“Is the Oedipus complex Universal?” It is remarkable how controversial this century-old question on Freud's individual developmental psychology remains. It was never so controversial, however, as when Freud applied oedipal theory at the level of culture with Totem and Taboo. (1913)(With this extension, Freud proposed his reconstruction of the origins of human culture out of the prehistoric primal horde, following Darwin. (p. 125) The Oedipus complex was now not only the “nucleus of all neuroses”, it was the nucleus of all civilization, as well. As Freud boldly put it, “the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus complex”. (p. 156-7).
After A. A. Brill's English translation of Totem and Taboo from the original German in 1918, Freud's origin theory of the primal horde received systematic criticism from the discipline of anthropology, beginning with Kroeber's (1920) acerbic broadside, followed by Malinowski's Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927), the most influential critique of the 20th century. Psychoanalysts early on were influenced by Malinowski's thesis and took up the criticisms. (e.g., Kardiner, 1939. Ch. 3; Fenichel 1945, p. 97; Fromm, 1959). Freud's cultural reconstruction was dismissed as simplistic, unscientific, lacking in evidence, and still mired in discredited concepts of 19th century evolutionists.
The critical reaction to Freud's evolutionary speculations only increased doubts about the Oedipus complex as a universal feature of normal psychosexual development. As we will see, critics still write as though it is uncontroversial to consider oedipal theory as entirely wrong. Remarkably, however, this could not be further from the truth. I will show that much of the original criticism from anthropology, including Malinowski's influential critique, has suffered under sustained scrutiny. The past century has actually brought increasing evidence that Freud
was on the right track and that much of the criticism has rested on fundamental confusions and misunderstandings that I hope to clarify.
Ever new versions of Malinowski's original critique appear and continue to perpetuate what I refer to as the fallacy of pathological patriarchy. In what follows, I will argue that this fallacy confuses the difference between what causes the Oedipus complex and what complicates its resolution. In doing so, I also hope to show that the logic and explanatory power of Freud's oedipal formulations become clearer when their biological and evolutionary bases are kept in mind. Fundamental psychoanalytic concepts then yield their full significance in the systemic sense in which Freud had formulated them. (Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein, 1953) Relevant concepts here will include libido, infantile sexuality, component instincts, ambivalence, bisexuality, ego and drive development, Freud's “etiological formula” of the complemental series and his emphasis on prolonged childhood dependency.
The last concept listed above—Freud's recognition of the cultural ramifications of prolonged dependency—is particularly important for the cogency of oedipal theory. For this reason, I will address this at some length in the final, most important portion of my argument. There I will turn to the writing of Geza Roheim, whose brilliant elucidation of this developmental observation in Freud's formulations is of enormous value. The fact of prolonged dependency is an uncontroversial feature of our developmental biology. It is a function of our species' evolutionary heritage and is, by definition, a cross-cultural universal. Critics of oedipal theory invariably overlook the full import of this as it relates to yet another feature of human development that also tends to be ignored: the precocious rate of sexual drive development relative to ego development in humans. As with our protracted dependency, this asynchronous aspect of our development is unmatched by any other mammal. The disparity between these two major structures of human personality (the ego and the id) reaches its peak in early childhood when the individual is still wholly dependent on the primary caregiver(s) for survival. Due largely to advances taking place in these structures, a normal set of developmental conflicts (Nagera, 1966) begins to coalesce, one which is characterized by triangular sexual competition and complicated by the bisexual nature of human biology. Freud called this matrix of developmental conflicts the Oedipus complex.
The achievement among our proto-human ancestors of a means of resolving this Oedipus complex was, in Freud's estimation, as monumental an event for human evolution as it is for each person's development. Freud became only more certain over his career that this “dissolution of the Oedipus complex” (1924a), typically achieved around age 5 or 6, recapitulates prehistoric primal events and adaptations made and preserved by some still incompletely understood mechanisms of inheritance. I will argue that Freud's explanation of this human innovation can only be fully appreciated in the context of his “etiological formula” of the complemental series. (1917b, p. 347 and note) This concept referred to the ubiquitous interrelation of innate and acquired/environmental factors in human motivation and adaptation. Critics have tended to overlook the fact that already in Totem and Taboo Freud's complemental series was guiding his speculation that the mechanisms of inheritance operating in these evolutionary adaptations could somehow entail an integration of both culturally acquired and genetically determined factors.
By around the mid-20th century, Malinowski's Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927) began to crack under the pressure of much-delayed reexaminations from within anthropology. (e.g., Kluckhohn and Morgan, 1951) The cracks only widened when the first follow-up field study to test Malinowski's conclusions was finally conducted by Powell in 1957 – a full thirty years after Malinowski's original ethnography. Harris (1968) would underscore the essential problem with Malinowski's thesis that was clarified by Powell's reexamination. Malinowski claimed to have discovered a non-oedipal nuclear complex in matrilineal society. In this “matrilineal complex”, the core “system of sentiments” flowed not from the familiar mother/child/father triad of patriarchy, which Malinowski viewed as pathological, but instead from the avunculate triad of sister/sister's son/maternal uncle. Yet there was a glaring problem that Malinowski neglected to consider. His own ethnographic data, confirmed by Powell, revealed that “the Trobriand child is brought up largely under the influence of the usual nuclear pairs. Mother's brother enters the picture only when the child is seven or eight years old, an age by which the Oedipal constellation is firmly entrenched…” (, p. 428)
In subsequent decades Malinowski's thesis has continued to weaken
under sustained scrutiny. (Fox, 1967; Harris, 1968; Fortes, 1977; Paul, 1976 and 2010; Spiro, 1982) Ironically, the most powerful defense of Freudian oedipal theory has come not from psychoanalysis but from anthropology, namely Spiro's Oedipus in the Trobriand's (1982). A prodigious undoing of Malinowski's thesis, Spiro's defense marshalled a carefully reasoned and thoroughly documented case that the Oedipus complex was not only universal but remained even more intense and unresolved in the matrilineal society of Trobriand islanders, the very test society for Malinowski's critique. The conclusion was compelling and unambiguous: “the only appropriate response to the question, ‘Is the Oedipus complex universal?’ is ‘How could it possibly not be?’” (p.162). He continued:
If there were a human society where mothers did not have male consorts—so that the son had no adult rival for the love of the mother—in such a society the Oedipus complex (by definition) would not exist. So far as we know, however, no human society of that type exists, or has ever existed. (p.162)
Spiro's conclusions in Oedipus in the Trobriands drew heavily from Malinowski's own landmark observations and the Powell follow-up field study from 1957. It was a devastating blow to the Malinowskian thesis of a non-oedipal nuclear complex. Arguably, to this day no decisive refutation of Spiro's analysis has been offered from anthropology. (Jordan and Swartz 2010, pp. 162-163)
More recently, in “Yes, the Primal Crime Did Take Place: A Further Defense of Freud's Totem and Taboo” (1910), anthropologist-psychoanalyst, Robert Paul, reaffirmed with increasing confidence the answer he gave in his now-classic paper from 1976, “Did the Primal Crime Take Place?”. Paul concludes that “Freud's idea of the ‘primal father’ can without much difficulty be assimilated to the concept of the ‘alpha male’ at the apex of a status hierarchy such as that found among our closest relatives, the chimpanzees, that probably characterized the last common ancestor of the three African great apes and the hominine line”. (p. 232) He also describes the favorable climate in contemporary anthropology for integrating sociocultural, biological and psychological theory and recommends that Freud's thesis in Totem and Taboo, can “…serve as a basis for understanding both the foundational myths of our own culture,
as well as the evolution of human society more generally.” (p. 247; italics added)
Given this brief sketch it is reasonable to conclude that Freud's oedipal theory, at the very least, has not been decisively invalidated by the hundred years of scrutiny it has received. The preponderance of findings from anthropology alone would suggest the opposite. It is also anomalous that Malinowski's “matrilineal thesis” would have been accepted within anthropology “with almost no skepticism or critical inquiry for fifty years.” (Spiro, 1982, p. 175; note: the Powell study remained virtually invisible in anthropology until Spiro revived it in 1982) Remarkably, however, contemporary authors from both anthropology and psychoanalysis continue to repeat Malinowski's old argument, as though it had been the final word and had never been subjected to damaging reexaminations. Bhlugra and Bhui (2002) insist that the Oedipus complex “is culture-specific and an essentially pathological outcome of a male-dominated, class-structured society.” (p. 81; italics added) Others assert that the complex itself doesn't actuality occur: “Examination of the nature and origins of the Oedipus complex presented by psychoanalysts and critics suggests, that as a hypothetical construct, there is little evidence to support its existence.” (Kupfersmid, 1995, p.135; italics added) We are asked to believe that a fair examination of the Oedipus complex would suggest that no one anywhere has ever even had one! Even Malinowski's thesis—again, the most important and ethnographically-grounded critique of the Twentieth century - never went this far.
