The Oedipus complex is one of the most interesting aspects of Freud’s interpretations. To put it into a simple definition, a child is in love with their opposite gendered parent and views the same gender parent as a rival for their affection. For example, if a mother has a baby, that baby generally relies on the mother to live and for love. The father is now seen as competition because the baby soon realizes that the mother is an “object” per say, of the fathers. This causes the baby to feel hatred, anxiety, separation and even fear towards the father. In the legend of Oedipus Rex, it is interpreted as the doomed prophecy of Oedipus who unknowingly kills his father and ends up marrying his mother. The legend of Oedipus moves audiences because we all could have experienced this. As Freud states, “While the poet, as he unravels the past, brings to light the guilt of Oedipus, he is at the same time compelling us to recognize our inner minds, in which those same impulses, though suppressed, are still to be found” (Freud 921). That impulse will always be there whether we think it is or not, there is no denying it. This is why no other modern day playwrights can get the same reaction as the legend of Oedipus can, because they don’t dive as far into the subconscious as Oedipus’s demise does. Now, speaking of other plays in which the narrative was portrayed to a similar effect, the tragedy of Hamlet by Shakespeare. Freud discusses the differences of these two stories of misfortune. First, Hamlet’s complex is repressed. The readers only see the “hesitation” of Hamlet when trying to carry out his act of revenge and are never directly told that this was why he was having the hesitations. Everything he did was essentially for his mother and her love but with this Hamlet also has a big ego and is fully aware of his prophecy yet grapples with the fact that he wants to do it. His father’s ghost asking him to avenge him by killing his killer makes Hamlet realize something about himself. Freud interprets, “Hamlet is able to do anything except take vengeance on the man who did away with his father and took that father’s place with his mother, the man who shows him the repressive wishes of his own childhood realized. Thus the loathing which should drive him on to revenge us replaced by self-reproaches, by scruples of conscience, to which remind him that he himself is literally no better than the sinner whom is to punish”  (Freud 923). The act of hesitation is because of his Oedipus complex, his father is finally out of the picture. So maybe take a deeper look into your subconscious and a seat onto Freud’s couch, if someone ever says, “you married your mother”.

In the Mirror Stage as Formative, Lacan believes that during our infant stage. We shape our own images based on a mirror and how we perceive ourselves as. What Lacan dives into is a belief I strongly believe. Staring myself in a mirror can shape my mood for the day. When I see myself looking fine and fresh, my personality is more expressive and courageous.

Even when I was a child, watching powerful heroes in movies, if I look in the mirror, I can picture myself wanting to be that person. Lacan mentions “The fact is that the total form of the body by which the subject anticipates in a mirage the maturation of his power is given to him only as Gestalt, that is to say, in an exteriority in which this form is certain more constituent than constituted”(1165).

My interpretation is that we illude ourselves into being that person or wanting to be that person. A perfect example is a child wanting to believe that he/she has absolute power and can demand their parents for their desires. Many infants when they begin to realize their surroundings, begin to experience many things that satisfy their wants/needs. As they begin to take in, they want more and more. Candy, toys, and other wants. They begin to shape this dominant attitude/personality and begin to believe that their world revolves around them.

Lacan perfectly describes this, “The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation – and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification”(1166). Our self-images are formed based on what we’re lacking and we end up forming these attitudes based on our ego.

Our ego plays a major role in our self-made images. We get defensive about things that manage to break through our ego and we begin to act more cautious. Especially when children feel insulted at such a young age, they begin to become more distant and lean away from their parents, siblings, and friends. As I’ve witnessed an “ex-friend”, when a harmless joke was made (even though it had nothing to do with him) he would act quietly and not say much. This is a normal reaction as if everyone knew what he was hiding even though we didn’t. It’s as if he was preparing to attack when an intruder has breached through his defenses.

Lacan presents us with, “Similarly, on the mental plane, we find realized the structures of fortified works, the metaphor of which arises spontaneously, as if issuing from the symptoms themselves, to designate the mechanism of obsessional neurosis – inversion, isolation, reduplication, cancellation and displacement” (1167).

Lacan’s belief regarding the self-made images we based on in a mirror has impacted the way we see and begin to see ourselves. I’ve realized how we became what we are today and where did it all originate. Or at least one of the reasons that could’ve influenced us to become what we are and why do we behave in certain ways.

In “The Interpretation of Dreams” Sigmund Freud proposed a new way of studying dreams. He believes they hold more significance than most people believed. In the beginning, he explains the Oedipus complex to support his theory. The Oedipus complex believes that naturally, humans project their first sexual desires upon their mother and their first feelings of hatred and murderous instincts onto their father. Oedipus tries to run from his fate but ends up doing exactly what he tried so hard not to unintentionally. Many people praise the work for its themes that “supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts of mankind to escape the evil that threatens them.” but Freud proposed that it is the myths’ relatable content and its ability to recognize our own inner minds and see the fulfillment of our childhood wishes that draws so many to the myth over those that have similar themes of fate v. humanity.

