Freud is coming back into fashion | Letters

Deborah Anna Luepnitz and Desmond Hewitt respond to Jacqueline Rose’s article on the great psychoanalyst

I agree with Jacqueline Rose about Freud’s continued relevance to our understanding of sexualities (What Sigmund Freud can teach us about the Middle East and #MeToo, 10 October). One could argue that the contemporary movement for marriage equality began with Freud, given his refusal to pathologise homosexuality. Many people assume that the Oedipus complex is meant to produce boys who will grow up loving women, and girls who will love men (I would call that “Oedipus simplex”).

I wish Rose had mentioned what Freud called “the complete Oedipus complex”, which suggests that every child forms both same-sex and cross-sex attractions. Little boys can have romantic feelings for Daddy as well as Mommy, as his famous case of Little Hans showed. For whatever reason, it does seem to be true that younger people are giving Freud a second look. In the past five years, 12 universities in the US have made it possible for students to obtain a minor – study a secondary subject – in “psychoanalytic studies”. At the University of Pennsylvania, where I have taught, these courses are attracting a surprising number of students.
Deborah Anna Luepnitz
Philadelphia, Pennslyvania, US