On closer scrutiny such broad dismissals as these may simply omit essential sources of evidence. The last critique failed to mention any of Spiro's writings, including Oedipus in the Trobriands, arguably the most important interdisciplinary defense in the last few decades. The author also seems unaware of the landmark Powell reassessment from 1957, Fox's Red Lamp of Incest (1967) and Paul's (1976) classic reexamination of Totem and Taboo, from both anthropology and psychoanalysis. (see also Paul 2010) In other words, the examination excluded the most important sources in the scientific literature in support of oedipal theory.
Arguably, the unresolved nature of the debate is manifested today in a kind of interdisciplinary confusion of tongues. With regard to the
perceived status of the Oedipus complex, authors from both disciplines can be quoted as saying either that it is “universally accepted” (e.g., Spillius, 2000, p. 187) or that one should imagine it had “disappeared completely”. (e.g., Strenger, 2006, p. 420) In the psychoanalytic literature addressing what Freud actually meant or the most useful clinical application of oedipal theory, the lack of consensus is well documented. (Adler, 2010; Ahumada, 2016; Birkstead-Breen, 2016; Blass 2016; Britton, 1989; Greenberg 1991; Hartke, 2016; Nagera, 2005; Paul, 2010 and 2016; Van Haute and Westerink, 2016; Wallerstein, 1988). It is an irony, also, that at the same time that anthropology was rediscovering and affirming Freud's oedipal theory, within psychoanalysis it was suffering the opposite fate; the general “waning of the Oedipus complex” that Loewald (1979) observed forty years ago has steadily increased to the point that the complex is now becoming “effaced” altogether, at least within intersubjectivist circles. (Adler 2010).
In one of the many ironies that have characterized the response to Totem and Taboo, the resistances that Freud encountered from the start to his observations on infantile sexuality were actually reinforced by Malinowski's idyllic portrayal of unrepressed “savage” psychosexuality among Trobriand Islanders. Although the data of Malinowski's landmark ethnography actually confirmed Freud's observations on the “polymorphously perverse” nature of infantile sexuality, his interpretations of them came to mirror those of his teacher, C.G. Seligman, who regarded Freud's claims of oedipal stage genital sensations and fantasies in the nuclear triangle to be a “regrettable excrescence”. (quoted in Smadja, 2011)
Indications of Malinowski's reaction to the facts of infantile sexuality appeared already in his initial agreements with Freud views, which nevertheless revealed obvious unease and specific reservations:
“Although, as I have said, the little boy has no thoughts, desires or impulses towards his mother which he himself would feel belong to the category of the ‘indecent’, there can be no doubt that a young organism reacts sexually to close bodily contact with the mother”. (p.36)
By the second edition of Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1937), Malinowski, explicitly disturbed by his earlier intuition, went out of his way to reject it, and to repeat the rejection again, lest anyone doubt his revised opinion:
“Since this was first written in 1921, I have changed my views on this subject. The statement that ‘a young organism reacts sexually to close bodily contact with the mother ’ appears to me now absurd. I am glad I may use this strong word, having written the absurd statement myself.” (pp. 36-37)
The urgent tone with which Malinowski appeared to “protest too much” in this later edition could suggest a traumatic element, après-coup, in his response to the initial, very public acknowledgement of oedipal sexuality. Smadja (2011) has proposed that such a response occurred within anthropology to the confrontation with psychoanalysis following Totem and Taboo. There may be justification for this in the ironic, anomalous, and polarized quality of reactions.
Within psychoanalysis, Neo-Freudians like Fromm, Horney and Kardiner were swayed by Malinowski's disavowal of oedipal longings for the mother among Trobriand boys and sexual rivalry with the father, even in repression or displacement. From anthropology, Kroeber (1939) redoubled his earlier criticism and called for a redefined oedipal “kernel”, without the superego, which he viewed as one of Freud's “gratuitous and really irrelevant assumptions”. (pp. 545-47) Fromm answered the call and argued that it was not sexuality but the child's “defeat in the fight against authority which constitutes the kernel of the neurosis”. (quoted in Kluckhohn and Murray, 1959, p. 519; my italics) It would become increasingly difficult to recognize anything either oedipal or Freudian in the redefined neo-Freudian “kernel”.
