A Story of Her Own: The Female Oedipus Complex Reexamined and Renamed (review)

Vera J. Camden

American Imago, Volume 68, Number 1, Spring 2011, pp. 139-148 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/aim.2011.0010

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A Story of Her Own: The Female Oedipus Complex Reexamined and Renamed. Nancy Kulish and Deanna Holtzman. New York: Jason Aronson, 2008. 218 pp. $80.00 (hc), $34.90 (pb).
Five years ago, at the meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association, a panel convened on Current Views of the Oedipus Complex in which, despite its aspiration to currency, the female version of the Oedipus complex was never mentioned. Freuds original conception of the universalized male epitomized the discussion in 2006 just as surely as it had when Freud coined the phrase in 1910. The possibility that half of the human population may diverge from the masculine paradigm patterned by Freuds interpretation and application of Sophocles tragedy was simply not taken up as a current view. Nancy Kulish and Deanna Holtzman, in A Story of Her Own: The Female Oedipus Complex Reexamined and Renamed, address such gendered myopia. They assert simply but emphatically that the Oedipal story does not work as a touchstone against which to measure and understand females, either theoretically or practically (183). The authors claim that the Oedipus complex as it is classically conceived and applied in psychoanalytic practice derives from the male situation both in its mythic articulation and in its clinical extensions. This is a fatal flaw from the standpoint of female experience. At the core of the authors critique and contribution is sexual difference, and this difference makes all the difference. When the Oedipus conflict is applied to women, it is mediated by male rivalry and desire, and then awkwardly appended to female development. The phallocentrism most obviously articulated by Freuds proclamation that the little girl is a little man (1933, 118) has left its residue throughout the vocabulary of psychoanalytic theories of development, and nowhere more evidently than in discussions of the female Oedipus complex. As Kulish and Holtzman write: Language shapes perception and expectation; it organizes our thinking. When we think about Oedipus, we think about castration and penis envy, not about pregnancy or vagina; when we talk about the phallic-Oedipal phase in little girls, we distract ourselves
American Imago, Vol. 68, No. 1, 139148. 2011 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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fromand thereby foreclose onthe girls crucial developmental need to identify with her mother (184). Drawing from the research of psychoanalyst and linguist Bonnie Litowitz, the authors affirm the power of language to influence perception, while distancing themselves from the dire Lacanian theories that suggest women are locked into a foreordained phallic linguistic. They also resist Lacanian feminists who valorize presymbolic modes of communication that lock women out of language altogether. Clinical practitioners and theorists cannot rely on poetry or silence; thus we are seeking a new language of female development (64). Their comprehensive reexamination of psychoanalytic theories of feminine sexuality since Freud leads to what the subtitle to their book rather disingenuously calls a renaming of reigning theories of the female Oedipus complex. Yet what they offer is clearly more than that. As they point out, the female triadic situation does not have its own name but floats, rather like an obscure signifier of something that is not nothing (59). With an urgency and practicality that is drawn from their daily work as analysts, the authors combine an encyclopedic review of the literature on the female Oedipus complex with a bold critique of its masculine premises. Included are detailed clinical illustrations that concretely demonstrate, on the one hand, how early paradigms have blinded us to the realties of female experience and, on the other hand, how new paradigms and alternative mythologies allow the analyst to listen with fresh attunement to the narratives of girls and women, and thus to make different interpretations and interventions. Kulish and Holtzman then advance a new conceptualization and propose a renaming of the female triadic situation according to a myth that more accurately accords with the developmental characteristics and compromises of the female. They propose the myth of Persephone, whose story goes like this: while picking flowers in the meadow, Kore, the maiden daughter of Demeter, is abducted and raped by her uncle, Hades, god of the underworld. She is forced to live in the underworld as his queen, and her name is changed to Persephone. Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and seasons, grieves and rages at the loss of her daughter, bringing drought upon the

