ABSTRACT

The multiple levels of meaning discernible in the Oedipus complex manifest themselves throughout Freud’s analyses of religion. It therefore comes as no surprise that Totem and Taboo concludes triumphantly by asserting that “the beginnings of religion, morals, society and art converge in the Oedipus complex.”2 Yet rather than coalescing within a sweeping reductionistic point of origin, these links create a series of unfolding interconnections. The relations among society (or, rather, culture), morals (or, rather, ethics), religion, and art enrich our understanding of each component of the explanatory network and subvert simple etiological models. Especially when it is read in light of the Lacanian symbolic order, the Oedipus complex becomes an overdetermined figure for the dynamics of acculturation.