Contemporary rejections of oedipal theory often rely on parodies of Freud's basic concepts. This is common in critiques of Freud's concept of infantile sexuality. Let us return to our earlier example, where the claim was that “there is little reason to believe in the existence of the Oedipus complex”. (Kupfersmid, 1995, pp. 546) The author portrays Freud as believing that infants are born with knowledge of both sexes' genitals and
that oedipal-aged children have sexual knowledge of adult intercourse, as if they can understand what this entails. Since the author provides no context for this claim, other than a general reference to Freud's entire Introductory Lectures, it remains difficult to understand on what basis he arrives at it. He simply writes without any clarification that Freud “contended that anatomical knowledge of the opposite sex, as well as a desire for sexual intercourse with the opposite sex parent, is genetically inherited.” (Kupfersmid, 1995, p. 536)
Freud's actual observations on childhood sexuality demonstrate how misleading such characterizations can be. With regard to anatomical knowledge Freud was clear on his view that young girls and boys originally make the ego-centric assumption that all genitals are like their own; that boys, for example, “attribute the same male genital to both sexes.” (1917a, p. 317) In The Ego and the Id (1923) Freud refers to a boy's pre-oedipal identification with the father and then clarifies that perhaps “it would be safer to say [identification] ‘with the parent’; for before a child has arrived at a definite knowledge of the difference between the sexes, the lack of a penis, it does not distinguish in value between its father and its mother.” (p. 31)
Freud's formulations on the castration complex, castration anxiety, and penis envy presuppose the potential anxieties children can have when first confronted with anatomical facts so at odds with their original misconceptions based on concrete thinking and ego-centrism. The following passage from Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1910) demonstrates the complexity of Freud's actual views on infantile sexual knowledge and experience:
…during the time when the child is dominated by the still unrepressed nuclear complex, an important part of his intellectual activity is brought into the service of his sexual interests… Under the influence of the component instincts that are active in himself, he arrives at a number of ‘infantile sexual theories‘—such as attributing a male genital organ to both sexes alike, or supposing that babies are conceived by eating and born through the end of the bowel, or regarding sexual intercourse as a hostile act, a kind of violent subjugation. But as a result precisely of the incompleteness of his sexual constitution, and of the gap in his knowledge due to the
Page 402hidden nature of the female sexual channel, the young investigator is obliged to abandon his work as a failure.” (pp. 47-48)
Condensed into this passage are a number of essential concepts and empirical observations that remain as useful today as they were when Freud formulated them over century ago. Childhood sexuality and infantile sexual theories are described here in relation to specific stage-typical aggressive trends and in the context of Freud's concept of the libidinal component instincts. The latter concept pertains to the building blocks of psychosexual development and is not limited to the leading oral, anal, and genital zones. It comprises every somatic source of sensory excitation, each of which is associated with functions basic to human survival.
Freud's psychosexual synthesis operationalized the question of how libidinal components emerge, compete for dominance, and eventually become more or less successfully coordinated in the service of mature object-relations, conscience formation, and reproductive genital primacy. The libido concept applied to the entire sensory field, and did so in the context of a model that accounted for the vicissitudes of drive components over the entire life course. Critics often overlook the fact that oedipal sexuality must not be “reduced to the genital, precisely because of the importance [Freud] accords to infantile sexuality and the partial drives.” (Chasseguet-Smirgel and Grunberger, 1986, p. 136)
Freud's epigenetic model of the gradual differentiation and integration of drive components in the course of ontogeny is a reminder that references to the concept of infantile “genital” make no sense apart from the systematic interrelation of all component drive contributions, including preoedipal ones. Otherwise, the Oedipus complex is inevitably misunderstood and reduced to intensifying genital sensations and fantasies. But this over-simplifies Freud's view, as demonstrated in the extraordinary passage quoted above. The typical sexual theories of childhood are no less oedipal because of their conspicuous oral and anal components. Rather, these components, along with the child's maturing ego functions, are now enlisted on behalf of emerging oedipal trends; in Freud's words they are “brought into the service” of the child's infantile genital aims.
The meanings associated with “oedipal” or “infantile genital” are easily
confounded with those of adult genital primacy. Malinowski, for example, regarded the denial of conscious sexual fantasies on the part of Trobriand men for their actual aging mothers as a disproof of the Oedipus complex. Such a misunderstanding may have played a role in Malinowski's conflicted reaction to the facts of oedipal sexuality, identified above. This confusion denies the persistence of unconscious wishes from childhood and eliminates the essential distinction in Freudian theory between external reality and psychic reality. There is a world of difference between the genital experiences at these different levels of maturation and development. It must be held in mind that oedipal sexuality remains fully “infantile” in every specific Freudian sense of this term:
* consolidation of masculine and feminine identifications remains incomplete;
* representations of sexual anatomy are not yet integrated into a mature self-concept that is consistent with genital primacy and sexual reproductive capacity;
* the full implications of sexual intercourse and reproduction are not yet comprehensible to the oedipal child, nor do their real consequences yet apply;
* preoedipal oral and anal trends still vie for dominance over genital ones;
* boundaries defining self/object representations are still fluid and easily fragmented;
* thinking is still largely ego-centric, concrete, and dominated by impulse, magical thinking and fantasy rather than the reality principle;
* full physical maturation, along with emotional independence from caregivers, could still be as much as two decades away.
For all such reasons, vaguely defined critiques of Freud's views on infantile sexuality using phrases with highly-charged adult connotations, like “the desire for sexual intercourse with the opposite sex parent”, will always be misleading unless they specify the meaning of these concepts in their proper developmental contexts.
The explanatory power of Freud's actual theory becomes even clearer when we expand our considerations beyond individual ontogeny to the larger cultural and evolutionary questions that Freud took up in Totem and Taboo. To do so is to bring the concept of the component drives into the service of our understanding of how individual psychology (and psychopathology) manifests in specifically collective forms. After all, Totem and Taboo was Freud's “first attempt” to explain the causal relations between these two levels. Let us consider the climactic ‘deed’ in Totem and Taboo: the murder and cannibalism of the primal father by the younger males in their sexual competition for possession of the females.
Freud's synthesis includes a psychodynamic explanation for how collective actions that would appear to be solely the expression of drive activity in its most regressed or primitive state—oral and anal-sadistic cannibalism—can be more comprehensively understood in terms of these pre-oedipal components becoming mobilized in the service of infantile genital (“phallic-oedipal”) aims and, eventually, in the service of mature reproductive genital primacy. In the initial stages of this process (associated with evolutionary advances; e.g., use of weapons) the primal father is killed and ingested in the service of possessing his phallic power over the horde and his genitally procreative monopoly over the females. This represents an oral incorporative form of identification brought into the service of phallic-oedipal aims at the shared level of the group. This deed (both real and imagined; Freud's thesis includes both) is quintessentially “oedipal”, precisely to the extent that it stands without resolution and is driven by fantasies of omnipotence and idealized sexual satisfaction; such hopes remain as futile as the oedipal child's omnipotent wish to replace the rival parent. No sooner is the primal deed accomplished than its victor becomes the next victim.
In Freud's account, the collective solution to this oedipal dilemma in the course of cultural evolution was a set of compromise formations (see Freud, 1901, pp. 58-9, for an early discussions of this concept); these took the form of the elaborate system of totemic rituals and taboos regulating aggression, sex and reproductive exogamy, characteristic of “primitive” society. Freud proposed that the corollary in individual psychosexual development of this phylogenetic achievement is evident in the dissolution
of the Oedipus complex—the relinquishing of oedipal objects by means of an introjection into one's own ego of the oedipal rival's values, those that now represent the exigencies of communal reality and pair bonding. (see Chapais 2010, for a landmark clarification of this particular feature in human society.) This identification further consolidates conscience formation and it exemplifies a triumph of the reality principle. Conversely, just as with the castration by, and murder of, the primal father, no sooner are traumatic oedipal defeats or victories (Alexander, 1933, p.188-89) experienced by the child—which can occur for many reasons (ex., physical and sexual abuse, overstimulation, separation/divorce, death of parent, etc.)—then difficulties arise for the child's ability to resolve the oedipal conflicts and move beyond them.