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earth. Demeter descends into the underworld to rescue her daughter, only to find that Persephone has been tricked into eating the pomegranate seed and thus, according to the laws of the gods, must never leave the underworld. Zeus, the one-time consort of Demeter and the father of Persephone, is also the brother of her abductor, Hades. Zeus eventually formulates a compromise in order to alleviate the drought and famine on earth. He arranges that Persephone live part-time with Hades, as queen of the underworld, while living the majority of the time with Demeter, on earth. Such an arrangement brings the change of seasons to earth, for it is during the absence of her daughter that Demeter withholds all sun and warmth so that winter takes hold. When her daughter is restored to her, the earth revives and flourishes. This story of Persphones literal descent into sexual knowledge, and her ritual visitation between parental figures (which sounds oddly like joint custody to modern ears), is placed in counterpoint to Sophocles story of Oedipus incest and patricide. The authors argue that this myth of mother and daughter tells a different story of triangulation from the one told about Oedipus. If Sophocles play reveals deep psychic truths that resonated with Freuds own self-analysis, Kulish and Holtzman counter that the myth of Persephone echoes and articulates truths peculiar to the lived experience of girls and women that they see in their practices. The authors acknowledge the interest and utility of previous attempts to counter Freuds masculine-universalism through such figures as Electra, Antigone, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Psyche, and Athena. But they insist on the superior claim of Persephone as icon and embodiment of an alternative narrative that portrays the girls compromise, allowing her to retain the mothers love while indulgingand enjoyingthe fathers desire and the benefits of his kingdom. The authors insist that normal female development does not relinquish the mother as a love object but rather adds on the father in the phase of triangulation. In other words, there are more things portrayed in the story of Demeter and Persephone than are dreamt of in Freuds philosophy of King Oedipus, things that permit both parents to be love objects.

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These are welcome interpretations that to me sound very resonant with Jessica Benjamins (1998) formulation of gender overinclusivitya theory that is not mentioned by Kulish and Holtzman, but would have been useful for its fuller elaboration of the relation between identification and object love. More problematic, for me, however, is the authors unexamined assumption that Persephones heterosexual desire is awakened and fulfilled by the forceful and authoritative masculine figure of Hades. Indeed, they claim that Persephones rape symbolically shifts agency and sexual desire onto the male aggressor, typifying the fantasies of many girls who back away from sexual feelings. Read into this myth is a typical neurotic solution of girls who fear their mothers disapproval of their competitive and sexual strivings: Out of fear of alienating their mothers and losing their love and care, many girls back away from their competitive and sexual feelings, hiding then both from their mothers and from themselves. A typical result of this solution is an abdication of the sense of agency over sexual and aggressive urges. This is for us the central implication of the Persephone story: The young girl is the victim of the father figure Hades, who has abducted her and seemingly forced her into sex. (183) It is here, in the authors response to and interpretation of female sexual agency in terms of the Persephone myth, that I find this otherwise enriching volume disturbing in its implications. However accurate their clinical observations may be concerning the disavowal of sexuality and aggression of many of their female patients, it seems to me that in their effort to deploy this new paradigm they unfortunately fail to capture the power and the poignancy of the myth itself as narrative. After all, the myth of Persephone has at its kore the rape of Demeters maiden daughter.1 Yet Kulish and Holtzmans interpretation and application of the myth of Demeter and Persephone plays down the act of abduction. While they refer to the outrage that we are told sent Demeter into earth-scorching grief and rage, they do not seem, empathically, to share it. Instead, they

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brush over the anguish at the heart of the narrative, so hurried are they to interpret the triadic compromise reached in the resolution of Persephones dilemma. They press Demeter and her daughter into unwilling service, so to speak, of their theories of feminine resistance to sexual knowledge and disavowal of desire. Making no comment on the traumatic core of the tale, they instead read into the depiction of Kores abduction an unconscious signifier of the girl whose no means yes and who is seemingly forced into sex. In contrast, listen to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter itself: he snatched the unwilling maid into his golden chariot and led her off lamenting. She screamed with a shrill voice, calling upon her father, the son of Kronos highest and the best. Not one of the immortals, or of humankind heard her voice, nor the olives bright with fruit, except the daughter of Persaios; tender of heart she heard it from her cave, Hekat of the delicate veil. And Lord Helios, brilliant son of Hyperion, heard the maid calling her father the son of Kronos. But he sat apart from the gods, aloof in a temple ringing with prayers, and received choice offerings from human kind. Against her will Hades took her by design of Zeus with his immortal horsesher fathers brother, Commander-and-Host-to-Many, the many-named son of Kronos. So long as the goddess gazed on earth and starry heaven, on the sea flowing strong and full of fish, and on the beams of sun, she still hoped to see her dear mother and the race of immortal gods. For so long hope charmed her strong mind despite her distress.

