Oedipus Through Lacanian Eyes

Reviews the book, Oedipus: The most crucial concept in psychoanalysis by Juan-David Nasio, David Pettigrew, and François Raffoul (see record 2010-22743-000). Juan-David Nasio advances the argument that the Oedipus complex remains at the center of psychoanalysis—indeed, that without it there can be no psychoanalysis. In the Lacanian view, all children are fated to experience an Oedipal phase that is simultaneously a reality, a fantasm [sic], a concept, and a myth. Insofar as Nasio reminds us that the power of infantile sexuality is a problem with which every child and parent must wrestle, his brief essay on Oedipus serves a useful purpose. However, his assertion of simplistic, one-to-one links between specific infantile anxieties and adult psychopathology is hard to swallow, especially since it suggests that we need not attend to the complicated nuances of individual intrapsychic experience. In my view, it is precisely that attention to complexity that has kept psychoanalysis afloat for the past century. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)