동북아시아 곰-인간 교혼설화에 나타나는 모친살해의 의미

Abstract

This study examines the matricide motif shown in the East Asian bear-human intermarriage myth through Melanie Klein's Oedipus complex theory. The matricide described by Klein is similar to the symbolic meaning of patricide found in Freud's or Lacan's Oedipus complex. Klein restores the mother's position, which had been erased in the process of subjectivation, by placing the object of a person's desire not on their father's penis, but on their mother's breast including that of their father. Among the East Asian bear-human intermarriage myths, most of the female bears in the stories of male human-male bear relationships have the form of 'the first mother'. Human males and their children can become 'the first mother' as they establish themselves as the original beings of the totem tribe. At the same time, the female bear takes care of the abandoned human males like their mother but eventually loses both her children and her husband due to the man's escape from her. This narrative structure can also be seen as a process of resolving the Oedipus complex in which the symbolic meaning of matricide is revealed. Among the female human-male bear intermarriage myths, there are also myths in which a woman, having finished raising children, goes into the forest, meets a male bear, lives as a bear, and is killed by a bear-son. This myth describes the imaginary and symbolic body of the parents, and the matricide that appears here means the erasure of the imaginary body of the parent symbolized by the bear in order to resolve the Oedipus complex through entry into the symbolic realm. The bear-human intermarriage myth, in which the matricide motif appears in the context of the narrative, is also another example of the Oedipus complex in which a subject is socialized through matricide. The discussion of the Oedipus complex, which can be explained through Melanie Klein's 'matricide', offers an important meaning of restoring the mother's position, which has been excluded from psychoanalysis. And at the center of its important meaning lies the female bear in the bear-human intermarriage myth.