Sigmund Freud has caught my attention with his reading of Interpretation of Dreams. He talks about the reading of Oedipus Rex to show us that according to him we as humans try to resist the taboo of incest. As he brings up the meaning behind the story of the prophecy of how he ends up killing his father and marries his mother. This is what Freud says to a T of our primal exotic desire for our mother and as well to get rid of the father, but that we try to resist these desires. When I read this in high school, I did not care much for this book especially how my classmate read it in such a funny voice and because at that point the common disease of “senioritis” had gotten to me. I understood some of the book because the teacher explained the book to, us but I did not see this “primitive actions” that has been explained in class.

            When this was explained, I was the student to talk about “nowadays primitive actions.” It is rare that I talk in class, but when I explained the “daddy issues” that women have from missing a father figure in their life and the “cougar fetish” that men have towards older women, I never that of people responding the way they did, such as making Josie choke up on trying to participating and saying “WOW.” As you say there is no right or wrong answer in this course, but getting a reaction like that, did what I have to say go too far? I mean it is somewhat true, according to Freud, because though men do not kill their fathers and have sexual relations with their mothers, going after older women is not a comfortable “norm” in society and relates to the “incest taboo.”

            Oedipus Rex is not the only piece of literature that supports how we try to have “primal repression.” Hamlet is another work that I read, well skimmed, in high school that has murder of family in it. Hamlet kills many people in the process of trying to kill his uncle, the new king since he married the queen, who happens to be the wife of his brother who he murdered for the throne. The difference between Hamlet and Oedipus Rex is that Oedipus blinds himself to punish himself for acting upon these “primal actions” while Hamlet is killed following his mother’s death and tells someone to not commit suicide to tell his story. To me, I never really thought of these works of literature interesting. My opinion has changed after reading Freud and from our class discussion on Tuesday explains our “primal repression.”