Had choir practice and we (the english choir) finished practicing early. We were sitting there on sand under an open sky and waiting for the tamil choir to finish their practice. We finally got bored of waiting and so nam asked me to tell them all a story. It was one mixed group of people like the picture up there …. anyway I told them the story about King Oedipus. They were all disgusted by the oedipus story. Heard this story from a professor, and I found it very amusing.
Here is the gist of the story ….
Oedipus was the mythical king of Thebes (son of Laius and Jocasta) who, unknowingly, killed his father and married his mother. At Oedipus birth, the Delphic Oracle prophesied that he would kill his father. Seeking to avoid such a fate, Laius had the infant’s ankles pierced with nails and had him placed in the wilderness to die. His servant, however, betrayed him, handing the boy to a shepherd who presented the child to the King and Queen of the neighbouring land who raised him as their own son.
After reaching adulthood, Oedipus seeks out the Oracle. The Oracle related the same prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Wishing to avoid this Oedipus decides to leave the country and on the way he gets into an argument with a passerby and Oedipus kills the stranger. The man was King Laius, Oedipus’ biological father.
As he traveled, Oedipus encountered a mystical creature, the Sphinx, that was terrorizing Thebes. Oedipus saved the city by answering the riddle of the Sphinx (“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?”) and was rewarded with the now-vacant throne of Thebes and the widowed queen Jocasta’s (his biological mother) hand in marriage. Oedipus had four children with Jocasta.
Within a short time, divine signs of misfortune and pollution began to appear in Thebes, which caused the king to seek out their cause. Finally, a seer reveals to Oedipus that Oedipus himself was the source of the pollution. Oedipus discoveres that he is really the son of Laius and Jocasta and that the prophecy had indeed come to pass. Jocasta commits suicide and Oedipus blinds himself by forcing her brooch pins into his eyes.
The answer to the riddle: a human being. When he is an infant he crawls, when an adult he walks and when an old man he uses a walking cane.
From the above story Sigmund coined the term oedipus complex.
The Oedipus complex is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud to explain the origin of certain neuroses in childhood. It is defined as a male child’s (around the age of 5 years) unconscious desire for the exclusive love of his mother. This desire includes jealousy towards the father and the unconscious wish for that parent’s death.