Marcuse defended the libidinal reading of the Oedipus complex against Fromm’s interpersonal reinterpretation
Evidence
Fromm’s attempt to “translate it from the sphere of sex into that of interpersonal relations” 110 was a reversal of the critical thrust of Freud’s thought. To Freud, the Oedipal wish was not merely a protest against separation from the child’s mother and the painful, alienated freedom it signified to Fromm. It also expressed a profound craving for sexual gratification, for freedom from want, for the mother as woman, not merely as protectress. In fact, Marcuse argued, “it is first the ‘sexual craving’ for the mother-woman that threatens the psychical basis of civilization; it is the ‘sexual craving’ that makes the Oedipus conflict the prototype of the instinctual conflicts between the individual and his society.” 111 To ignore the libidinal roots of the Oedipus complex, whether it was universal or merely a symbolic expression of this society’s deepest problem, was to smooth over the fundamental antagonisms to which it referred. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 372
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to the broader Frankfurt School split about Freudian revisionism and the importance of sexuality — relevant to any future reading of Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization. — connects to: Fromm’s early social psychology critiqued Freud’s purely libidinal account of authority — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 417; Marcuse’s rationalism and identity-thinking delayed his engagement with psychoanalysis — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 365; The absence of the Oedipus complex in the Antilles blocks typical neurotic homosexuality (+2 more)