ABSTRACT
The tension between bisexuality and Oedipus is one of the organizing tensions of the original Freudian psychoanalytic theory. The two ideas represent two poles in Sigmund Freud’s thinking: bisexuality stands for the natural, the primitive and the inborn that forever continues to dominate the human life while Oedipus represents order, linear development, adaptation to the patriarchal culture and assuming one’s designated role therein. In his early papers on hysteria, he traced the condition to trauma and emphasized the role of the primary bisexuality in its development: universal bisexuality was the developmental stage that the hysterics regressed to or became arrested at, accounting for their pervasive ambivalence and a conflictual or fluctuating gender identity. Perhaps there is a relationship between D. W. Winnicott’s relative disinterest in the Oedipus complex and the lack of historicity in his thinking on gender. In the Lacanian tradition, the Freudian idea of the Oedipus complex underwent a transformation.
