The Cronus Complex Psychoanalytic Myths of the Future for Boys and Girls
This chapter examines how the Freudian theory of sexual differentiation is grounded in a reading of classical culture and myth. It is based, on the one hand, on a gendering of the linguistic constructions of the Latin and Greek languages, and on the other, on an attempt to use the metaphor of archaeology to understand the development of the self with reference to Greek myth and history. The classical past thus becomes for psychoanalysis a means of historicising and legitimating its clinical findings. This chapter looks at the ambiguities in Freud's theory of castration and the story of the god Cronus who ate his own children.
Keywords: psychoanalysis, classical myth, history, sexual differentiation, femininity, masculinity, culture, self, castration, Cronus
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