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Book Reviews The mountain peaks and the depths of the sea echoed in response to her divine voice, and her goddess mother heard. Sharp grief seized her heart, and she tore the veil on her ambrosial hair with her own hands. She cast a dark cloak on her shoulders and sped like bird over dry land and sea, searching. (Foley 1994, 2, 4)

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In their summary of the story of Persephone, the authors do not, in fact, directly cite the Hymn to Demeter anywhere; this, I think, suggests an unfortunate distancing from the impact of the poem. About the rape of Persephone, for instance, the authors claim, No one hears her cries (38). Yet this is not an accurate reading either of the Hymn, in the Foley translation that they use, or of Ovids version. As we see, line 24 tells us that no one heard Persephone except Hecate, Helios, and, eventually, while Persephone is still spinning the earth in Hades chariot, Demeter herself hears her daughter. My point is not to quibble with the authors knowledge of the literature surrounding this myth, or with their fundamental sense of its powerful invocation of female experience. It is merely that they do not fully grapple with the affective impact of Persephones loss of innocence and hope. However much we may want to interpret the realism of her reconciliation and the compromise she accepts as Queen and daughter, we must reckon with the rape at the heart of this story. As Tamara Agha-Jaffar (2002) reminds us, Persephones rape is heinous: It constitutes the violation of the bodily and psychic integrity of the young girl. . . . [P]atriarchy may have viewed this as an acceptable method of selecting a bride, but it wouldnt be unreasonable to assume that . . . women espoused a different opinion of this abominable practiceas evidenced by Kores shrieks for help and her mothers reaction (142). Kulish and Holtzmans challenge to the neo-Freudian remnant is thus itself muted by the limitations of their reading of the very myth they marshal to counter the oedipal paradigm. Their admirable reframing and renaming of the

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female Oedipus complex concedes too much when they fall into the familiar intellectual posture of marginalizing the reality of the external world in order to turn their attention exclusively to the inner life of the child. When they conclude that at the heart of this myth is the problem of female agency and the pretense of victimization, they ironically reenact the sin for which psychoanalysis has long been condemned by feminists, namely, Freuds diminishing of the reality of trauma, his repudiation of the seduction theory, and his substitution of fantasy and unconscious desire for real victimization. How can one elaborate a theory of normal female development around a story of a daughters rape by an uncle, her rescue and ritual release through a compromise constructed by conflicting parents, and her reluctant reign in the underworld without first recognizing the affective and psychic impact of such traumatic circumstances in the life of the childand the plain reality of her victimization? What happens to normal sexual desire when so many external forces have impinged on her inner life and compromised her sense of agency and autonomy? In his essay Psychoses and Child Care D. W. Winnicott (1953) illustrates with bold and simple diagrams the ways that environmental disruptions of the infants emerging encounter with the breast can impact his or her negotiating of desire. The infants creation of necessary illusion surrounding the breast amounts to an exploration not only of inner fantasy but also of external reality. In these crucial steps, says Winnicott, the very basis for subjectivity is formed. An intruding environment can force the infant away from gradual and developmentally appropriate explorations of the outside world, only to be thrust back into the potentially psychotic core of his or her isolated self. I allude to this model because it seems to me that Kulish and Holtzman utilize the narrative of Persephone to suggest that female agency characteristically disguises desire by the fantasy of victimization. Rape, for these authors, becomes primarily a metaphor for disavowed desire. Such a move, in my estimation, forecloses the possibility that female desire, like the good feed enjoyed by Winnicotts infant, can emerge within the gradual exploration of illusion and the taking in of external reality illustrated by Winnicotts description of a good-enough

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environment. It is what Winnicott called the impingements of the traumatic environment that force compliance, the creation of a false self, and a dissociation from authentic, inner-directed desire. Persephones rape is a tragic interruption, literally, of her explorations of desire as she picks flowers, enjoying the world of fantasy: 5 As she [Persephone] played with deep-breasted daughters of Ocean, plucking flowers in the lush meadow, roses, crocus, and lovely violets, irises and hyacinth and the narcissus, which Earth grew as a snare for the flower-faced maiden in order to gratify by Zeuss design the Host-toMany [Hades], a flower wondrous and bright, awesome for all to see for the immortals above and for mortals below from its root a hundredfold bloom sprang up and smelled so sweet that the whole vast heaven above and the whole earth laughed, and the salty swell of the sea. The girl marveled and stretched out both hands at once to take the lovely toy. (Foley 1994, 2)

