The OEdipus Complex

Join us for a fascinating seminar on the OEdipus Complex, by external speaker Dr Eric Smadja.

Join us as Dr Eric Smadja proposes that the OEdipus complex has crystallized a set of manifestations of misrecognition, misunderstandings, distortions, and evasions, as well as an attitude of defiance on the part of anthropologists towards psychoanalysis, in different ways, depending on the schools of thought and the authors, from the very beginning of their encounter right up until the present day. Thus the picture of the OEdipus complex formed by anthropologists could be said to be paradigmatic of the picture they developed of psychoanalysis.

Which object(s) of conflict, or rejection, within psychoanalysis, might be found to hide and symbolize the OEdipus complex and its universality? Why are there such different and contrasting reactions? What might the latent motives be? But also, what are the issues at stake? Are they really scientific or of another nature? What role has psychoanalysis played in this conflictual history, in particular with regards to its representation and manner of dealing with socio-cultural and historical reality?

Dr Eric Smadja proposes the epistemological and historical conditions which formed the background to this debate, and then develops it following a chronological thread up until the years 1950-1960, while differentiating three major cultural areas, Great Britain, the USA and France, for the sake of greater intelligibility.

Listen to Dr Eric Smadja as he formulates some observations and comments on this conflictual history and proposes some hypotheses enabling us to a certain understanding.