Word: complexe
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...their stride were sufficient to bowl neurotics over. The foundations of neuroses, Freud discovered, were laid in the sex experiences of early childhood. Upon this astonishing fact, which Freud painstakingly confirmed in hundreds of cases, he built his famous theories of the libido (Latin for lust) and the Oedipus complex...
Driven by libido, all children fall in love with their mothers, hate and fear their fathers as rivals. Sometimes they may love their fathers too (ambivalence), but the fundamental hostility remains throughout childhood. (Later on girls often fall in love with their fathers.) This Oedipus complex-sets the pattern for a child's response to other persons throughout the rest of his life. Normal persons outgrow the Oedipus situation by the time they reach maturity. But weaker characters cannot tear themselves away from their parents, hence, "fall into neuroses...
There is no escaping the Oedipus complex, said Freud, for it is our heritage from primitive ancestors, who killed their fathers in fits of jealous rage. "We are all omnibuses in which our ancestors ride, and every now and then one of them sticks his head out and embarrasses us," perceptively observed Oliver Wendell Holmes in his pre-Freudian novel The Guardian Angel...
Because they do not believe in the primacy of the Oedipus complex, a small group of analysts have seceded from the Freudian union. Some of them do not agree that men are bound by primeval, rigid instincts. Others hold that society inflicts more wounds upon personality than the sex instinct. For these rebels, orthodox Freudians, whose feelings run high, have nothing but contempt...
...Carl Jung of Zürich, who has "retreated from psychoanalysis" into semi-religious therapy, and Alfred Adler, who died in Aberdeen two years ago. Adler held that man's mainspring is not sexual desire but a desire for superiority. Physical infirmity or family bullying produces an "inferiority complex." This complex, in turn, forces "overcompensation," or a transformation of weakness into strength. Because Demosthenes stuttered and Beethoven was deaf, said Adler, they developed inferiority complexes. Demosthenes compensated in magnificent oratory, Beethoven in magnificent music...