The analogous relationship between oedipal defeats or victories in childhood, on the one hand, and the primal events (repeated over millennia), on the other hand, allows us to underscore the evolutionary biological basis of oedipal theory. To this end, let us return to Malinowski's critique.
In Sex and Repression in Savage Society, what Malinowski claimed to have discovered was a different type of a more generally defined “nuclear complex”, the nature of which had to be determined for each particular society: “… I have established a deep correlation between the type of society and the nuclear complex found there.” (1927, p. 82) It could be an Oedipus complex, a matrilineal complex, and, at least theoretically, any number of other possible types of nuclear complex. In a remarkable passage, Malinowski even appears to have engaged in something of a symbolic patricide of his own when he prophesied the end of the British and American patriarchy and, along with it, the extinction of an already endangered Oedipus complex:
“Psychoanalysis cannot hope I think, to preserve its ‘Oedipus complex’ for future generations, who will only know a weak and henpecked father. For him the children will feel indulgent pity rather than hatred and fear!” (1927 p. 27; italics added)
It's tempting to imagine something of Malinowski's own oedipal ambivalence in this fantastic conjecture of his. But, more relevantly, it underscores the fact that he never considered the matrilineal complex
to be simply “another version of the Oedipus complex” based on different customs. What becomes clear when we consider Malinowski's abysmal forecast for the Western father is that he had never viewed the Trobriand matrilineal complex as a mere subtype within oedipal theory, some kind of “different Oedipus complex.” Malinowski's actual view is important to understand because a misrepresentation of his thesis, precisely to this effect, arose in anthropology and psychoanalysis and, as I will argue, continues to be a source of confusion over what constitutes an actual oedipal conflict. A major consequence of this confusion is that it obscures the critical difference in Freudian theory between what causes the Oedipus complex, on the one hand, and what complicates its resolution, on the other. For this reason, a brief detour to explain this confusion over Malinowski's thesis will be helpful before we address the greater phylogenetic significance of what actually causes the Oedipus complex.
Around the time of the closely coinciding deaths of Freud, Malinowski and Boas (Freud in , both the latter in ) this idea that Mahnowski had argued for a type of Oedipus complex became more common among leading figures in the disciplines. Ironically, Malinowski's own critique of the universal Oedipus complex came eventually to be misrepresented by anthropologists and psychoanalysts alike as if it had posited a matrilineal form of the Freudian Oedipus complex. An illustration of the cross-disciplinary and authoritative reach of this revision in the fate of Malinowski's very non-oedipal matrilineal complex can be seen in Fenichel's influential Psychoanalytic Theory of Neuroses (1945) where he claimed that Malinowski had argued “…that societies with family configurations different from our own actually have different Oedipus complexes.” (p. 97; italics added) Fenichel was describing here what he claimed to be Malinowski's own conclusion. This was remarkable given that as far as Malinowski was concerned the “different Oedipus complexes” that Fenichel was referring to bore little resemblance to Freud's oedipal theory.
From anthropology, Kroeber (1939) had largely confused matters six years earlier in a revisitation of his first critique (1920) of Totem and Taboo, which had been excoriating in nature. Published two months after Freud's death, Kroeber's reappraisal began with no great reconciliation:
“I see no reason to waver over my critical analysis of Freud's book. There is no indication that the consensus of anthropologists during these twenty years has moved even an inch nearer acceptance of Freud's central thesis”. (p. 446) Kroeber (1939) went on to rebuke the Freudians for their “all or nothing” attitude, of “partaking of the nature of a religion - a system of mysticism [and possessing] the qualities of a delusional system” (p. 451; italics added)—all this for insisting that concepts like the super-ego and the Oedipus complex were defined systematically and would not retain their coherence if decoupled and not taken together. Then, in a strange sleight of hand, Kroeber asserted that Malinowski had “showed that the mechanism [of the Oedipus complex] remained operative even in a changed family situation.” (p. 449); he went on to suggest that Malinowski had argued for Freud's theory by demonstrating what Kroeber considered to be the “kernel of the Oedipus situation”, which consisted of “the incest drive and incest repression, filial ambivalence, and the like”. (p. 447) Actually, it's possible that if Malinowski's own interpretation of his data had found at least these to be true for the Trobriand child between three-to-five years of age then at least some of the controversy could have been avoided. But, as we'll see, wish as Kroeber might, Malinowski had not interpreted his own data in this manner; instead he convinced two generations of anthropologists, and many Neo-Freudian psychoanalysts, that Trobriand boys at this age had no triangular filial ambivalence and no incest drive toward the mother whatsoever, least of all any that could cause destructive fantasies of eliminating the father, unconscious or otherwise.
A truly matrilineal form of the Oedipus complex would have been in complete agreement with Freud and is what oedipal theory would predict. But this was not Malinowski's thesis. In fact, given the sociopolitical and economic nature of his argument (and, I would argue, ideology) he could not have been much clearer:
The complex exclusively known to the Freudian School, and assumed by them to be universal, I mean the Oedipus complex, corresponds essentially to our patrilineal Aryan Family with the developed patria potestas, buttressed by Roman law and Christian morals, and accentuated by the modern economic conditions of the well-to-do bourgeoisie. Yet this complex is assumed to exist in every savage or barbarous society. This certainly cannot be correct, and
Page 408a detailed discussion of the first problem will show us how far this assumption is untrue. (1927, p. 5)
There would have been no debate with Freud (by proxy, with Jones, Roheim and others) if Malinowski's thesis had determined simply that the Oedipus complex varies in form according to different social structures. Indeed, this was Jones' position in his defense of Freud! Not surprisingly, Jones (1924) was just as clear about Malinowski's position as Malinowski was:
[Malinowski] attempts to modify Freud's theory of the nuclear family complex. As is well known, the latter regards the relationship between father, mother, and son as the prototype from which other more complicated relationships are derived. Malinowski, on the contrary, puts forward the idea that the nuclear family complex varies according to the particular family structure existing in any community. (p.169)
Jones' position remained true to Freud's designation of the Oedipus complex as the universal nuclear complex. Jones correctly showed that Freud's oedipal theory predicted that the oedipal dynamics stemming from the nuclear triangle could be displaced onto any variety of objects according to the given social structures. Jones' argued that,
…. the matrilineal system with its avunculate complex arose…as a mode of defense against the primordial Oedipus tendencies…. The forbidden and unconsciously loved sister is only a substitute for the mother, as the uncle plainly is for the father…(p.170)
It wasn't just Jones who clarified the terms of the debate. Roheim also took the same theoretical position against Malinowski's matrilineal complex. In his brilliant The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968), Marvin Harris would point out:
Contrary to popular impression, in the argument between Roheim and Malinowski over the effect of the Trobriand matrilineal organization on the Oedipal situation, it is Roheim who holds the trump card. By Malinowski's own admission, the Trobriand child is brought up largely under the influence of the usual nuclear pairs. Mother's brother enters the picture only when the child is seven or
Page 409eight years old, an age by which the Oedipal constellation is firmly entrenched. (pp. 428-9)
Once again, there was no confusion about the actual terms of the debate: the Oedipus complex, as Freud had defined it, was the universal nuclear complex—yes or no.
