ABSTRACT
Leon Sheleff, for example, has rightly criticized arbitrarily applying S. Freud’s Oedipal model to explain the identification with, or revolutionary reaction against, a tyrannic and oppressive father, in the case of a non-Western Chinese leader such as Mao Tse-tung. The fact that Freud, nonetheless, chose the patricidal Oedipal myth as a key narrative for the construction of his dialectic paradigm of growth and progress might be revealing. The careful selection of the Oedipal metacode paradigm demonstrates that it was not only the incest theme but its concomitant theme of patricide that Freud believed characterized human development. The chapter argues that it is only by referring to the Hegelian-Darwinian theories as his hermeneutic metacodes that one may understand why Freud selected the Oedipal story from all the available legends to interpret and guide the course of socialization.
