Oedipal Paradigms in Collision

"While neither deifying nor vilifying Sigmund Freud or his theory of the Complete Oedipus Complex in which the founder of psychoanalysis described alternating wishes to parricide one parent and to incestuosly attach to the other, Dr. Covitz argues for a novel developmental schema for triadic object relations that functions as a bridging algorithm for individual and social psychologies. Particularly pleasing is the author's ability to interweave this work through a variety of interdisciplinary lenses, ranging from Genesis studies to sociopolitical thinking and clinical object relations theory. Dr. Covitz's utilization of the Oedipus Complex as a key hermeneutical construct for interdisciplinary rapprochement is not only remarkably pioneering; it is visionary." (Barry Arnold, Series Editor, Peter Lang; Author of The Pursuit of Virtue: The Union of Moral Psychology and Ethics )
"Howard Covitz's Oedipal vision is an uncannily subversive one. He loosens the binding of the family script and encourages a new reading of the Theban narrative, a reading which spells out why the Oedipus story is still intriguing. This new Oedipal dream is an ungendered one for both parent and child. I found myself reading this Elementary Oedipal without regard to sexual difference. Woman is not the other parent; daughter is not the other child. And the Oedipal journey does not necessarily take place on the road to murderous and incestuos inclinations, but rather on the road from total self-absorbtion to empathy with others. Some will say this Oedipal tale, which invites a comparison of the imperfections of Oedipus with those of Joseph the Dreamer, bares little resemblance to its parental complex. That may be why it is possible to read Covitz's Oedipal and the feminine side-by-side." (Cass Dalglish, Department of English, Augsburg College; Author of Sweetgrass )
"While having established psychoanalysis as a discipline that looks upon phenomena developmentally (e.g. Libido), for many of his