On the Bullfight

While reviewing the literature for my recent article, “Animals and Their Symbolic Meaning,”11 I came across some articles on bullfighting. Two of these were of special interest to me because of their deep and detailed study of the subject and their analytic approach. These were by Drs. H. Desmonde1 and W. Hunt.6

Desmonde, through historical as well as anthropological studies, came to the conclusion that the bullfight symbolically represents the killing of the father by his son.1 Hunt, “Looking at the bullfight as one might look at any work of art, noting its symbolism and the emotions it arouses,” came to the same conclusion “… that in its central unconscious significance the bullfight is an oedipal drama which portrays the victory of the son over the father.”6

Both papers were published in 1952 and 1955, respectively, in The American Imago. Some years ago Freud's postulates of the Oedipus complex as the Kernel of all the neuroses, its universality and its biological origin were more accepted than they are today, and these articles seem to be under the influence of his concepts. The cultural factors which were neglected by Freud are taken into greater consideration by such later analysts as Horney, Sullivan and Erich Fromm. Many analysts today do not accord it the same weight as did Freud and his followers and the oedipal constellation has by now been subjected to varied interpretations.16

…Perhaps more sharply than in any known society, Samoan Culture demonstrates how much the tragic or the easy solution of the oedipal situation depends upon the inter-relationship between parents and children, and is not created out of whole cloth by the young child's biological impulses.15