What's the Mother of the Problem?

Personally afflicted sabotage, horrendous manipulation, and self-mutilation are all thoughts can all be conjured up when thinking of the vices (are there any virtues?) of the Oedipus complex, a temple of Freudian thought and criticism, and ironically, masturbation. The connection can be made when we follow the trail of Freudian interpretation and the examples of how the Oedipus complex and the figure of the stereotypical, overbearing Jewish mother creates a cloistered, almost castrated male. Especially when noted in Philip Roth’s book, Portnoy’s Complaint, does the perverse conception about a son’s urge for his mother (and in this case of course, a Jewish son) seem quite relatable to many of Woody Allen’s restrained, repressed and frustrated characters. Frustration and release: this is the vicious cycle. And let’s just make it quite clear now that Jewish descent is not a mere coincidence.


The idea of self-hatred identifiable in Jewish men and in Alex Portnoy, the young Jewish man who has a penchant for a less admirable and male-shaming “habit,” also has significant lust/frustration over his fierce Jewish mother, as well as a loss of paternal guidance in his father. Freud would ascertain this situation as being fitting into the common effects of the Oedipus complex and perhaps simply, one of the many consequences. This “habit” perhaps just may be seen as a different form of a male being thwarted (sexually by the cooing and attachment of his mother, countered with the resignation of his father as a male leader).

Woody Allen’s film Play It Again, Sam (1972) fixes on Allan, a neurotic man whose goal is to overcome his wife’s departure from him to enter the threatening road of love again. He finds solace and guidance in this experience within the character of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (Curtiz 1943). Bogart plays his role-model. What I find interesting is that Allan finds leadership in a man who is confident with smoothness, purity, yet a ruggedness that is decidedly male. Rick Blaine, Bogart’s character tries to win back his true love Ingrid Bergman who he was separated from, but very in the weak sense that Allan tries to woo women in.



Rick completely contrasts the neurotic, timid, frustrated Jewish male and Allan himself. And through this all, Rick seems to fit into the cast of a man who is motherless, yet strong without motherly influence. The fear of defiance that Alex has over his mother funnels into the fear that Allan has over the various women he is about to date- both are set on impressing women and have been mentally castrated, therefore masturbation gives the male some action of his own to control.