Sphinx Complex

The term Sphinx Complex represents a new reading of the Oedipus legend and how it applies to psychoanalysis and extreme behaviour.

 
The Complex is exactly the same as what Oedipus Complex is most understood to be, minus the literal interpretation from the play. Literally Oedipus Complex should actually be the opposite of standard usage in psychology.

Someone with "Oedipus Complex" or "Oedipal Complex" is accepted to be someone who hasn't emerged out of his childhood to adult sexual identity. But, in the story, Oedipus more than has emerged. He conquered the Sphinx which represents immaturity and pre-"manhood".
 
When using Greek words and legends they should be used accurately and without social bias. It eliminates possibility of confusion and promotion of false ideas.

Let me quickly tell the Oedipus Rex story:
 
Oedipus is left in the woods as a baby to die by his parents, the King and Queen of Thebes, as an Oracle says he will kill his father and marry his mother. A shepherd rescues him and he grows up in Corinth as the son of the King and Queen of Corinth. When he hears the Oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother, he runs away thinking the King and Queen of Corinth are his real parents. He ends up going to Thebes which is under the curse of the Sphinx, and on the way he unknowingly kills his father in a road rage incident. Then he answers the Riddle of the Sphinx and slays the monster, freeing Thebes from her curse, and then marries the Queen who he doesn't know is his mother. He has kids with her and the city is once again cursed. He vows to rid the city of this curse like he did the curse of the Sphinx asks a blind prophet to tell him who the curse is and the prophet tells him that he is the curse that he is seeking. He finds out it is true and he stick pins in his eyes and exiles himself.

Oedipus Complex doesn't figure in the Oedipus Rex story as Oedipus doesn't meet up with his parents until he's an adult. i don't see the relevance of the story to general psychoanalysis.

Oedipus Rex was performed in Paris and Vienna and Freud must have seen it in Vienna. How he comes up with Oedipus Complex, as defined by him, by watching the play, is not explicable except by maybe a Seinfeld episode.

P.S. Okay, I just found out from the Kory Ryan thesis on the Homicidal Triad that Freud came up with the Oedipus Complex because Oedipus was not conscious that the man he killed was his father and the woman he married was his mother so he thought it had something to do with the subconscious.   (zzz)
 
How is it subconscious? It could be anything like simple ignorance as it literally is, or mean something metaphorical like societal or racial amnesia or suppressed knowledge.

Before explaining the Sphinx Complex, we'll explain the Sphinx and what she/it represents:
 
  

All About Heaven wrote:Sphinx
 
 
A very complex symbol. In the animal part we see in part the deep Subconscious - the autonomic system. Thus we see in part of the symbolism of the sphinx the animal tendencies – the survival instinct, the animal sensuality, which are traditionally male at this level.
 
But the sphinx is also in most representations a Lion and the Lion is the symbol of the Intellect.
 
Both the deep subconscious [autonomic system] and its animal urges [male] and the Intellect [also symbolically male] are blocks to spiritual experience.
 
Thus the objective of anyone on the spiritual path is to subdue both. Thus to a certain extent the sphinx is similar to the tamed lion [see Lion].
 
But the sphinx has an animal lower half [the sexual part and animal urges as well as the Intellect] with a woman’s face - the feminine [the emotions and imagination plus creative capability]. The feminine dominates the masculine.
 
In effect, order to achieve the mystic marriage, the masculine has to embrace and understand the feminine and the marriage is the sphinx. Thus we often see a man - representing the masculine intellect and conscious self - the reasoning learning left brain side of us - embracing a sphinx, meaning he has both come to terms with the idea and is happy for it to happen.

https://allaboutheaven.org/symbols/sphinx/123

Having a close relationship to your mother or adoring your mother seems to be considered an abnormal trait, although it's normal to cling to your mother for comfort. The problems start when the mother is no longer a source of comfort.

 
If the mother is caught out in adultery as Peter Sutcliffe's mother was and exposed by the husband in front of the son, the one he turned to for comfort becomes a source of discomfort. This looks good as a Motive and/or Trigger. It's not unusual.

Somehow that gets portrayed as an Oedipus thing. But that's a bad reading of the play. Sutcliffe is not an Oedipus. They are opposites. He doesn't have an Oedipus Complex. He has what you might better call a Sphinx Complex. Because he is a victim of the Sphinx.

The problems just compound themselves when you bring in other psychologists and other Greek myths. 

Jung came up with Electra Complex as the female equivalent of the Oedipus Complex and Freud rejected that name because, to him, the female complex was different and Electra Complex suggests it's the same. He preferred Negative Oedipus Complex.
 
Negative Oediups Complex?  :-/ Female Oedipus Complex? Electra Complex? Electra Complex is equally All About Nothing. Why did Jung even go along with this idea?
 
Electra is also an adult in the myth when she kills her mother and stepfather in revenge for her mother killing her father Agamemnon when he returns from the Trojan war with another woman.
 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electra_complex

Edmund Kemper
 
“To one of his drinking companions, he confided that he’d become engaged and he commented that a ‘man would be a fool to marry a woman smarter than himself’. Kemper did not marry the girl. In fact she was seldom seen in the area and little was known of her except that she came from a Central Valley town, was small, blonde, young and immature.Later he told an investigator that he worshipped her in an ‘almost religious’ way and that they had never engaged in a sexual relationship."
 
source: The Coed-Killer by Margaret Cheney.
 
The prevailing politically-correct idea, as per Mr. Mercedes, is that a normal relationship would prevent extremism and serial killings.
 
If they're talking about a steady partner relationship, I’d say there are plenty of serial killers with “normal” relationships. That didn’t make a difference. 

There are those that think that extreme force is required to have the ones they want and that leads to murder, and there are those that kill after rejection. That happened with Ted Bundy but I don't think it proves the old Freud-derived adage. Athough almost all his victims were lookalikes of his girlfriend who rejected him, we surmise he could have had a Substitution relationship instead of a Substitution Murder, so sex was not the issue.
 
I’m not disagreeing in Principle in regard to their view of Kemper or Kaczynski. I just think other factors or indicators would have exempted them from a ‘normal’ relationship, partly to do with his overall nature including inadequacies and partly to do with his standards or preference in women. The two don’t mesh. Don’t know if changing preferences or compromising unreal standards to reality would have completely changed the outcome.
 
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe's was set to be a serial killer the moment his philandering father confronted his mother over affair she was having.
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was devoted to his mother Kathleen
Sutcliffe's father John discovered his wife was having an affair in 1970
A new documentary claimed Sutcliffe was devastated by his mother's affair
 
Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4848358/Yorkshire-Ripper-Peter-Sutcliffe-unusual-murder-motive.html#ixzz59kaVjaz9

I think you can find a co-relation between being obsessive like Bundy and Kaczynski, who were rejected by one specific female prior to the murders, and not being able to have "normal" relations. Maybe even with specific female obsession and maternal obsession. But I think you need all three ingredients along with the real homicidal indicators to result in murder.

All this being said, Jack the Ripper does fit into the literal original Oedipus character. Not because he was a mamma's boy but because he was capable and on top of the situation and atop his society. Just like Oedipus. 

He's no different than any of the other Caucasian prostitute killer since 1888 who are almost universally businessmen, doctors or other professionals. There are a couple of factory workers but they were usually in the army and not officers so their business careers would have been curtailed.

Oedipus arrives to conquer the Sphinx. The victim's didn't even know what "a man" was. Oedipus did. 

Oedipus is Superman.