“I use to be widely believed, but then I took an arrow to the knee”-Oedipus, Son of Sigmond

So we all know the classic and legendary theory of the Oedipus Complex developed by Freud (1909), so I believed it was about time that I blogged about what was such a truly original idea.

The theory of the Oedipus complex was formed by Freud which was one of the five psychosexual stages of development in children, as it is suffered by male children during the Phallic stage of their development. Freud believed that the Oedipus Complex was the stage where the boy began to become immersed in deep sexual feelings for their mother, and due to this, would see their father as a ‘rival’ for their mothers love, so would dream of ‘disposing’ of him. However, due to the father being able to over-power the child, the child also develops deep resentment and fear of the father, as the father may castrate the child.

Freud uses the study of Little Hans to support his theory of the Oedipus complex. The study was to explain a phobia of horses which was felt by the child “Little Hans” by relating them to the emotions felt due to Han’s progressing through the Psychosexual stages Examples of this was dreams felt by Hans such as riding on the back of a ‘crumple-necked’ giraffe and was weary of the ‘squawking giraffe’. Freud explained this by stating that the giraffe with the crumpled neck was the resemblance of his mother and his sexual feelings towards her by riding her, whilst the squawking giraffe resembled his father who was alarmed by Hans riding his mate. He concluded that Han’s phobia of horses was due to Hans making resemblances between the horses and his father, due to the horses’ blinders appearing similar to his father’s glasses as well as the black lips similar to his moustache.

This was widely believed and these were believed to be the cause of dreams.

However, it took an arrow to the knee….

Firstly, although it is a widely known theory, it is still only a theory. This means there is no scientific evidence to support his theories, meaning they cannot be totally believed. Furthermore, the researcher which conducted the Little Hans study was not actually Freud, but Han’s own father, Freud only ever met the child twice. The father was the one which conducted the research, meaning that researcher bias was present, lowering the validity of the study, similar to the Thigpen and Cleckley (1954) study where one of the researchers fell in love with Eve Black.

Following this, although Freud did not conduct the research he did view and analyse the results. Even though this means the professional did conduct the research, it is flawed in this situation as Freud himself often indulged in cocaine. This lowers the overall validity of the study as cocaine alters visual and inhibitory behaviour (Post & Rose, 1976). Following this, it is also highly doubtful that a child of that age would even though about sex, never mind wanting to indulge in such activities with their own mother, even if the child does love their mother, it is a different sort of love. As well as this, there is also a distinct lack of construct validity, as the researcher was meant to be researching a child’s phobias, however, more focus was placed on the ‘sexual-feelings’ for the child’s mother, and would much rather just play with toys.

In conclusion, although Freud’s theory is legendary and, let’s face it, absolutely brilliant, it really did take an arrow to the knee and it’s time to move on.

Reference List

Freud, S. (1909) Analysis of a phobia of a five year old boy. In The Pelican Freud Library (1977), Vol 8, Case Histories 1, pages 169-306

Post, R.M., & Rose, H., (1976). Increasing effects of repetitive cocaine admistration in the rat. Nature, 260, 731-732 (22 April 1976); doi; 10.1038/260731a()

Thigpen, C.H. & Cleckley, H. (1954) A case of multiple personality.

Why beautiful people are more intelligent….or not…a critical view of Kanazawa and Kovar (2004)

In the study conducted by Kanazawa and Kovar (2004) they tried to explain the relationship between beauty and intelligence by using four assumptions. The first of these assumptions was that “men who are more intelligent are more likely to attain higher status then men of lower intelligence”; the second assumption was that “higher status men are more likely to mate with beautiful women; the third assumption was that “intelligence is heritable”; and the final assumption was “beauty is heritable”. Through this they explain that if these assumptions are true then it would also mean that beautiful people are more intelligent then unattractive people.

Whilst looking at these assumptions, although someone can see why they have been formed, it does not exactly mean that it is the cause of a proven theorem. This is such as the problems with their assumptions. The first assumption to be viewed is that men of high status are more likely to mate with beautiful women. They use examples such as that of Buss (1994) where he stated that men like young and attractive women and women like rich men. However, it does not look into the fact that personality has a huge role on the factor of face preference (Little et al, 2006). When this is examined with the possibility that beautiful people often have negative personality traits such as vanity (Dermer & Thiel, 1975) then this may cause the males to be put off by these physically attractive women and search for a mate of the desired personality.

 Assumption 3 states that “intelligence is heritable”. However, in the case of mating, the offspring is mixed of both the male and female parents. So if the female in the relationship is of low intelligence, then perhaps the intelligence of the male father will not be passed on. This is supported by the Buss (1994) study where he showed that males are more interested in physical appearance when choosing a mate then intellect. Leading on from this, intelligence is not just what is inherrited, it is also a social factor of what is learnt. This can be seen in studies such as Bandura () where children learn to imitate aggression through watching adults. Although aggression is not intelligence, it does show that children learn from their social environment, so even if a child is born with higher IQ, if not introduced in to the correct environment they still may not become intelligent as others born of lower IQ parents. 

When viewing assumption 4 that beauty is heritable a question needs to be asked, what is beauty? As shown by Buss (1994) the views of beauty tend to alter from culture to culture, such as China finding Chastity hugely important whereas places such as Sweden find it unimportant and irrelevant. As well as this, since, as mentioned above that women are not hugely interested in physical appearance, the male in the relationship may be unattractive and these may pass on into the child, causing an unattractive child.

So although the four assumptions do make sense, they are not 100% solid as there two sides to everything when creating offspring is involved.

Reference List

Bandura, A., Ross, D. and Ross, S.A. (1961) Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-582.

Buss, D. M. (1994). The evolution of desire: Strategies of human mating. New York: BasicBooksBuss

Dermar, M., and Thiel, D.L., (1975). When Beauty may fail. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 31(6), 1168-1176

Kanazawa, S., and Kovar, J.L., (2004). Why beautiful people are more intelligent. Intelligence. Vol 32, (3) 227-243

Little, A.C., et al  (2006) What is good is beautiful: Face preference reflects desired personality. Personality and Individual differences, Vol 41 (6), 1107-1118