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It is as she reaches out to take the flower that the earth opens up and disgorges the charging chariot of Hades. As the nymph Cyane proclaims to Hades in Ovids version of this myth, No further shall you go! Thou canst not be the son-in-law of Ceres against her will. The maiden should have been wooed, not ravished (Simpson 2001, 88). That Persephone is forced into compliance at the prime of her life outrages her mother, who, of all goddesses, understands the cycles of life. It is not at all clear from the myth that Demeter would not have welcomed her daughters proper courtship and fertility; what she rails against is the impingement of a dark and desperate abductor.

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The compromise that Demeter negotiates with Zeus reflects the rules of the game: her daughter is tricked into eating the pomegranate and must stay part time in the underworld by the mandate of law. The period of her daughters recovery and return inaugurates the change of the seasons and the promise of new life. Persephones reconciliation to her marriage may provide a model for recovery and adjustment to traumatic history. It is not clear to me, however, that Kulish and Holtzmans use of this story captures the compelling model of female desire ascribed to it. For what does their Persephone complex really prescribe for the girl if not sexual initiation by force, unresolved dependence on a depressed and enraged mothers power and fertility, and resigned relinquishment to the father/ uncles bed as a concession to the Name of the Father? This constellation may indeed typify the lived experience of many girls and women seen in clinical practice, but it maps the terrain of trauma, not desire. It took Sndor Ferenczis classic article, The Confusion of Tongues between Adults and the Child (1949), to remind the psychoanalytic establishment of the tragedies of many young girls (and boys) initiation into sexuality when they are molested, or forced into acts over which they have no control and about which they have no understanding. It is surely one of the tragedies of womens lives that their compliance in adult sexual experience is often dissociated from their own sense of agency and desire. And in the story of Persephone, it is hard for me, at least, to view her queenly reign with Hades as exemplary of female power when she is abducted, raped, and tricked into staying with her husband. Indeed, in some versions of the myth her reign as queen is itself dark and brutal, perhaps further suggesting her ultimate identification with the violent world into which she was thrust as a girl. I do not pretend to comprehend the immensely complex and rich tradition captured in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. I only ask why the traumatic core around which this myth is built, a core that contains the impact of a young girls rape and a mothers grief and rage, is not elaborated upon in this feminist critique of Freudian oedipal orthodoxies? If we are to reinterpret reigning psychoanalytic mythologies, we cannot afford

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to ignore the vast history of criticism that has surrounded the treatment of sexual abuse and political power in history and in contemporary culture. Surely in light of current understanding of the intergenerational transmission of trauma, we might think of additional, necessary ways this myth might be used to illuminate our psychic lives. Then we might indeed have found a myth for our time. Vera J. Camden 2460 Fairmount Blvd., Suite 317 Cleveland Heights, OH 44106 vcamden@kent.edu Notes
1. My point here is made in the same spirit as that of John Munder Ross (1982), who has helped us to recognize that at the heart of Oedipus violent crime and confusion was the intergenerational transmission of trauma set in motion by his father Laius rape of the boy Chrysippus.

References
Agha-Jaffar, Tamara. 2002. Demeter and Persephone: Lessons from the Myth. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Benjamin, Jessica. 1998. Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays in Recognition and Sexual Difference. New Haven: Yale University Press. Ferenczi, Sndor. 1949. Confusion of Tongues between Adults and the Child. In Final Contributions to the Problems and Methods of Psychoanalysis. Ed. Michael Balint. Trans. Eric Mosbacher et al. London, Hogarth Press, 1955, pp. 15667. Foley, Helene P. 1994. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Freud, Sigmund. 1933. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. S.E., 22:1182. Ross, John Munder. 1982. Oedipus Revisited: Laius and the Laius Complex. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 37:169200. Simpson, Michael, ed. and trans. 2001. The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Winnicott, D. W. 1952. Psychoses and Child Care. In Through Paediatrics to Psychoanalysis: Collected Papers. London: Karnac Books, 1995, pp. 21928.