Against common postcolonial and historical readings, this article argues that the rise of primitive urge to dominate exploit others is what drives Kurtz Mustafa Sa’eed, two main characters in Joseph Conrad’s Heart Darkness (1902) Tayeb Salih's Season Migration North (1966), respectively, act as primal fathers thus commit violence on others. Adopting Freud’s theory primal-horde notions like “hyp...

The study intends to study the archetypal anxieties in Stanley Kubrick’s (1980) The Shining, which can be interpreted as Danny’s journey for the completion of his individualization process. In his individualization process, Danny has to go through the anxieties often seen in fairytales, such as separation anxieties, authoritarian anxieties, Oedipal rivalry anxieties, and sexual anxieties, in or...

In psychoanalytic theory, Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy's desire to sexually possess his mother (Freud.1900). In the course of his psychosexual development, the complex is the boy's phallic stage formation of a discrete sexual identity; a girl's analogous experience is the Electra comple...

For nearly 100 years and at least in certain prominent psychoanalytic subgroups, the Oedipus complex remained a defining construct that determined a boundary for those within and outside psychoanalysis. The time is ripe for reconsidering its culture-specific and variable nature and its failure inter alia to explain with any degree of cogency ongoing internecine conflict in a community of clinic...

As the theory of identification assumed increasing importance in Freud’s work, it came to be a cornerstone of psychoanalytic theory. Yet because the difficulties contained in Freud’s views on this question have not, with the exception of Lacan, been properly appreciated, post— Freudian theory has employed a theoretical construct of questionable coherence. Although Freud wavered over what was id...

Cet article propose une lecture critique du concept de complexe d’Œdipe chez Freud à partir des travaux postérieurs en anthropologie concernant les systèmes parenté.Nous essayerons comprendre comment l’influence l’anthropologie évolutionniste dans la conception freudienne famille peut apparaître comme un obstacle théorique pour transformations contemporaine Occident.Nous analyserons hypothèses ...

[Editor’s Note: Having read several variants of “Cinderella,” you may have wondered what it is about this story that has prompted people in different parts of the world at different times, to show interest in a child who’s been debased but then rises above her misfortune. Why are people so fascinated with “Cinderella”? Depending on the people you ask and their perspectives, you’ll find this que...

In her feminization of Hawthorne’s famous Italian tales, Alcott made talented heroines not only objects but subjects their art. The excellent training many aspiring women sculptors follows the Oedipal patterns which oppressively dominate Nathaniel own Roman artworld. Being victimized by a Puritan ideal beauty that no living body could equal, Alcott’s feminized versions Marble Faun allude to Ame...