From a psychoanalytic point of view, Oedipus is the original orphan and
the prototype of the orphan in search of a Self. Sigmund Freud considered
Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex to be the ur-narrative of our culture because
it postulates the nature of identity as relational. One of Freud's most provoca-
tive hypotheses, which he outlines in "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexual-
ity," is that the infant's initial perception of union with the mother gradually
shifts to an awareness of difference, and inherent in that awareness is a pro-
found sense of loss of the earliest love object. This sets in motion the desire to
replace that object through substitution. It is through identification with the
father, the rival, that symbolic repossession becomes possible.

Building on Freudian theory, French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan perceived
the irony that the loss of the undifferentiated Other, the mother, entails the
discovery of the differentiated Self. The awareness of the Self as separate and
autonomous is implicated in a sense of loss and desire for reunion with the
mother. As Lacan elaborates in his seminal essay "The Mirror Stage as Forma-
tive of the Function of the I," the resolution to the problem of fragmentation
is identification with the father, the rival, who has the power to repossess the
mother at will. Thus, fundamental to the Oedipus complex is the child's de-
pendence on the father as an object of identification and a source of recognition,
and this dependence transfers to the social Other.

The psychoanalytic implication of the Oedipus myth is that we are all born
into a condition of separation and loss and are doomed to define ourselves
only in relation to others. In short, identity does not exist in a vacuum or as
an essence; it is mediated. This is exemplified by Oedipus's psychological jour-
ney. First he thinks he knows who he is and tries to define himself through his
actions. Then he discovers, from others, that he is someone else. In other words,
he depends on others to reveal his identity. Part of the irony is that as a result
of this knowledge, he changes.

The appeal of orphans to the literary imagination is that they incarnate
this aspect of the human condition. Their quest for an identity hinges upon
an understanding of the Self not as an essence formed in the past but as a dy-
namic, interactive process that takes place in the present and projects into the
future. Another of Freud's theories is that groups, and even nations, behave
like individuals. Following this logic, one can infer that a group or nation, like
an individual, can experience a sense of orphanhood and that its process of
collective identity formation is also relational in nature.

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