It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that Malinowski's argument was never that the nuclear Oedipus complex could manifest in diverse forms according to different customs. Not once in three-hundred pages of Sex and Repression in Savage Society did he refer to anything slightly resembling the reinterpretations that others, like Fenichel and Kroeber, applied to his thesis, such as “different Oedipus complexes” or “matrilineal form of the Oedipus complex”. Instead, Malinowski refers to “…the matrilineal complex, so entirely different in its genesis and its character from the Oedipus complex…” (p. 83); he exhorts psychoanalysts “…not to assume the universal existence of the Oedipus complex” (p. 81); he claims that with the assumption that the “…Oedipus complex exists in all types of society, certain errors have crept into the anthropological work of psychoanalysts.” (p. 6)
The increasing use of oedipal terminology to describe Malinowski's own thesis and critique of Freudian theory was an ironic development, to say the least. The so-called “different Oedipus complex” that Fenichel and others had in mind (i.e., the matrilineal complex) represented a radical undoing of Freudian oedipal theory. Not only was it supposed to have proven that the Oedipus complex was not universal, but it had also redefined it as a pathological symptom of patriarchy. According to Malinowski the Oedipus complex was not a normal developmental conflict in need of resolution but an institutionalized illness in need of a cure. Yet this same thesis, accepted as valid, was now being referred to as though it had confirmed a universal oedipal structure, of which it was merely a type! Subsequent generations of pre-eminent anthropologists, such as University of Chicago's Milton Singer (1961) would refer (without questioning the validity of it) to this revisionist idea that Malinowski had argued for “… a matrilineal form of the Oedipus complex among the Trobriand islanders”. (p. 10)
Arguably, the condensation and decoupling of core psychoanalytic concepts taking place in the course of the debates represented nothing more than a critique from anthropology (and from within psychoanalysis) of oedipal theory, a rhetorical means of refuting Freud's claims with faint praise and loose appropriations. On the other hand, given the indications of a traumatic element operating in the confrontation, the fact that this rhetorical shift was concurrent with the deaths of Freud, Boas and Malinowski, just as their grieving followers had become wartime allies, also suggests that a wish for some mediating function in the bitter controversy may have begun to surface. In this case, the construct of a “matrilineal Oedipus complex” may also have functioned in a manner similar to that of the “totemic” object as Freud had conceived of this: as a compromise formation, forged out of necessity on behalf of an otherwise warring band of siblings in a time of ambivalent mourning and existential danger. The fact that during this same catastrophic period of wartime the “controversial discussions” between embattled followers of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein in London were taking place and would lead to a “gentleman's agreement” at the war's end (King and Steiner, 1991) is certainly worth examining in this same light.
Malinowski himself may have originally contributed to the confusion when he claimed that his thesis had confirmed “the main tenet of Freudian psychology.” (1927, p. 82) But this had nothing to do with the Oedipus complex per se. He simply meant that he had “established a deep correlation between the type of society and the nuclear complex found there” (1927, p. 82; italics added). Given the nature of Malinowski's critique this certainly did Freud no favors; once again, from the latter's point of view, it amounted to a rhetorical means of undoing oedipal theory with faint praise. Aside from the fact that Freud never suggested such a watered-down definition of his “main psychological tenet”, the essential point remained that the Oedipus complex was supposed to be universal and Malinowski had found no such complex in the Trobriand Islands.
On the central question of the universality of the Freudian Oedipus complex Malinowski's position could not have been clearer: the Trobriand
“matrilineal complex” was not a different type of Oedipus complex; it was a different type of nuclear complex. Therefore the Oedipus complex was not universal. His entire argument relied explicitly on the assertion that the nuclear complex of Trobriand society was “so entirely different in its genesis and its character from the Oedipus complex…” (1927, p. 83). Indeed, Malinowski's prediction of an end to the Oedipus complex and Western patriarchy itself with the arrival of a “weak and henpecked father” would have made no sense otherwise.
With these considerations in mind let's return now to Malinowski's prediction that the Oedipus complex would become extinct with the rise of a “weak and henpecked father”. As I've said, this idea obscured the distinction between what causes the Oedipus complex and what complicates its resolution. Malinowski's prediction relied on the premise that the father's power (or, more accurately, the pathological abuse of it) causes the Oedipus complex. It assumed that in the absence of oppressive patriarchal authority the son's hostile emotions toward the father associated with sexual rivalry for the mother's love would not arise. This premise was a reflection of Malinowski's idiosyncratic rendering of Freudian theory and, upon closer scrutiny, the flaw in the logic of it becomes easy to recognize: it was equivalent to saying that someone competing for sexual love could feel no hostility toward a rival so long as the rival posed no actual danger or physical threat. This allowed for no role whatsoever for narcissistic envy or jealous rage directed toward objects perceived merely as competitors or obstacles to love and sexual attachment. The only relevant etiological factor in Malinowski's formula for the Oedipus complex was oppressive paternal aggression.
This was the same old problem that Freud had identified in his critique of the “Adlerian view of life”, namely that it was a theory “founded exclusively on the aggressive instinct”; as Freud eloquently put it, “there is no room in it for love.” (1914, p. 58; italics added) Accordingly, Malinowski's critique relied on portrayals of the Western-type father and the Trobriand father that from a contemporary perspective appear transparently villainized and romanticized, respectively. Malinowski's representation of the patriarchal father was so one-dimensionally hostile and aggressive, in fact so much like the tyrannical primal father in Totem and Taboo, that one
can appreciate why Malinowski would have wished for his extinction as soon as possible. Ironically enough, the Viennese father of Little Hans - Freud's exemplary case of child phobia in Totem and Taboo, bore a closer resemblance to the Trobriand all-loving father depicted by Malinowski! Spiro (1982) documented the problem with these exaggerated representations and explained them in terms of Malinowski's effort to “reinforce his polemical aim of proving that the hostility of the Western son is to be explained…by the father's oppressive authority” (pp. 35-6) rather than by the son's sexual rivalry for the mother's sole affections.
