You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In this scholarly volume, Covitz invites us into a dialogue regarding the complexities of the ffidipus Complex. This is one of those terms that we believe we understand and yet, on taking a closer look, we note how easily we move into shorthand presumptions without really thinking through the matter at hand. In Ædipal Paradigms in Collision, we are invited to journey alongside Covitz as he considers the complexities of history, discourse, and phenomenology in which this construct is embedded.
This is not a book to hurry through, but rather one to savor. The text is speckled with notes that contextualize both the term Ædipal Paradigm and Covitz's understanding of it. The interplay between text and footnote also becomes a dialogue between Covitz and the reader, through which we begin to form a relationship with this highly reflective thinker who is finding his own way through these complexities.
As we continue on this journey, we are increasingly comfortable in our reliance on our guide, who emerges as a thoughtful, respectful, and discerning commentator on this field of inquiry. Covitz posits “Vorstellungen”-the mental images Freud describes-as the “building blocks of experience” (p. 90). In this way, Covitz highlights the visual elements of our conceptualizations as the fundamental units of meaning. It is this primacy of the visual element that holds or “marks” (Charles, 2004a) the meaning that enables us to utilize these elements to build more complex meanings. As Covitz points out, the Vorstellungen combines drives (or affect) with “certain portrayals of characters or objects” (p. 92). This fundamental linking of affect with idea is the power of myth, which enables us to mark complex meanings and to hold them in mind in ways that enable us to build upon their meanings, internally and with others (Charles, 2004b). This is also, however, as Covitz points out, the danger of myth: that is, the myth carries such weight in our minds that we come to assume its validity bec