OEDIPUS NOTIONS OF MASCULINITY AND FEMININITY

Oedipus Notions of Masculinity and Femininity

Oedipus Notions of Masculinity and Femininity

Introduction

We live in a gendered society, in which individuals are generally categorized according to their sex, either male or female. Individuals furthermore are recognised, or identify themselves by their sexual orientation, i.e. heterosexual or homosexual. How are differences between men and women and variations within these assemblies to be understood? What part does heritage and humanity play in forming an individual? These are inquiries that the Viennese founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud attempted to answer all through his long vocation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He contends that all human beings start out their life as innately bisexual but through the method of evolving members of humanity need to stifle facets of this disposition to comply with heritage insights of 'masculinity' or 'femininity'. He attempts, in his comprehensive research and ideas on infantile sexuality, to trace the course of gender identification and to recount the numerous methods that the progeny must navigate in alignment to reach at an mature person sexy identity. The Oedipus convoluted is centered to this process. It is used to interpret the structure of the psychical apparatus as well as the aetiology of psychic disorders. The reason of this term paper is to analyse the applicability of the Oedipus convoluted in comprehending sexual difference.

Analysis

As already asserted, Freud posits the innate bisexuality of all human beings, and remarks that due to this disposition, men and women rarely, if ever, achieve the idealised, pure states of 'masculinity' or 'femininity' but rather blend aspects of both in a convoluted mixture, permitting for endless variations of sexual persona inside society (Freud 1977, pg 342). It is throughout the Oedipal phase of development that the progeny must, for the first time, repress facets of its bisexual environment in order to comply with cultural expectation, as comprised by the dad, who becomes a metaphor for culture and authority.

The Oedipus convoluted boasts the little boy two possible means of satisfaction, an hardworking and a passive role. He could either yearn to inhabit the father's location in a 'masculine' fashion and have intercourse with his mother as his dad does, in which the dad becomes a rival for the mother's attention. Or the little young man could yearn to replace the mother, and be loved by his dad, in which case the mother becomes dispensable (Freud 1977, pg 318). Coming to terms with the discovery of the mother not owning a penis, which he regards as 'castration', means that the young man can not continue to nurture either of these wishes, as both entail the decrease of his penis, through punishment or as a precondition. This outcomes in the alternative being offered to the little young man between narcissistic interest in his penis, which he values so highly, and the libidinal cathexis of his parental objects. Normally the narcissistic interest prevails producing in the ego turning away from the Oedipus ...