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GENERATIONAL CONFUSION |
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The
concept or notion of 'child' or 'childhood' was absolutely marginal
until the modern period. However, with the gradual loss of the
generational difference implied by modern, democratic, negotiational
strategies, between, what were called parents and children, we have
deleted again the notion of child, as child.
The term 'child' means nothing except in relation to the term 'parent'. To be a child means to be of a different generation to a parent. Freud key reference point, the Oedipus complex, structures and highlights the importance of sexual differentiation, and the necessity of assuming some position, some identity as man or woman. The complex also introduces a generational differentiation. A father is radically different from a son; a mother is different from a daughter. Each has to assume a position vis a vis the other of the different generation. There is of course an infinitely varied number of ways of doing this. There need be nothing overly restrictive about it, as long as a son acknowledges, in some fundamental sense, his father as father, and the father acknowledges his son as son. Without taking on this task - the encounter with Oedipus - we will have no place, no position, or, we will be all over the place, a somebody (grandiose) and a nobody (impotent), full and empty - in short, not Oedipus, but Narcissus. This intergenerational confusion and equality could be seen, at an extreme, as legitimating sexual relations between the generations. If there is no generational difference between fathers and daughters, why should they not have sex together? Our revulsion at this underlines our realisation, in this respect at least, that there is a line to be drawn, an Oedipal taboo to be maintained between the generations. The daughter is then protected in her status as 'daughter', as 'child'. Without this line a plague indeed descends. For Comments or Suggestions please email me at: |