Publication Details

Abstract

The relationship between the individual and the family is approached at first from the perspective of the formation of a person in the early period of her childhood. A child is first fully dependent on maternal care (or on care of a person replacing the mother). Later, at the age from three to five years the child experience the so called Oedipus complex as a complex of feelings throuh which the child overcomes, thanks to father, his ambiguous relationships to his mother. Attention is paid also to the mythical character of Freud’s conception viewing the Oedipus Complex as grounded in a real event of the early history of humankind. Drawing on Lacan’s conceptions the connection between Oedipus Complex and the patriarchal social order is emphasized, the latter being conceived as an entry to the symbolical order (the rites of initiation play a similar role in societies studied by ethnologists). Lacan’s conviction, that a child of female gender is forced to accept the symbol of the opposite gender as a basis of her own identity (a view criticized as phallocentrism), is mentioned as well. In conclusion some of the feminist attitudes are criticized for their inability to see the pregnancy as a natural acceptance of the female corporeality.