
The tale of Cupid and Psyche resonates through the culture. Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast are versions of it. While Freud* appropriated Cupid and Psyche as elements of his psychological system (referring to Cupid by his Latin name, Eros – after all, considering the myriad winged baby Cupids of the art of the 17th and 18th, he couldn’t really have called sexual desire “cupid”), as far as I can tell – that is, after a twenty minute perusal of the internet – neither Freud nor any other psychological archaeologist has noted that the primary theme of Cupid and Psyche is Oedipal.
The story of Cupid and Psyche rests on the fact that Psyche, because of her beauty, usurps the position of Venus and is being worshipped in Venus’ stead. Venus sends her son, Cupid, to humiliate Psyche by making her fall in love with a lowlife. Instead, Cupid takes Psyche as his mistress. If that’s not Oedipal, then I don’t know what is.
*Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). A cocaine addict whose “discovery” of the “unconscious,” which provides an excuse for every damn thing we do that we wish later we hadn’t, made him the most influential thinker of the 20th century.