A review of existing relationship between myths and psychological concepts.
TO BE COMPLETED (feel free to contribute).
Eros, the tendency toward survival, propagation, sex, and other creative, life-producing drives.
Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex; a crucial stage in the normal developmental process. Sigmund Freud introduced the concept in his Interpretation of Dreams (1899).
Feminine counterpart of Oedipus' complex, the Electra complex, as proposed by Carl Jung in his Theory of Psychoanalysis, is a girl's psychosexual competition with her mother for possession of her father.
Antigone is the sister of Electra, as both were Oedipus' daughters. Her object of desire is targeted towards her dead brother.
Introduced by Raymond de Saussure in 1920, the Jocasta Complex denotes an obsessive fixation of mother on her son, which is intensified by latent desire and creation of an adoration cult of son. As much as Oedipus desired his mother, his mother, Jocasta, had the same feelings towards her son.
This complex embodies an obsessive desire of a father to keep his daughter permanently by his side, which prompts him to impede her getting married, and, therefore leaving him.
See Nyctimene Myth.
The Phaedra Complex refers to the sexual desire of a stepmother for her stepson, and by extension covers ambiguous relationships and desires between stepparents and stepchildren. Phaedra was the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae. Though married to Theseus, she fell in love with Hippolytus, Theseus' son born by either Hippolyta or her sister Antiope.
Thanatos refers to the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness. Although this term was not used in Freud's own work, being rather introduced by Wilhelm Stekel in 1909, it was defended by subsequent psychoanalysists like Lacan and Klein.
This complex (Stern, 1948) illustrates unconscious or pre-conscious hatred of mother toward her children, as a means of revenge against the father. The term is derived from Greek mythology, in which Medea killed her children fathered by Jason after he deserted her for a younger woman.
Introduced by George Devereux in 1953, the Laius Complex revolves around the paternal wish for filicide, particularly for the extinction of the male heir, in an attempt to ensure one will have no successors. He is the father of Oedipus.
It is viewed as a surpressed desire of a son to get rid of his mother by all possible means. In classical psychoanalysis, it desnotes a son's repressed impulse to kill his mother, which may result in the actual act of matricide. The name is derived from the Greek myth of Orestes, who killed his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus.
It is viewed as latent or manifested rivalry between brothers or/and sisters for achieving all-inclusive parental love (in childhood) and highest social status (in adulthood). Competition may take violent forms and accepts victory (supremacy) only of the one.