[I] Oedipus Complex A. (1) The outline of King Oedipus by Sophocles. (2) Oedipus did not know the murder of his father by himself, and succeeded to the father's throne, making his mother his own >Qeen< without any knowledge of the truth of these facts, and without never falling in love with his mother. It is only the destiny of the oracle by Apollo. As the resulting disaster in his despair, he forced to make himself blind, exiled out of his ruling country. >The myth can be understood as a symbol not of the incestuous love between mother and son but of the rebellion of the son against the authority of the father in the partriarchal family; that the marriage of Oedipus and Jocasta is only a secondary element, only one of the symbols of the victory of the son, who takes his father's place with it all his privileges.< (The Forgotten Language by Fromm, p. 202). B. Antigone by Sophocles. (Conscious Oedipus complex between father and son). [II] Electra Complex (Chiefly through My Mother-My Self by Nancy Friday) with the daughter's envy, and jealousy of her mother, (attached to the closeness to and the symbiosis to the mother), the girl wants to be loved by her father, taking the place of her mother. Father must love his daughter with his wife in love.
(1) Erich Fromm's theory of >self-realization< has developed through the process of critical examination into S. Freud's biological-deterministic rationale and his own cultural-deterministic one in his early works, and it consequently includes both of these factors as the vital components. (2) In his theory, therefore, a human-being is regarded as an existence who can realize his own primary potentialities to be for himself only through his self-determining, spontaneous-productive activities as the responses or re-actions to his biological/socio-cultural determinants. In this sense, man's self-realization is the very process of such productive re-activities. (3) The essential point of the controversial issues between Fromm and the other members of the >Frankfurt School<-Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse-is concerned with the objective possibility of self-realization within the real context of the present society. However, Fromm's rebuttal against their negative arguments concerning his self-deterministic rationale seems to be insufficient so far as I know.
(4) In his theory, the possibility of self-realization is based on his >faith< -or >paradoxical hope< -n human nature inherently having potential powers and strivings for self-realization within itself. By this faith, his practical efforts in psychiatry and his own self-realization have been supported and, at the same time, the faith itself has also been verified through these experiences. (5) Thus, we can grasp the innate construction of Fromm's theory of self-realization as follows. a) His theory is based on the self-deterministic rationale on man's personality. b) But the biological/cultural determinisms are still alive, because in his theory man's self-realization is regarded as the process which is constructed only through his productive re-activities to his own biological/socio-cultural determinants. c) His self-deterministic rationale is founded on the above-mentioned >faith<. In other words, the theory of self-realization is the very product of this faith. (6) The essential process of what is called >self-formation< (Selbst-bildung) in educational philosophy can be identified with the self-realization through man's spontaneous-productive re-activities.