Psychoanalysts influenced by Marxist theory such as Reich, in the The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and The Sexual Revolution (1936), or, later, Guattari, in Anti Oedipus (1972), took up and amplified the more ideological and socio-political implications of Malinowski's thesis of pathological patriarchy. (see Chasseguet-Smirgel and Grunberger, 1986) Perhaps the most controversial and tragic of these was Wilhelm Reich, who eventually pushed these elements to frankly psychotic extremes. In spite of the psychotic element in Reich's ideological views, however, his ultra-Malinowskian critique of patriarchy gained a great deal of followers. “Right up until the end Reich had many disciples, including medical doctors and scientists.” (1986, p. 109) Reich became fascinated with Malinowski's idealized portrayal of Trobriand sexuality and his ideas on patriarchy, repression and totalitarianism. With his amalgam of Freudian and Marxist theories Reich constructed a more explicitly political version of Malinowski's prediction of an extinct Oedipus complex: “The Oedipus complex must disappear in a socialist society because its social basis—the patriarchal family—will itself disappear, having lost its raison d'etre.” (quoted in 1986, p. 144; italics added)
Reich seized upon Freud's earlier theory that anxiety results simply from undischarged quantities of libido, and proceeded to reduce “all mental and physical illness to a single cause: sexual stasis.” (1986, p. 115) The mentally ill person is simply “constrained by social prohibitions, [and] is unable to abandon himself to orgasm, to discharge sexual energy.” (1986, p. 128) Reich further insisted that “the repression of genital tendencies [is what] provokes the eruption of brutality in history.” (quoted in 1986, p. 134)
Chasseguet-Smirgel and Grunberger describe this overriding theme in Reich's writings: “[In all of Reich's work] we have a universal evil—sexual stasis, which is responsible for cancer, schizophrenia and Fascism; and, its obverse in a universal panacea—orgasm.” (1986, p. 204) Probably it would be more accurate to say that patriarchy was the real evil for Reich and his followers and that sexual stasis was merely its effect. As with Malinowski, the symptom may have been a sexual one but the real problem was oppressive paternal authority. Exactly as Fromm and others would claim, Reich maintained that the Oedipus complex was only “a result of the sexual restrictions imposed on the child by society. Yet wholly unconscious of what they are doing, the parents carry out the intentions of authoritarian society.” (quoted in 1986, p. 203)
The weaknesses of this argument for pathological patriarchy become clearer when we consider that it allows for no contribution whatsoever from normal maturation and development to the child's aggression, sexual competition, and ambivalent trends in the nuclear relationships. In one form or another, all reflect a perversion of power, structured according to external forces, encoded in repressive institutions, and implemented by pathological parenting. This extreme cultural determinism is entirely inconsistent with the abundant examples of instinctually-driven dominance hierarchies, sexual competition, and bisexual behavior among all of our closest primate relatives. Are we to believe that the instinctual sources of these behaviors were simply erased with human evolution? A common thread that runs from Malinowski through Reich, to later publications like Anti-Oedipus and into contemporary psychoanalytic critiques, is the claim that if the Oedipus complex is simply the consequence of culture and oppressive power then the parents (and Freudian psychoanalysts) who reproduce Western society itself are the agents of that pathology. There are ever new examples within psychoanalysis of this old thesis. Here is a recent one:
There is little doubt that the Oedipal complex is culture-specific and an essentially pathological outcome of a male-dominated, class-structured society. The destructive competition with other men, produces distant uncooperative, possibly non-constructive relationships and leads to erotic compulsions that prevent stable, intimate, sexually satisfying marriages alongside intimate, contextualized relationships with other women. (Bhugra and Bhui, 2002, p. 81)
These authors essentially paraphrase Malinowski's original conclusion and write that the Oedipus complex “is not built into the collective mind but is found only under specific historical circumstances, such as societies with patriarchal authorization structures and competition for wealth that stimulate rivalry and hostility.” (p. 84) And repeating Reich's objects of blame, the authors insist that parents “as agents of such a social order, who harbour hostile and erotic feelings for their children, bring the Oedipal complex into being where it may not exist.” (p. 84)
Specifically missing from this thesis is Freud's complemental series. Freud, S. With this formulation Freud repeatedly and explicitly defined the reciprocal relation between innate/biological and experiential/environmental factors operating in the etiology of human motivations. For the same reason it eliminates the weighing of both endogenous and exogenous contributions to bisexual conflicts and ambivalence in human psychosexuality. These must all be pathological symptoms of oppressive power relations. Reich was explicit about this, maintaining that “ambivalence in the sense of coexisting reactions of love and hatred is not a biological but a socially conditioned fact…” (quoted in Chasseguet-Smirgel and Grunberger, 1986, p. 197) By definition this argument also pathologizes the complete Oedipus complex, with its complementary heterosexual and homosexual dimensions. All of these essential Freudian concepts are simply eliminated and replaced with the same old Malinowskian etiological equation of external patriarchal oppression.
Freud was clear about his assessment of a utopian dimension to these socio-political critiques of oedipal theory. This particular aspect of the polemic, namely the relation of individual psychology to power and political institutions, was always a part of the debates within and between both anthropology and psychoanalysis over the Oedipus complex. Within psychoanalytic circles alone the relation of theoretical to political differences was complex. On the one hand, Fenichel, himself a Marxist, disagreed with Neo-Freudians like Kardiner, Fromm and Horney who insisted that oedipal theory represented a rigid biological determinism that was antithetical to the hope for a malleable human nature and perfectible society. Unlike Fenichel, the neo-Freudians insisted that “the insight into the formative power of social forces upon individual minds”
required changes in Freud's theory of instincts. (Fenichel, 1945, p. 588). On the other hand, Fenichel's ideological perspective, while less revolutionary than Reich's, required a level of optimism for humanity that Freud considered to be unrealistic. Fenichel believed that “wars, misery and neurosis” could one day be fully eliminated with “a more reasonable and less contradictory regulation of social relations”. (1945, p. 589) Freud was far more pessimistic about the benefits of state-regulated social relations and the future of mankind.
Freud explained his view of utopian plans to rid mankind of its violent tendencies in a famous letter to Albert Einstein, published in Why War? (1933)(The following passage is especially relevant to the present discussion because while Freud is writing explicitly about the utopian element in critiques of his anthropological theory, he is implicitly referring to Malinowski's Trobriand matrilineal thesis:
“…there is no use in trying to get rid of men's aggressive inclinations. We are told that in certain happy regions of the earth, where nature provides in abundance everything that man requires, there are races whose life is passed in tranquility and who know neither coercion nor aggression. I can scarcely believe it and I should be glad to hear more of these fortunate beings. The Russian Communists, too, hope to be able to cause human aggressiveness to disappear by guaranteeing the satisfaction of all material needs and by establishing equality in other respects among all the members of the community. That, in my opinion, is an illusion.” (pp. 211-12)
Apart from its utopian implications, perhaps the greatest weakness of the pathological patriarchy critique is that it fails to account for what is possibly one of the most significant and underappreciated features of human evolutionary biology, one which was always at the heart of Freud's oedipal theory. The likely consequences of this feature for individual psychology and human society go virtually unnoticed in critiques of oedipal theory in spite of their central role in the development of that theory. Specifically, Freud maintained that what sets the central oedipal conflicts in motion is neither exclusively externally motivated, nor is it primarily aggression (paternal or otherwise). Rather, it is the prolonged duration of childhood helplessness and dependency as this gradually
becomes inflected through the prism of the distinctly precocious sexual maturation that characterizes our species. In Freud's (1924) own words, “the Oedipus complex is the psychical correlate of two fundamental biological facts: the long period of the human child's dependence, and the remarkable way in which its sexual life reaches a first climax in the third to fifth years of life.” (p. 208)
To better understand this feature of Freud's anthropological thinking we can turn to Geza Roheim, the first psychoanalyst-anthropologist and arguably the most eloquent interpreter of this aspect of Freudian theory. Roheim elaborated on the congruence between Freud's formulations and the “fetalization theory” of Dutch anatomist, Luis Bolk. Roheim quotes Bolk:
There is no mammal that grows so slowly as man, and not one in which the full development is attained at such a long interval after birth…What is the essential in Man as an organism? The obvious answer is: The slow progress of his life's course… This slow tempo is the result of a retardation that has gradually come about in the course of ages. (in Roheim, 1950, p. 360)
In the course of hominin evolution individual physical development has been marked by a progressive “retardation” or slowing of its rate. Following Roheim's description of this, humans in particular achieve physical maturation “…far more slowly than any other mammal. Most mammals are mature at one year or less. A chimpanzee is mature at about seven years, a human being at about fifteen or more, though growth is not complete until over twenty years and the skull sutures remain open until nearly thirty so that the brain can still grow.” (1950, p. 490)
The maturation being referred to here would include that of the ego of Freudian structural theory and all of what Hartmann (1939) referred to as “inborn ego apparatuses” and the structures of the “conflict-free sphere of the ego” (see also Nagera 1968), such as perception, motility, memory, and the physical structures of the body on which they depend. Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein (1951) underscored the importance of Roheim's observations on the significance of the retarded development of these structures in humans. “[It] implies the idea not only of the
unique role of the love object in human development but also the extent to which the influence of this object determines later behavior.” (p. 9)
A corollary of this evolutionary slowing of somatic development, or neoteny, is the progressive fetalization of adult human features relative to our primate relatives and our hominin ancestors. According to Roheim, “human beings have conserved traits in the anatomical structure which makes them comparable to juvenile or foetal anthropoids…” (1950, p. 401) As a result, “We are much more like baby monkeys than adult ones.” (1950, p. 401) This remarkable fact can be seen in adult human features—such as flattened face, upright posture, roundness of the skull, and brain size relative to the body—all of which more closely resemble those of the infant chimpanzee, who will eventually outgrow them.
