Oedipus was not the son of Laius and Jocasta

Abstract

Neurotics have family-romance fantasies, which they sometimes take to be real and which make them think that their parents are not really their parents. They have other unconscious fantasies in which they feel that their sexual objects are really their parents and in which trivial acts acquire the value of incest and parricide. From these psychoanalytic findings we can interpret the Oedipus legend as a special manifestation of the family romance which has arisen from guilt feelings and an intense desire for punishment. Oedipus fantasies the rulers of Thebes to be his parents and takes his behavior toward them as both incestuous and parricidal. As a displacement on the adult level, the Oedipus legend symbolizes the genital situation of the child both before and during the creation of the superego. As Oedipus was happy in his love life before the plagues afflicted Thebes, the child enjoys, during his infancy, sexual pleasure with his mother and rejects his father as his rival. Later just as Oedipus did, the child learns from his parents and from the rest of his environment, that his incestuous and parricidal behavior is dreadful and that he must feel very guilty and be punished severely. The child also learns this must be repressed: He must no longer perceive these things. In the legend this is symbolized by Oedipus blinding himself. The usual interpretation of the Oedipus legend, which wrongly believes that he really committed incest and parricide, does not take into account the distortions of judgement and preception which guilt feelings can give rise to.