ABSTRACT
In our meanderings among the various masks, we have touched upon the Oedipus myth. The central part of this myth concerning the protagonist’s personal destiny has become, thanks to Freud and psychoanalysis, one of the stories that has influenced modern thought to the greatest extent. The theme of taking the father’s place, developed in the story of Oedipus through the transgression of some of the basic rules of society, has been used as a metaphor for understanding the bonds of children with their own parents, bonds that are ineluctable and potentially pathological, in a precarious equilibrium between desire and reality. On the other hand, Winnicott, speaking of the unconscious fantasies of adolescence, reminds us that ‘if the child is to become an adult, then this transformation must take place over the dead body of an adult’.