Roheim's synthesis shows that Freud's observations on the evolutionary significance of delayed development remain perfectly consistent with contemporary evolutionary biology. Stephen Jay Gould (1977) referred to this “paedomorphic theory of human origins [whereby humans] evolved by retaining the juvenile features of our ancestors.” (p. 356) He judged that this neotenous slowing down of human development—and the corollary retention of juvenile traits—“has been a (probably the) major determinant of human evolution.” (p. 9) The selective advantage of this process is evident in the fact that it allowed for the retention into later development of the rapid brain growth rates of the fetus, longer learning and socialization, greater complexity in social behaviour, and more adaptive flexibility due to less over-specialized traits.
The particular relevance of this to the Oedipus complex becomes clearer when we compare the slowed rate of ego development in humans to our separate rate of sexual drive development. Over the course of human evolution the rates of these two maturational or developmental lines have become ever more decoupled, divergent, and asynchronous. The final adult growth of the ego lags far behind its sexual drive counterparts. Whereas in general among most species sexual development is synchronous with completed physical growth, this is not the case for humans. In Roheim's description, “the incidence of the sexual impulse is premature, man is not only slowed down when compared to the animal world but presents a disharmony in his own rate of development.” (1950, p. 412-13;
italics added) The consequence of this is that “within the frame of our general retardation our sexuality is relatively precocious.” (1950, p. 412-13; italics added)
Roheim observed that the “enormous discrepancy in the age of sexual maturity and full growth is striking when we compare man to other mammals.” (1950, p. 400) This holds true even for our closest primate relatives, who in turn display this same asynchrony more so than all other mammals except humans. A remarkable example of this precocious genitality in another primate can be seen among the Bonobo chimpanzees, a species possibly most similar to our pre-human ancestor. Among the Bonobos, genital arousal and stimulation in a variety of modes is utilized nearly indiscriminately, including by juveniles and between the young and adults as a means of modulating aggression, dissipating conflicts, food bartering, and other social purposes. Though not as great as in humans, the asynchronous relationship between sexual development and full physical growth is still quite marked. “Wild females give birth for the first time at 13 or 14 years of age, becoming full grown by about 15.” (De Waal 2006)
Roheim elaborated on Freud's view of the significance of this asynchrony for object-relations in childhood, noting that “since genital libido is present at the time when the child is still dependent …the prima facie sex object must be the mother.” (1950, pp. 412-13) Intrapsychic conflicts result from the mismatch between the child's object-related libidinal fantasies and the ability to fully satisfy them in reality. Depending on a multitude of potentially ameliorating or exacerbating internal and external factors (again, in accordance with Freud's complemental series) these conflicts can result in nothing more than the stage-typical transient nightmares and fears of monsters under the bed; conversely, the conflicts can develop into paralyzing and unresolvable symptoms, such as chronic phobias or crippling inhibitions later in adult relationships. Along with the evolution of this asynchronous differentiation between ego and id, humans have co-evolved psychological mechanisms of defense, such as projection, repression, sublimation and introjection, in order to protect the immature ego from being overwhelmed by the precocious drives while the child is still dependent upon the mothering figure. According to Roheim,
“the psyche has to evolve various mechanisms to repress or project or transform the sexual impulse.” (1950, pp. 412-13)
Now I've followed Roheim extensively here in order to clarify Freud's (1924) underappreciated formulation that “the Oedipus complex is the psychical correlate of two fundamental biological facts: the long period of the human child's dependence, and the remarkable way in which its sexual life reaches a first climax in the third to fifth years of life.” (p. 208) Oedipal theory reflects Freud's recognition of the psychological, social and evolutionary implications of this developmental asynchrony. It is this incongruity and the developmental conflicts arising from it—and not paternal aggression—that causes the Oedipus complex and makes it universal.
These considerations serve to further clarify the problem with Malinowski's prediction that the Oedipus complex would become extinct with the “weak and henpecked father”. It assumed that if the average father-figure of a given society were benign or psychologically castrated, then the motivation for jealous hostility toward the father due to sexual competition for the mother's sole affections would be eliminated. As we've seen, even logically this makes no sense. The arousal of such hostility requires nothing more aggressive or violent than the oedipal child's nightly exclusion from the parent's bedroom—to say nothing of the total extrusion of the child from the mother's entire village at weaning and again at puberty, as in the Trobriand case!
In fact, Malinowski had it exactly backwards. Whereas the weak and henpecked father-figure would have little bearing on the actual cause of the Oedipus complex, he would most certainly play a role in its course, intensity, and likelihood of remaining unresolved. As discussed earlier with regard to oedipal victories and defeats, the same would be true in the case of a tyrannical and abusive father. Freudian theory implicates both extremes of over-stimulation or indulgence, on the one hand, and excessive frustration or trauma, on the other, in the wide range of problems that can interfere with a successful resolution of the Oedipus complex. Both extremes can be associated with complications leading to oedipal and pre-oedipal fixation or regression. Likewise, both can interfere with latency and, for this reason, an adequate consolidation of
sexual role identifications and conscience formation going into puberty. Spiro demonstrated this for the Trobriand boy who, so far from having no Oedipus complex, retained the unresolved libidinal attachments to the pre-oedipal and oedipal mother even more intensely than is likely for the Western boy. In Trobriand society, the total extrusions from the mother and her village at the time of weaning, and again at puberty, were necessary precisely in order to facilitate the young boy's identification with his collective fathers and the relinquishment of the still-powerful earlier attachment to the oedipal and pre-oedipal maternal objects.
