solitary confinement of children under the authority of their parents and the erotic bell jar created by it, with its inequalities and prohibitions, is a natural and unavoidable stage in the destiny of every human.
The wonder is that the oedipal situation no longer seems anything but a string of crimes that the little child wanted to commit, and not the consequence of the conflict of impulses inflicted upon him by this parents. But in recounting the tale of Oedipus as if it were an “instinctive” and inevitable phenomenon, we legitimize that small socio-cultural horror known as the modern Western family—a kind of psychosexual cannibalism among three or four starving people tarred with the same brush. And we teach that desire has its original sin, and that therefore it must be corrected, controlled, directed, redeemed in order for it to become good. Did we do that? Afraid so, every human is born guilty, dreams only of murder and incest: if we hadn’t forbidden you certain things, take a little look at where you would have been, you poor little wretches!
I’m not concerned with critiquing the oedipal pattern itself, the way in which psychoanalysis constructed it and the way it has been pulled totally to pieces since then: what interests me is the role that this pattern has been made to play when it is recounted to children—and this role is hateful. It reminds us that sexology is onlyinterested in Freudianism to borrow from it new tools of family-centric indoctrination and the repression of desire.
Therefore, if the child forgets, conveniently conceals his sex and plays the oedipal game wholeheartedly, he’ll be rewarded with affection, respect, flattery from Dad-Mom; he’ll be fed, protected, hugged, rarely beaten; but if not, there will be persecution, pain, war. This is the second stage of libidinal misappropriation: you’ll love us enough to desire and beg for what we’ll give you—but you won’t desire us too much, and, above all, you won’t desire any other person on the outside. This is a deal for survival: the child who doesn’t subscribe to it risks his hide. Unfortunately, I’m not referring to a metaphor: refusing the oedipal bargain means nothing less than attracting bad treatment that goes so far as murder. The infanticide committed by parents—on those of their offspring of “oedipal” age—has today actually become one of the very first causes of infant mortality. At the end of this chapter, I’ll return to this monstrous aspect of family reality, whose importance few have had the daring to reveal to us—especially in France, where parental power and its crimes are better protected than anywhere else.
Last stage of the libidinal harnessing of children: any occasion for extrafamilial pleasure (being seduced by friends, by images, by writings, by adult strangers) will be denounced, forbidden, morally stigmatized, prevented by laws and in reality almost impossible; it will be the capital offence, and the child knows that there is no excuse and no pity for it. No sex outside, no sex inside: work-family for the child, while the barracks teaches his big brothers the meaning of the homeland.
The family in the Encyclopedia play at being nudists; so the little boy walks around with his prick exposed to the air, if not up in the air. But Mom, in the mode of right-thinking Freudian,describes the detrimental consequences of certain “regressions” to which children poorly integrated into the family would be prey:
…All of you are sure about our affection! [But when a] child feels abandoned, he continues to live like a baby, know what I mean? He’s capable of doing anything to get attention… Even opening his fly in public!
Thus, there’s a situation when a child is allowed to show his cock, it’s good, it’s a proof of mental health; and another situation when it’s so bad that the guilty party must be immediately dragged to a psychotherapist, that courageous policeman of flies in
The wonder is that the oedipal situation no longer seems anything but a string of crimes that the little child wanted to commit, and not the consequence of the conflict of impulses inflicted upon him by this parents. But in recounting the tale of Oedipus as if it were an “instinctive” and inevitable phenomenon, we legitimize that small socio-cultural horror known as the modern Western family—a kind of psychosexual cannibalism among three or four starving people tarred with the same brush. And we teach that desire has its original sin, and that therefore it must be corrected, controlled, directed, redeemed in order for it to become good. Did we do that? Afraid so, every human is born guilty, dreams only of murder and incest: if we hadn’t forbidden you certain things, take a little look at where you would have been, you poor little wretches!
I’m not concerned with critiquing the oedipal pattern itself, the way in which psychoanalysis constructed it and the way it has been pulled totally to pieces since then: what interests me is the role that this pattern has been made to play when it is recounted to children—and this role is hateful. It reminds us that sexology is onlyinterested in Freudianism to borrow from it new tools of family-centric indoctrination and the repression of desire.
Therefore, if the child forgets, conveniently conceals his sex and plays the oedipal game wholeheartedly, he’ll be rewarded with affection, respect, flattery from Dad-Mom; he’ll be fed, protected, hugged, rarely beaten; but if not, there will be persecution, pain, war. This is the second stage of libidinal misappropriation: you’ll love us enough to desire and beg for what we’ll give you—but you won’t desire us too much, and, above all, you won’t desire any other person on the outside. This is a deal for survival: the child who doesn’t subscribe to it risks his hide. Unfortunately, I’m not referring to a metaphor: refusing the oedipal bargain means nothing less than attracting bad treatment that goes so far as murder. The infanticide committed by parents—on those of their offspring of “oedipal” age—has today actually become one of the very first causes of infant mortality. At the end of this chapter, I’ll return to this monstrous aspect of family reality, whose importance few have had the daring to reveal to us—especially in France, where parental power and its crimes are better protected than anywhere else.
Last stage of the libidinal harnessing of children: any occasion for extrafamilial pleasure (being seduced by friends, by images, by writings, by adult strangers) will be denounced, forbidden, morally stigmatized, prevented by laws and in reality almost impossible; it will be the capital offence, and the child knows that there is no excuse and no pity for it. No sex outside, no sex inside: work-family for the child, while the barracks teaches his big brothers the meaning of the homeland.
The family in the Encyclopedia play at being nudists; so the little boy walks around with his prick exposed to the air, if not up in the air. But Mom, in the mode of right-thinking Freudian,describes the detrimental consequences of certain “regressions” to which children poorly integrated into the family would be prey:
…All of you are sure about our affection! [But when a] child feels abandoned, he continues to live like a baby, know what I mean? He’s capable of doing anything to get attention… Even opening his fly in public!
Thus, there’s a situation when a child is allowed to show his cock, it’s good, it’s a proof of mental health; and another situation when it’s so bad that the guilty party must be immediately dragged to a psychotherapist, that courageous policeman of flies in
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