Chapter 5 The Enigma of Oedipus in Psychoanalysis and Social Anthropology

In this chapter, I revisit some classical debates between social anthropology and psychoanalysis that address the question of the universality of the Oedipus complex.

The relationship between psychoanalysis and anthropology is as old as the discipline of psychoanalysis itself. Throughout his work, Freud attempted to establish connections between the two disciplines in his attempt to validate the universality of his theories. Totem and Taboo (1912–13) represents the most important example of this engagement. Early in the development of social anthropology, the individual became excluded from the field of analysis, an inheritance of the Durkheim’s establishment of social facts (e.g. Durkheim, 1893, 1897, 1924, 1938; see also Lukes, 1973, 1977). Anthropologists, like the sociologists before them, stated that the individual was not the object of concern for their discipline, which focused on the social. This inaugurated a series of dichotomies, namely those between nature and culture in the French tradition, personality and culture in America and right and sentiment in Britain.

The debate in the 1920s between Bronislaw Malinowski (1844–1942) and Ernest Jones (1879–1958) about the distinction between mother’s right and father’s love became a classic in its illustration of the distinction between anthropological and psychoanalytic paradigms.

The pattern of psychosexual development observed by Malinowski among the Trobriand Islanders was different from the classical

descriptions of Western societies. Malinowski (1916) pointed out the sexual freedom that existed between young adolescents. In addition, he noted that among the Trobrianders, fathers were friendly and nurturing, and it was not believed that they had any role in the conception of their children (see also Malinowski, 1923, 1929, 1984). This, Malinowski supposed, was to eliminate the competitive and rivalrous relationship with their sons, as postulated in the classical Oedipus c