프로이트의 오이디푸스 콤플렉스에 대한 수사학적 이해

Abstract

In the most general sense of the word, rhetoric, means the art of creative expressions. Its specific areas might include the concerns about how to express one’s own thoughts despite the presence of the taboo that prohibits to do so. Using the multiple meanings of the language, to write between the lines is the most typical way of this kind of rhetoric. Thus, rhetorically composed texts have various layers of different meanings within themselves. From this perspective, Sigmund Freud(1857-1939) is a rhetorical writer. He created a neurotic term, Oedipus complex, through his psychoanalysis of totemism of ancient primitives, Greek tragedy, Tyrant Oedipus of Sophocles(B.C.E. 496-406), and young male children’s psychic tendencies. Yet, Freud had developed and disclosed the meanings of Oedipus complex over 40 years through books, including The Interpretation of Dreams, Totem and Taboo, and Moses and Monotheism. It can be called dialectical rhetoric, the method that progresses little by little. Dialectical rhetoric also includes historical one that detaches Freud from the Oedipus complex, because he constantly gave credits to other writers such as Charles Darwin and R. S. Smith for the idea of the Oedipus complex. One of the purposes of both rhetoric include the protection of Freud from the would-be criticisms and constraints. The most commonly known meaning of the Oedipus complex is the symptom of neurosis of a young male child who sexually loves his mother but hates his father because he considers his father as the competitioner for his mother, although he respects his father as the father. The Oedipus complex has deeper and more serious meanings such as patricide by his own son and incest with his own mother. Freud insists that these crimes are the origins of the whole Western culture, including politics, ethics, and religion. With his constant concerns about religion, he stressed that those crimes are the origin of Judaism and Christianity. Especially the ideas of patricide have relation with Moses, Jesus, the apostle Paul and the Last Supper. The ideas of incest is hidden in the deification of the totem animals and human beings. In the deepest layer of the concept of the Oedipus Complex appears Freud as Oedipus. Here Oedipus means the conquer, as Hanibal almost defeated the Roman Empire. Like Hannibal, Freud sentences the whole Western history as the remnant of those crimes. There are still hidden meanings in the Oedipus complex because it means that the Christian Westerners have murdered Jews with anti-semitism, even though Jews are their religious and intellectual fathers, because Judaism is the father of Christianity, and Moses, Jesus, and the apostle Paul were all Jews. So far, it is generally thought that psychoanalysis has less relationship with hermeneutics. Yet, Freud’s hermeneutics of unconsciousness might contribute to uncover the hidden meanings of the elusive language.