male Oedipal Complex' (MFMOC) where we are attracted subconscously to a mixture of different childhood role models -- and 'project' this mixed childhood role model template (or mixture of different, more particular templates) into a 'present-day love-object-transference-figure' who seems to reflect a 'composite' of these mixed childhood love object transference characteristics.
Well, I guess the full psycho-dynamics here are not that simple but the most important point that I wish to make before closing is that, as a therapist, you don't 'literally translate childhood romantic-sexual attraction' to the point of overlooking, ignoring, denying, dissociating... a real childhood memory of a real client that reflects a 'real childhood sexual assault' that you 'fritter away interpretively' and say, in effect, 'Well, that is just the woman's distorted memory-fantasy of a particular childhood event (partly real, partly imagined, or totally imagined) based on the narcissistic influence of her Paternal Oedipal Complex'...
If a therapist 'over-interprets' a female client's early childhood memory in such a fashion as to 'white-wash' or 'obliterate' a real childhood sexual assault -- then this a totally pathological misuse and abuse of the concept of The Oedipal Complex. Again -- oedipal complexes can come in all different types, shapes, and sizes, some more sexualized than others -- as a theorist and therapist, you neither want to diagnose 'a false childhood sexual assault' but nor do you want to 'interpret away' a 'real childhood sexual assault'.
You want to remain 'objectively open' to any life or experiential possibility, and not to close your mind in such a way that you may 'diagnostically miss' the possibility of something that 'objectively or really happened' in your client's childhood that 'your possibly narcissistically biased theory that you were trained to believe in does not cover.
This goes for both the following hardline, narcissistically biased, one-sided, polar theories: 1. The Seduction Theory taken to the extreme where anything and everything can be 'interpreted' as meaning a 'childhood sexual assault'; or 2. The Oedipal Theory taken to the extreme where 'all asserted childhood sexual assaults' -- or at least those connected to 'father-daughter' relationships -- are 'reductionistically interpreted' as being a 'product of the little-girl-now adult client's Oedipal imagination'.
There are two equally narcissistically biased 'camps' of psychotherapy -- and I am exaggerating my point here to make sure that I clearly make it: 1. Those run by 'Out of touch, out of date, Victorian, Patriarchal, Masculinely Biased, Freudian Has Beens'; and 2. Those run by 'Hardline, Overly Narcissistic, Feminist-Biased, Therapists who want to turn every father, every male, into a 'female victimizer' -- and every female client into a 'victim of masculine abuse'.
Both men and women are equally capable of both being -- and 'playing up the roles' of -- 'victims' and 'victimizers', 'seducers' and 'seduced', 'manipulators' and 'manipulated'.
Both hardline extremist polar theories are equally one-sided -- and 'narcissistic' -- from opposite perspectives.
Both are equally theoretically and therapeutically dangerous.
Both need to come back to 'centre-court' and regain their 'flexible objectivity and open-mindedness'.
Both need to 'meet in the middle' with an over-arching theory that is capable of 'taking them either way to whatever different degree that seems to 'most accurately represent' the particular client's actual case and clinical material.'.
In this regard, I am promoting a bipolar 'Seduction-Oedipal Transference Theory' or more generally stated...a bipolar 'Traumacy-Fantasy-Impulse-Transference Theory' -- both of which are capable of bending or blending the flexibility of this theory in what is deemed as the most appropriate and relevant direction. The precedent set in physics is the 'Particle-Wave Theory' -- or what has become 'Quantum Physics'.
In a similar fashion here, I am looking at what might be called 'Quantum Psychoanalysis'.
More on this as we move along...
-- dgb, May 10th, updated May 14th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap Negotiations...
-- Are Still in Process...
