Freudian theory and womb twin survivors - Oedipus, mothers and all that

Oedipus married his mother (unknowingly) and killed his father (unintentionally.) Freud invented it in 1896, and people still talk about it as if it was real.




Passionate feelings of love and hate for your parents? Sounds familiar, bearing in mind last week's blogs.

Sexual feelings for a parent? Hmm.


But how about the need for great intimacy with someone of the opposite sex, who is part of the family and therefore tabu? A parent would do very well. What about the feelings of the sole survivors of an opposite sex fraternal twin pair? The need for great intimacy would be there, and a parent, as we have seen, makes a good substitute for a lost twin. There could be some sexual feeling and behavior (incest  is not so rare) but not with sexual relations in mind - more a great need for a close and physical intimacy that goes beyond the bounds of an ordinary friendship. This is an attempt to create a sibling relationship between two people of the opposite sex.

Rage against your parents?  Wanting them to die? Waiting for them to die and leave the space for you  alone without them?  Is this in the Dream of the Womb?

Does that rage come from the womb?  Is this a reaction to rejection by death - that style of rejection peculiar to womb twin survivors, where one's own death is a release from the pain of being the survivor, for the pain was once in the dying of your twin?

The definition of RAGE is wounded anger - it's the normal aggressive reaction to someone or something that seeks to inflict pain upon you. Your wish is to kill the source of it, or send it away, a long way away, so that it won't hurt you any more.  This seems to be the reaction of  an identical womb twin survivor, for the rage in the Oedipus complex is against the person of the same sex.

So hidden inside the Oedipus complex is a dual conflict: a need for great intimacy in a familial context with someone of the opposite sex (Mum) , while raging against the person who is of the same sex (Dad) who must die or leave - does this the Dream alive?

What if Freud, in his self-analysis, found his own derives and desires and assumed they were typical of everyone (which clearly they are certainly not.) What if Sigmund Freud was a womb twin survivor himself?  Now there is an interesting thought!

There is some evidence of this possibility, in fact.  We will talk tomorrow about death, to make this clear.