1. Read the text and say how Oedipus complex manifests itself. Oedipus Complex

In the Oedipus complex, a boy is fixated on his mother and competes with his father for maternal attention. The opposite, the attraction of a girl to her father and rivalry with her mother, is sometimes called the Electra complex.

Sexual Awakening

At some point, the child realizes that there is a difference between their mother and their father. Around the same time they realize that they are more alike to one than the other. Thus the child acquires gender. The child may also form some kind of erotic attachment to the parent of the opposite sex.

Jealousies

The primitive desire for the one parent may also awaken in the child a jealous motivation to exclude the other parent. Transferring of affections may also occur as the child seeks to become independent and escape a perceived 'engulfing mother'. A critical point of awakening is where the child realizes that the mother has affections for others besides him. Note that opposition to parents may not necessarily be sexually based – this can also be part of the struggle to assert one's identity and rebellion against parental control.

Transitioning

The mother becomes a separate object, removed from the son’s ideal self. Thus she can be the subject of object love. This separation and externalization of love allows a transition away from narcissism of earlier stages. The father's role in this is much debated. In a number of accounts children transition their attentions from mother to father. The father effectively says 'You must be like me – you may not be like the mother – you must wait to love her, as I do.' The child thus also learns to wait and share attention.

Separation

The boy returns to the mother as a separate individual. That separation may be emphasized with scorn and a sense of mastery over women that can also be seen in the long separation of boys and girls in play and social relationships. This is a source of male denigration of women. Women become separated reminders of lost and forbidden unity. Women become thus both desired and feared.  Separation leads to unavailability and hence the scarcity principle takes effect, increasing desire. Excessive separation leads to a sense of helplessness that can in turn lead to patterns of idealized control and self-sufficiency. Whilst the boy becomes separated from the mother, it is a long time before he can be independent of her and hence must develop a working relationship that may reflect the tension of love and difference he feels. The relationship thus may return to a closer mother-son tie, where the point of healthy distance is a dynamically negotiated position, such that comforting is available but is required only upon occasion.  

Freud links the Oedipus complex with development of the superego, which uses guilt to prevent the continuation of incestuously oriented relationships. Failure to get past this trigger point and into the symbolic order is considered to be a classic cause of lasting neurosis.

2. Take part in the competition of speakers. Prepare reports on inferiority complex, emotional detachment, narcissistic personality disorder, neurosis. Present them. Make the reports sound scientific.

3. Conduct a group therapy aimed at eliminating complexes : the group meeting is run by a psychologist, the group members are 10-17 year-old children suffering from different complexes. Together, the psychologist and the group members are discussing the complexes and working out the ways how to get rid of them.

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