Freud's recognition of the consequences of prolonged human maturation and dependency provided him with a conceptual link between individual and social psychology and phylogenetic (evolutionary) processes. Freud (1926) realized that it was because of this feature in the mother/infant relationship that “the influence of the real external world upon [the developing infant] is intensified…” (p. 154); it was this factor that “establishes the earliest situations of danger and creates the need to be loved which will accompany the child through the rest of its life.” (p.155) The implications of this for the evolution of social structures was not lost on Freud. “In the prolonged symbiosis of the child with his parents we have the reason why human beings live in families and in this prolonged co-existence of two generations we have the biological basis of social life.” (Freud, 1924, p. 208) It was on this conceptual foundation that Freud formulated his theory of human culture as a compromise solution to the dynamic conflicts forever arising between the ego and the drives:
And here, the discovery was made that a third and extremely serious part of human intellectual activity, the part which has created the great institutions of religion, law, ethics, and all forms of civic life, has as its fundamental aim of the enabling of the individual to master his Oedipus complex and to divert his libido from its infantile attachments into the social ones that are ultimately desired. (Freud, 1924, p. 208; italics added)
The genius of Freud's theoretical integration of individual psychology, social psychology and phylogenetic (evolutionary) processes brings us to a final irony. It was because of Freud's grounding in evolutionary biology that critics ever since Malinowski have continued to accuse him
of postulating a rigid biological determinism or reductionism. Yet nowhere is Freud's insistence on the reciprocal interaction of biological inheritance and developmental experience in human adaptation more elegantly on display than when Freud defined the Oedipus complex in relation to the biological fact of prolonged infant dependency. As we have seen, Freud (1926) recognized that it was precisely for this reason that an “early differentiation between the ego and the id is promoted”. (pp. 154-5) A major consequence of this differentiation is the fact that anywhere between twelve and twenty-plus years of enculturation (depending on the given society) will be required of the human ego before it can master the simultaneous demands made upon it from both the external environment and the internal drives sufficiently to achieve “adult” status. It is this distinctive feature of our shared evolutionary heritage and developmental biology that ensures, from the beginning to the end of life, the role of learning, culture and adaptation in all human motivation. And it is this differentiation between the ego and the id—and the normal developmental conflicts arising from it—that causes the Oedipus complex and makes it universal.
I have stressed the fact that prolonged childhood helplessness and dependency is a cross-cultural universal. It is a function of our shared evolutionary heritage as a species. Equally cross-cultural is the fact that roughly between two to five years of age, long before physical maturity and independence is attained, libidinal attachment to the primary caregiver will become inflected through the prism of genitally-dominated object-related impulses, perceptions and fantasies. The dawning recognition at this unique moment in development, “that the young baby and its mother are not alone in the world [and] that the object has its own object, which is not the baby” (Green, 1995, p. 882) triggers an inevitable and more or less painful narcissistic crisis. The normal set of developmental conflicts that flows from this crisis is what Freud called the Oedipus complex.
The achievement among our proto-human ancestors of a means of resolving this Oedipus complex was, in Freud's estimation, as monumental an event for human evolution as it is for each person's individual's development. It is only too easy to forget that Freud's most controversial
conclusion in Totem and Taboo was not that all children experience destructive and incestuous wishes in the oedipal triangle or even that the primal deed (either fantasied or real) had occurred. Rather it was Freud's assertion that the distinctly human means of resolving the Oedipus complex in both its intrapsychic and cultural dimensions recapitulates primal adaptations made and preserved by some as yet incompletely understood mechanisms of “inheritance”. A central theme of this discussion has been that Freud's explanation of this human innovation can only be appreciated in the context of his etiological formula of the reciprocal interaction of innate and acquired factors operating in human ontogeny and phylogeny—otherwise known as the complemental series.
Finally, as oedipal conflicts must be accounted for regardless of society or culture they must also be accounted for regardless of sex. Much has been written and debated concerning the profound and important differences between the female and male Oedipus complexes. I would argue that these differences were always the more important and fruitful subject for psychoanalysis to grapple with – far more than the question of a non-oedipal nuclear complex. It certainly was for Freud. He grappled a great deal with this question and altered his theory over time to account for it. He also acknowledged his limitations with regard to this subject and recognized the necessary role of women psychoanalysts in answering it. For better or worse, however, the historic controversy that emerged between anthropology and psychoanalysis was not about these differences, nor was it about their profound effects in the adult lives of women and men. The crux of the controversy, rather, was the question of whether or not the Oedipus complex existed; specifically, whether it existed in non-Western matrilineal societies. Malinowski's answer was “no”, even though he agreed that Freud's oedipal theory was an accurate analysis of the European or Western-type nuclear complex. To this extent, Malinowski's own thesis remains at odds with the more radical rejections of oedipal theory in contemporary psychoanalysis and the “postmodern” rejection of nomothetic or generalizable models altogether. I have tried to demonstrate some of the weaknesses of these trends in psychoanalysis and their historical connections with Malinowski's Sex and Repression in Savage Society.
The guiding assumption here has been that an understanding of the evolutionary bases for oedipal conflicts serves the question of their different
manifestations according to sex and a multitude of other variables. Radical versions of cultural determinism would preempt this complemental approach with the claim that sexual differences are purely cultural constructions. Equally extreme versions of biological determinism would also preempt it and the possibility of a psychoanalytically informed critical theory, one which takes into account the role of environmental forces in structuring apperception. (see Whitebook, 1993) By definition, both effectively eliminate Freud's etiological formula of the complemental series. For the same reason, both extremes preempt a balanced understanding of the cross-culturally variable, but universally recognized, boundaries that differentiate the generations (adult from child) and the sexes (male from female). The social structuring of these boundaries, along with those defining exogamous groups, is the collective equivalent of the resolution of the Oedipus complex.
Paradoxically, while it was Freud (1940) who insisted on the “biological fact of the duality of the sexes” (p.188), it was also Freud who confronted our simplistic assumptions about these boundaries, asserting that “no individual is limited to the modes of reaction of a single sex” (p.188) and that “psychological bisexuality, too, embarrasses all our enquiries into the subject and makes them harder to describe.” (p.188) And while it took Freud to elucidate the nature of the unconscious forces that drive our creative capacity to transcend boundaries, it was also Freud who described the power of those same forces to undo the boundaries upon which our creativity and culture thrive. While variously drawn, these universal boundaries are the very ones to which every human being must become reconciled in the course of resolving the Oedipus complex and mastering the challenges of life and adult love. Unfortunately, this comes as a painful blow to human narcissism and our childhood fantasies of omnipotence. For this reason the fragile ego is always ready with new resistances to the recognition and acceptance of these universal boundaries. It is a tribute to the power of such resistances that from within anthropology Kluckhohn (1951) would affirm the existence of a universal culture pattern and would consider this statement to be a “confession”, as though he had told an embarrassing secret. It remains a great irony that seventy years later, and a century after Freud's Totem and Taboo, this universal cultural pattern is still being treated like an embarrassing secret within psychoanalysis.
Michael Poff MA, MSW
The Carter-Jenkins Center for Psychoanalytic Studies
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