Portrayal of Oedipal Desires in Vijay Tendulkar’s The Cyclist

The Oedipus Complex is a term used by Sigmund Freud in his theory of psychosexual stages of development to describe a boy's feelings of sexual desire for his mother and jealousy and anger towards his father for the possession of his mother. The child considers his father as a rival for her attention and affection. The concept of the Oedipus Complex was first discovered by Freud during his self-analysis in 1897 and presented in his publications of the next decade. Oedipus complex is the greatest, the most crucial sexual conflict in Freud's model of psychosexual development. The great master psychologist Sigmund Freud praised literary artists for their accurate observations of the subtlety and complexity of the human mind. Vijay Tendulkar is a leading Indian playwright who shows unusual insight into the complexities of human psyche and lays bare various psychological factors, imparting to his portrayals of characters an element of human authenticity. This phenomenon of Oedipus Complex is interwoven into the texture of the play The Cyclist written by Vijay Tendulkar.