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The Oedipus Complex is one of the strangest and most counter-intuitive concepts in the whole of psychoanalysis.
俄狄浦斯情结是精神分析中最奇怪和反直觉的概念之一。
First formulated by Sigmund Freud in 1899, and taking its name from the mythical Greek tragic hero Oedipus (who in the eponymous play by Sophocles unknowingly sleeps with his mother and kills his father), this suggests that every child goes through a phase, normally between the ages of three and five, of physically desiring its opposite sex parent while wishing to do away with, or kill, its rivalrous same-sex parent.
它最早由弗洛伊德于1899年提出，以希腊神话中的悲剧英雄俄狄浦斯命名，俄狄浦斯是索福克勒斯创作的同名戏剧中的角色，在不知情的情况下弑父娶母。而“俄狄浦斯情结”指每个孩子都会经历的一个阶段——通常在三岁到五岁之间——对异性父母产生性幻想，同时希望消灭或杀死处于敌对地位的同性父母。
Expressed bluntly like this, the Complex tends to arouse immediate puzzlement, ridicule - or disgust: children aren't generally to be witnessed expressing any kind of sexual desire and we are unlikely to remember anything in our own lives remotely resembling what Freud insistently describes as a universal truth.
这样直截了当的表达往往会让人对这种情结产生困惑、嘲笑或厌恶的情绪：通常情况下，没人看到孩子以任何方式展现出性欲，我们也不太可能记得自己小时候有过任何与弗洛伊德坚称的“普遍真理”类似的情况。
However, the explanatory power of the Oedipus Complex is likely to increase - as is often the case with Freud's ideas - the less literally we take it, in other words, the more we view it as providing us with an overall picture of the genesis of human sexuality rather than as a concrete event in a given child's mind.
然而，想让俄狄浦斯情结更具阐释力——弗洛伊德的思想通常如此——我们需要尽可能不从字面意义去理解它，换句话说，我们要更多地将它视为人类性行为起源的总体图景，而不是某个儿童脑海中的具体事件。
We might think of the Oedipus Complex as offering us a guiding narrative about how we come, through the varied experiences of childhood, to have our own distinctive approach to sexuality.
我们可能会认为俄狄浦斯情结是一种指导性的叙事，告诉我们童年经历如何塑造一个人独特的性存在方式。
The Complex shines a light on a range of questions:
俄狄浦斯情结揭示了一系列问题：
-How confident do we now feel in our powers of attractiveness?
-现在我们对自己的吸引力有多大的自信？
-Are we disgusted or broadly at peace with our sexuality?
-我们对自己的性意识感到厌恶还是能够大致接受？
-Do we think that other people are likely to reject or accept our advances?
-我们认为其他人会拒绝还是接受我们的追求？
-How much are we intimidated by our desires?
-我们对自己的欲望感到有多恐惧？
What is telling is that a huge range of responses are to be found here: some of us labour under critical degrees of shame and terror.
最能说明问题的是，俄狄浦斯情结可以为我们提供一系列解答：我们中的一些人背负着极度的羞愧和恐惧。
Others have no particular difficulty making our appetites known and acting on them in reciprocal situations.
还有一些人能够轻而易举了解我们的心理，本着互利的原则，采取相应的做法。
Sex may be a source of exceptional joy - or the locus of boundless masochism and paranoia.
性或许能让人极度欢愉——或者说，是人成为受虐狂和偏执狂的核心。
With Freud's ideas in mind, rather than imagining that we actually wanted to sleep with anyone as children, we might say that we went through a phase of exploring what it might mean to prove attractive to a man or a woman.
根据弗洛伊德的想法，与其认为我们小时候真的想和某人产生性关系，不如说我们经历了一个阶段，在这个阶段，我们开始探索对男人或女人展现吸引力可能意味着什么。
Importantly, we did so in the form of a game, one in which we no more wanted things to become real than we would - when we played pirates or jungle explorers in the kitchen - have wished to join an actual Caribbean drug cartel or a trip down the Amazon.
重要的是，我们以游戏的形式进行探索，而不希望游戏中的事情变成现实——当我们在厨房里扮演海盗或丛林探险者时，我们不希望加入一个真正的加勒比海贩毒集团或沿着亚马逊旅行。
Little boys and girls will, in a limited way, try out what happens if they attempt to charm mum or dad; at a given point, they might pull a highly endearing smile and say they want to spend the rest of their life with only one parent, or send the other one away or muse that it might be nice if they could have a little wedding ceremony with one parent only.
小男孩和小女孩会以有限的方式试探他们取悦父母能得到的结果；在某个时间点，他们可能会带着可爱的微笑，说他们想要和父母中的一个人共度余生，或者把另一个人送走；他们还可能会谨慎地说，希望能和父母中的一个人举行一场小小的婚礼。
