A Little Boy and His Mother

A little three year old boy, who was already distant from the father, was incredibly distressed by the birth of his new baby brother. As soon as the baby brother was brought home from the hospital, the three year old boy reached his boiling point. In all seriousness he took his baby brother and placed him on a serving tray and put the tray on the table. He got a fork and ran to get his mother a different part of the house. Bringing the mother to the table, he offered to eat the baby brother to make himself the only child of the family again..

This is a perfect case for Freud’s theory of “tie of affection, which binds the child as a rule to the parent of the opposite sex, succumbs to disappointment… or jealousy over the birth of a new baby” ( Freud 435). The three year old boy had the father figure to deal with, in terms of competing for the full affection of the mother, so a new baby brother would be too overwhelming. Another male in the family to vile for the love of the mother is something a little boy, who has not completed the separation process yet, can’t handle. The boy was not ready to identity with the father yet, because he was still in the phase of wanting to take the fathers place, the “Oedipus Complex”. I do not think that the desire to be with the mother was sexual though at three years old, it just had the aspects of the emotional attachment to the nurturer. A new child in the family means less time with the mother, which means less pleasure for the older sibling. Also the situation of becoming an older sibling, forces one to grow up faster and to reach the stage of more socially acceptable identification with the mother quicker.



Works Cited
Freud, Sigmund. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan.
2nd ed.Malden: Blackwell, 2004. p.389-396, 431-440