After taking a course in psychology, and now reading this article, it is true that Freud is as weird as ever. I am still trying to understand the notion that from birth a child’s first love and fixation is on their mother. I am also curious to talk about the idea of competition between children and their parent of the opposite sex. In relating this back to The Help. I am wondering how this compares to competition with the maids and mothers. If the maid is the one who is tending to the child more than the biological mother, does this mean that the maid becomes the object of love for the child?
Frued’s theories are rather silly, I’d recommend looking at something more modern like Skinner, if psychology is a genuine interest .
(it gets a but complex)
http://www.kidsdevelopment.co.uk/bfskinnersbehaviouraltheory.html
This is one of my biggest issues with Freud – his theories are all prescriptive, and don’t take into account the insane variations of human experience that occur.
For children born into families with working mothers (currently this is about 3/4 of all families) who then go into daycare, what happens to this mother-as-love-interest? What about children who grow up in single-parent households? How do they “switch”? What about children whose parents are same-sex couples?
Obviously, the guy is incredible famous and it’s true that there’s a ton of writing and literature and theory stemming off his ideas. So maybe there is some merit, somewhere, to some of his arguments – I mean, lots of the film critics we’re reading from use psychoanalysis. It’s just hard for me to separate the craziness from the legitimate points.