Freud believes that the story has such great ability to resonate with the true nature of many people because it centers on two “typical dreams” at its core. Freud believes art / this story “ sprang from some primeval dream-material which had as its content the distressing disturbance of a child’s relation to his parents owing to the first stirrings of sexuality.”

In the section “ The Work of Condensation” he explains the difference in the “length” of dream-content and dream-thoughts if they were both being written down. He believes the actual content of the dream may be “quick” or have little the describe, but has a lot of significant meaning to draw out of it nonetheless.

In to me the most interesting part of the piece, “The Means of Representation in Dreams” Freud talks about the concept that “For the most part dreams disregard all these conjunctions, and it is only the substantive content of the dream-thoughts that they take over and manipulate.” He proposes that sometimes dreams are unable to represent logical relations but instead use a combination of pictures to illustrate a dream-wish. These are not always very clear to us or logical but they represent and “form a group in the conceptual sense.” He also helps us frame clarity under confusing and contradicting aspects of dreams. For example, he talks about how the use of the word “or” when describing a dream is inaccurate and is most likely an “and”. He says “In such cases, the rule for interpretation is: treat the two apparent alternatives as of equal validity and link them together with an ‘and’.”

Oftentimes, one believes the idea of not being awake or aware of your surroundings is to be unconscious. But how would one know what exactly being unconscious is like if it is to be unaware of whatever is going on? Francoise Meltzer looks into this question in their essay “Unconscious” while looking into psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan’s own definitions of unconsciousness. After reading Meltzer one can conclude that the term “unconscious” will always be up for debate on its meaning. In the end, unconsciousness is never something humans can really know or define, as it is part of the unknown.

One of the ideas of unconsciousness that is brought up is by Freud and Lacan. Freud, who is said to have really begun the conversation on unconsciousness, defines it as feelings or thoughts that we are unaware of, yet continue to influence the way we live life. Freud believed that although we are not fully aware of these unconscious thoughts, they influence us from behind. In other words, the unconscious is just as important as the conscious. For instance, Meltzer expands on how Freud believed the unconscious worked, and it would leak into our conscious. Meltzer states:

The major activity that characterizes the dynamic model is repression: the unconscious “contains” wishes and even information of which the Subject is unaware and which his “censor” (like the sentry at the door of the sitting room) strains to keep from the Subject’s consciousness) Occasionally (like water exerting pressure against a weak wall) some of this unconscious energy will leak through the “repression barrier” and thrust its way into consciousness. But unsconscious thoughts will always manifest themselves obliquely in consciousness…(Meltzer 151).

For Freud, in order for there to be conscious, there had to be the unconscious. Sometimes we will be unaware of what we are feeling or thinking and will just act impulsively. Many may wonder and think back to a time when this may have happened, but it will be quite impossible to remember. Again, unconsciousness is something we are meant to be unaware of, so how exactly would we be able to know this. A possible example of it may be when someone is jealous in a certain situation. Although they may realize after, at that moment they may act out of jealousy but be unaware of it until after time passes. These feelings of unconsciousness are “repressed” according to Freud because of how little we know of them. The less we know, the less present they seem to be.

Lacan takes part of Freud’s unconscious ideas and part of Saussure’s linguistics theory in order to combine them and form his own unconscious definition. Lacan believed that unconscious thoughts went hand in hand with those in consciousness. For Lacan everything seemed to be a sign of some sort, as Saussure thought. Yet Lacan argued that unconsciousness what the superior state, rather than consciousness. As Meltzer explains:

In the situation just described, the term “consciousness” can easily replace that of “master”; and that of “unconscious” can stanf in for “slave”. Consciousness in other words, appears to be the master of the psyche: it is that which is recognized and which seems to determine psychic activity. … The unconscious, further, will produce the materials which allow for the very existence and shape of consciousness…Without the material “goods” supplied to consciousness by the unconscious, the first has nothing by which–or with which — to function (Meltzer 158).

Lacan seemed to analyze the unconscious the way Saussure identified the signifier and signified. Both went together, and without one of them, the other would hold no purpose. While the unconscious is repressed and “not thought of” it is what produces our feelings in the background. The unconscious creates the feelings we often wish to repress or hide yet eventually come out through our consciousness.

Regardless, the real definition and theory of unconsciousness will never be able to be found. From what we know, the unconscious is an idea, something we accept. It is a made-up concept that humans have accepted and not questioned its existence but rather questioned the meaning.