|
|
|
|
|
|
|
a metaphoric series (Pelasgos, Zeus) until it reaches the wedding night; at this point Hypermestra (like Io, eventually) is able to take her place in the social order and to accomplish the transformation from a girl who desires her father to a woman who loves another man. For the other Danaids this conclusion must await the footrace that brings them husbands. Thus the female oedipus complex, from a Lacanian viewpoint, turns out in fact to be simpler and more straightforward than that of the boy. Lacan's major thesis, "Si le désir de la mère est le phallus, l'enfant veut être le phallus pour le satisfaire" (If the mother's desire is the phallus, the child wishes to be the phallus in order to satisfy it, 1966b: 693), is easily transferred from boy to girl: whereas the boy's desire, based on that of the mother, is to be the phallus she desires, the girl's desire, also based on that of the mother, is to have the phallus she desires. The critical difference is between being and having. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Denial of a masculinity complex in the Danaids does not necessitate rejection of an unresolved oedipus complex as well.9 On the contrary, the Danaids typify the oedipal situation: because of their excessive attachment to their father and their identification with a mother-substitute, they are unable to love other men and are therefore consumed by an incapacitating anxiety concerning sex and marriage. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
One of Freud's earliest statements could serve as a clinical description of the Danaids' behavior and its causes: |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
It is in the world of ideas, however, that the choice of an object is accomplished at first; and the sexual life of maturing youth is almost entirely restricted to indulging in fantasies, that is, in ideas that are not destined to be carried into effect. In these fantasies the infantile tendencies invariably emerge once more, but this time with intensified pressure from somatic sources. Among these tendencies the first place is taken with uniform frequency by the child's sexual impulses towards its parents, which are as a rule already differentiated owing to the attraction of the opposite sex the son being drawn towards his mother and the daughter towards her father. At the same time as these plainly incestuous fantasies are overcome and repudiated, one of the most significant, but also one of the most painful psychical achievements of the pubertal period is completed: detachment from parental authority, a process that alone makes possible the opposition, which is so important for the progress of civilization, between the new generation and the old. At every stage in the course of development through which all human beings ought by rights to pass, a certain number are held back; so there are some who have never got over their parents' authority and have withdrawn their affection |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
9 For early psychoanalytic theory, every female oedipus complex must remain to some extent unresolved: Freud (1931) 230, Lampl-de Groot (1928) 337. |
|
|
|
|
|