Roles and Positions of Women in Kinship Structures Levi Strauss and Freud
Question: Write an essay showing how Freud and Levi-Strauss’ explanations of the roles and positions of women in kinship structures can be used to examine how female characters (and their actions and relationships) are presented in texts we have studied this semester (Weeks 2- 14). You must discuss TWO or THREE texts and make clear what parts of Freud and Levi-Strauss’ theories you are using.
Sigmund Freud and Claude Levi-Strauss explain the roles and positions of women in particular kinship structures and allow their theories to be presented in two apparent texts. This paper will explore the intention behind Freud’s idea of the ‘Oedipus Complex’ within his theory of ‘Infantile Sexuality’. This can be examined through circumstances in his personal life, and also with great relevance to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Following this, a theory, which is further researched by several anthropologists, is Levi-Strauss’s “Incest Taboo” within kinship structure. Through Sophocles’ Oedipus the King the significance is greatly seen through the incestuous marriage.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the founder of psychoanalysis. From his reading of literature, among other sources, Freud developed a theory of “Infantile Sexuality” and within it, the idea of the ‘Oedipus Complex’. In Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Oedipus The King, the hero, who had grown up apart from his parents, unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother. Freud proposed that the potential psychological health of an adult man depended on whether or not he would be able to overcome, and to fully contain the subconscious of two very influential infant desires; to have sex with his mother, and to also to kill his father (Freud 374). According to Freud’s theory, mental health in an adult male depended on the ability to resolve the infantile jealousy, which the infant boy had felt for his father’s physical relationship with his mother (Freud 273).
Freud’s development of the ‘Oedipus Complex’ can be supposed as coming
Sigmund Freud and Claude Levi-Strauss explain the roles and positions of women in particular kinship structures and allow their theories to be presented in two apparent texts. This paper will explore the intention behind Freud’s idea of the ‘Oedipus Complex’ within his theory of ‘Infantile Sexuality’. This can be examined through circumstances in his personal life, and also with great relevance to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Following this, a theory, which is further researched by several anthropologists, is Levi-Strauss’s “Incest Taboo” within kinship structure. Through Sophocles’ Oedipus the King the significance is greatly seen through the incestuous marriage.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was the founder of psychoanalysis. From his reading of literature, among other sources, Freud developed a theory of “Infantile Sexuality” and within it, the idea of the ‘Oedipus Complex’. In Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Oedipus The King, the hero, who had grown up apart from his parents, unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother. Freud proposed that the potential psychological health of an adult man depended on whether or not he would be able to overcome, and to fully contain the subconscious of two very influential infant desires; to have sex with his mother, and to also to kill his father (Freud 374). According to Freud’s theory, mental health in an adult male depended on the ability to resolve the infantile jealousy, which the infant boy had felt for his father’s physical relationship with his mother (Freud 273).
Freud’s development of the ‘Oedipus Complex’ can be supposed as coming