ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of Oedipus complex theory. It addresses the two major theories— that of Freud and Klein— in the context of their overarching theories, as well as placing them in the sociological context in which their authors developed them. The chapter provides a brief summary of the feminist perspective and offers an alternative perspective giving equality to males and females alike. Jerry Aline Flieger published a paper in 1990 in which she categorises feminists into three groups: “father’s daughters”, “mother’s daughters”, and “prodigal daughters”. “Father’s daughters” are those who follow Freudian beliefs in women being marginalised and disadvantaged, seeing themselves as castrates— not as good because they lack the signifier, a penis. “Mother’s daughters” are, however, the reverse of this— they denigrate the male inability to bear children, and instead conflate their own possession of a womb as making them the superior gender.
