While Freud’s theory of the Oedipus complex is concerned with psycho-sexual development, it concomitantly presents a novel historical-political imagination. This article compares the post-Oedipal self with the selves envisioned by Nietzsche and Marx, suggesting that while these 19th-century theorists constructed selves that are able to transcend the normalizing and subjugating circumstances of modernity, Freud’s theory defines a healthy self as irredeemably embedded in the prevailing culture and life-orders. In making his case, Freud spurns the quests of Nietzsche and Marx for wholeness of the individual and for self-authorship, and presents the self as structurally agonistic, riven and thoroughly molded by society.
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