Quadrant: The Journal of the C.G. Jung Foundation

On the Archetypal Complex: His Father’s Son. Esau and Dionysos, Satan and Christ; Mythological Aspects and Psychological Implications — H. I. Bach

Freud was the first to point out the basic significance of the mother-son relationship as reflected in the Greek myth of Oedipus. In accordance with an oracle, Oedipus unknowingly had first to kill his father and then marry his mother. Freud saw in the Oedipus complex the basic pattern of human psychology and for a time believed it to be the only pattern in the depths of the unconscious. I hope to show, however, that there may well be an archetypal complex opposite to the Oedipus complex, namely that of “His Father’s Son.” Here the accents of attraction and repulsion between son and parents are reversed, the relationship to the father being positive and that to the mother negative. …