Oedipus

Oedipus (Ancient Greek Οἰδίπους Oidípous "swelling foot"; Modern Greek Οιδίποδας Idípodas) is a figure in Greek mythology. He is a son of Laios, king of Thebes, whom he kills at a fork or crossroads. Later, as a reward for freeing Thebes from the Sphinx, he is given Iocaste, the king's widow, as a wife, who according to most ancient sources is also his birth mother. It is only later that Oedipus learns that Laios is his father. As he and Laios had once been prophesied, Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. In Sophocles' drama Oedipus the King, Iocaste hangs herself when the truth comes out, whereupon Oedipus gouges out his eyes and goes into exile with his shame. Other versions differ considerably with regard to the further fate of Oedipus, sometimes also with regard to that of Iocasta.

The tragic figure of Oedipus has found its way into literature, art and philosophy many times. The psychoanalytical concept of the Oedipus complex goes back to Sigmund Freud.

Taking up the myth in psychoanalysis and philosophy

Sigmund Freud named a psychoanalytical phenomenon "Oedipus complex" or "Oedipus conflict" after the Oedipus myth. Within the framework of his theories on infantile sexuality, Freud interpreted patricide and the desire for one's mother as basic patterns of unconscious desires. According to Freud, the infantile developmental phase in which the rivalry between son and father forms a central theme is accordingly called the "Oedipal phase".

Erich Fromm rejects Freud's interpretation and, citing Johann Jakob Bachofen, states that the myth describes the struggle between patriarchal and matriarchal principles. In all three parts, the father conflict is thus to be interpreted as a conflict of authority on the family level. This is also reflected on the socio-state level, in the person of Creon, who advocates the patriarchal social system, and his confrontation with Antigone and Haimon, who both represent the old matriarchal order. Creon argues that sons should be at the service of their fathers, that state law is supreme, and that the ruler owns the state and his subjects. According to Bachofen, this must have been different in the time of maternal law. Because of the impossibility of determining paternity in a promiscuous society, all people must have been considered brothers and sisters in the past, and only the woman could assign her children. Thus, according to Bachofen, blood relationship and the maternal-care principle were more important than state ties. The maternal principle is not only found in family and society, but also in religion, which is why Bachofen points out that the oldest deities were women (e.g. Demeter). In this context, Oedipus is to be understood as one of the last representatives of the matriarchal order.

The philosopher Michel Foucault described the Oedipus myth in The Truth and the Legal Forms as the depiction of an ancient "criminal case" that attempts to be solved in two different ways: first by the archaic means of the "trial", i.e. the oracle's sentence and the judgment of God, and then later by the "enquête", the investigation of the course of events and the questioning of witnesses, which Oedipus himself conducts. He is thus a victim of his knowledge: first he gains power through his encounter with the Sphinx and becomes king of Thebes, only to lose it again precisely because of his acquired knowledge, namely who he is and that he himself killed his father.

In the first volume of their unfinished trilogy Capitalism and Schizophrenia 1972, entitled Anti-Oedipus, the poststructuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze and the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari argue in a fundamental critique of Freudian psychoanalysis that the essential mechanism of psychic individuation is not repression, e.g. of the Oedipus complex, and the resulting neuroses, but splitting off and differentiation of multiple identities. As co-founders and representatives of the anti-psychiatry movement, they therefore plead for the reorientation of psychiatry in favour of "schizoanalysis".

Immanuel Velikovsky, in his book Oedipus and Akhenaten, theorized that this must be a wandering saga from "hundred-gate" Egyptian Thebes.