Testing the Theory of the Oedipus Complex :: Psychology Psychological Experiment

Abstract from Paper___________________________________________________THEORY If a subject in the experimental group shows more aggressive behaviortoward his father and increased affectionate behavior toward their mother afterreceiving the subliminal messages and the control group shows no increase whenshown neutral messages, then it will be proven that the Oedipus Complex does infact exist in the unconscious. To prove this we bring the behavior step forward from theunconscious to the sub conscious through the subliminal messages. These boyshave repressed these feelings for so long because it is too painful for them todeal with.______________________________________________________Research Paper Begins presentThe positive libidinal feelings of a child to the parent of the oppositesex and hostile or jealous feelings toward the parent of the same sex that maybe a source of adult personality disorder when un indomitable. It is a pattern ofprofound activated ambivalence, a troubles ome mixture of love and hate.The Oedipus Complex occurs during the phallic stage, from roughly ages3-6 years. Freud believed that during this stage boys seek genital stimulationand develop both unconscious desires for their mother and jealousy and hatredfor their father, whom they consider a rival. It was said that boys matt-up guiltand lurking fear that their father would punish them, such as by castration.Freud also believed that conscience and gender identity form as the childresolved the Oedipus Complex at age 5 or 6, but this actually happens earlier.A child tends to become strongly masculine or feminine without until now having thesame sex parent present.Freud argues that all sons unconsciously desire to kill, even if theylove, their fathers. He found his own unconscious wish to murder his father inhis intensive self analysis in 1897, shortly after the death of his father.Freud says it is only the male child that we find the fatefulcombination of love for the unmatched pare nt and simultaneous hatred for the other asa rival. Freud believed Oedipal was a normal part of human psychological growthand it is during this stage children produce emotional conflicts.Other psychoanalysts believed that girls experience a parallel calledthe Electra Complex. This comes from a Greek legend of a women named Electrawho helped plan the murder of her mother.The Oedipus Complex originates from a myth intimately a Greek hero namedOedipus, written by Sophocles. Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta who inthe fulfillment of an oracle unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother.When Oedipus and Jocasta realize what has happened, Jocasta hangs herself andhe rips the golden brooches from his breathless mothers gown and plunges them deep