Even amateurs in psychology are familiar with the Oedipus complex – this key concept in Freud’s psychoanalysis, according to which, at a certain age between three and five (the phallic stage of psychosexual development), the child directs its libido toward the parent of the opposite sex, while at the same time experiencing feelings of rivalry toward the parent of the same sex.
This is the age at which, if the Oedipal conflict is not resolved in a way that is sufficiently satisfactory for the child, it continues to reproduce itself later in life, in adulthood. This means being attracted to people who are already committed to someone else, as well as experiencing pronounced rivalry toward members of one’s own sex.
In short, it means entering love triangles.
Because the topic of love triangles is so important, I decided to translate part of an article by the remarkable Liz Greene, which examines Freud’s contribution to understanding their archetypal nature. The article is entitled The Eternal Triangle and is far more extensive than the translation presented below. I hope that in future articles I will be able to add further parts of it, deepening the understanding of this timeless and highly relevant theme.
“Family triangles do not finish in childhood, but have repercussions throughout life. If unresolved, they may secretly enter our adult relationships. If a family triangle is unhealed, we may recreate it, once or many times, hoping on some deep and inaccessible level that we will find a way to heal or resolve it. Freud developed the idea of the Oedipal triangle – also known as “the family romance” – in a very specific context. In his view, we attach ourselves passionately to the parent of the opposite sex, and enter into a situation of rivalry and competitiveness with the parent of the same sex. Depending on how the Oedipal triangle is resolved in childhood – and this includes the parents’ responses as well as one’s own innate temperament – our later relationships will inevitably be affected.
If we unequivocally “win” and get the exclusive love of a parent of the opposite sex, we will suffer because we never learn to separate or share. We experience a kind of false infantile potency because we feel that we have beaten the rival. We are all-powerful, which may open the door to a later inability to cope with any kind of relationship disappointment. And one’s relationships with one’s own sex may also be disturbed accordingly.
If, for example, a boy sees his mother and father in conflict, and “wins” the Oedipal battle by becoming his mother’s surrogate husband, he may experience deep unconscious guilt toward his father. Also, he may lose respect for his father, whom he has apparently pushed out of the way with great ease. The boy’s image of father may then be of someone weak, impotent, and easily beaten, and somewhere inside he will fear this in himself, because he too is male. This boy may have to keep affirming his Oedipal victory later in life by turning every male friend into a rival, and relating exclusively to women.
Such men do not connect with other men, but only to the women who are attached to other men. The bond with his mother will have cost this man his relationship with his father, which may mean he has no positive internal masculine image on which to draw, and no sense of support from the community of men around him. His sense of male confidence and male sexual identity must rely entirely on whether his women love him – and the more, the better. That is a very insecure and painful place in which to live. We could apply the same interpretation in the case of a woman and her father.
If we entirely lose the Oedipal battle – and the operative word here is entirely – we also suffer. Absolute Oedipal defeat is a humiliation which can severely undermine one’s confidence in oneself. By “absolute”, I mean that the child feels that no emotional contact of any kind has been achieved with the beloved parent, and a profound feeling of failure ensues. One simply cannot get near the parent, who may be incapable of offering any positive emotional response to his or her child. Or the other parent is always in the way. Later in life, such an emotional defeat can generate a gnawing sense of sexual inadequacy and inferiority. It can contribute to many destructive relationship patterns – not least the kind of triangle where one is hopelessly in love with a person who is permanently attached elsewhere.
One may become the unhappy Instrument of Betrayal, forever knocking at the closed door of a lover’s marriage. Or one may become the Betrayed, helplessly repeating the Oedipal defeat in the role of the established partner who is humiliated by the greater power of the mother- or father-rival. With both unequivocal Oedipal victory and unequivocal Oedipal defeat, we are unable to establish a psychological separation from the beloved parent, and a part of us never really grows beyond childhood. We may then become stuck in repetitive relationship dynamics where we keep trying to “right” the original difficulty through a triangle.
Freud thought that the healthiest resolution of the Oedipal conflict is a kind of mild defeat, where we get enough love from the beloved parent but are still forced to acknowledge that the parents’ relationship is ultimately unbreachable. We may then learn to respect relationships between other people, and build confidence through establishing relationships beyond the magic parental circle. We are here in the realm of what Winnicott called “good enough” – a good enough parental marriage, a good enough relationship with both parents, and sufficient love and kindness for the Oedipal defeat to be accompanied by a reasonable sense of security within the family and a knowledge that one will continue to be loved.
It is also important that we do not fear punishment from the parent-rival. Sadly, many parents, themselves emotionally starved and resentful in an unhappy marriage, do punish their children for “stealing” the partner’s love. We need to recognise that we cannot supplant one parent in order to have the other, but we also need to know that we will be loved by the parent we have tried to overthrow. Naturally this is an ideal which few families can achieve.
A great many people suffer from one degree or another of excessive Oedipal victory or excessive Oedipal defeat. What really matters is what we do with it, and how much consciousness we have of it. And nothing is quite so potent an activator of consciousness as a relationship triangle.
There is considerable value in Freud’s psychological model, and there do seem to be many situations where absolute Oedipal defeat or absolute Oedipal victory are linked with a tendency to become involved in triangles later in life. But there are serious limitations to this model of the family romance. The parent to whom we attach ourselves is not necessarily the parent of the opposite sex. The parent may be one’s own sex. Oedipal feelings are not, after all, “sexual” in an adult sense, but have more to do with emotional fusion. So, in fact, do many of our apparently purely sexual feelings in adulthood; sexuality carries many emotional levels which are not always conscious.
An Oedipal defeat or victory involving the parent of one’s own sex may have equally painful repercussions, and be equally conducive to later relationship triangles. One may feel dislocated from one’s own sexuality, because the beloved parent is a model for that sexuality and the bond is too weak or negative to allow the model to be internalised in a positive way.
A man may forever try to win his father’s love by proving how manly he is. He may then unconsciously set up triangles which are not really about the women with whom he becomes involved, but are unconsciously aimed at impressing other men – or punishing them for the father’s rejection.
And a woman may try to win her mother’s love and admiration in the same way, or punish other women for her mother’s failure to love her. The rival in an adult triangle may be secretly far more important to the individual than the apparent object of desire. We have only to listen to the obsessive preoccupation the Betrayed and the Instrument of Betrayal have with each other to recognise that the situation may be psychologically far more complex than it seems.
The Eternal Triangle, by Liz Greene
And so we can find the roots of love triangles in unresolved Oedipal conflicts from childhood – in ultimate Oedipal victory or ultimate Oedipal loss, the result of which is a deep sense of insecurity and an unconscious tendency to repeat the original situation in the hope of finding a solution. And, while Freud’s contribution to understanding the archetypal nature of the “eternal triangle” is undoubted, Liz Greene has more to add in understanding its spiritual meaning. But more on that in the next post :).
Kameliya Hadziyska
