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Short Stuff: Oedipus Complex · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, Chosh, Chuck, Jerry,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: not Dave but Dave. And this is short.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Stuff, yeah, the one in which we continue to lay
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: wood onto Sigmund Freud as a lot of people do.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean his spirit at least.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, here's the deal with Sigmund Freud.
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  Speaker 2: He and I think this this thing that you put
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  Speaker 2: together from Britannica and very well mind and psych central
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  Speaker 2: and simple simply psychology and other places, I think it
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  Speaker 2: kind of nails it. Where like maybe we should just
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  Speaker 2: think of Freud as kind of an innovative, perhaps even
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  Speaker 2: great mind and thinker, and not like a rigorous scientist,
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  Speaker 2: because a lot of the stuff in his psychoanalysis and
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  Speaker 2: in his theories was not It was just stuff based
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  Speaker 2: on anecdotal things he saw in the cases he worked on.
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  Speaker 2: Sometimes just like a single case would make him say like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: well here's what this is. I think.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean he would just theorize based on conjecture.
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  Speaker 1: He never applied the scientific method to any of his theories.
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  Speaker 1: He just thought and talked out loud and smoked cigars,
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  Speaker 1: and he came up with interesting explanations right for things
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  Speaker 1: he observed for like actual real things, and one of
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  Speaker 1: the actual real things that he observed is that a
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  Speaker 1: lot of times little kids are mean and hostile to
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  Speaker 1: one parent and can't be separated from the other parent.
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  Speaker 1: And he came to kind of recognize that usually they
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  Speaker 1: were attached to the opposite sex parent and were mean
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  Speaker 1: to the same sex parent, and that formed the basis
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  Speaker 1: of what came to be known as the Otopus complex,
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  Speaker 1: which is far and away his most famous theory among
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  Speaker 1: a lot of very famous theories that he came up with.
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  Speaker 1: But just like all the other ones, it's essentially conjecture.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, when you think, if you know nothing
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  Speaker 2: about Freud, you probably have made a about like somebody
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  Speaker 2: wanting to sleep with their mother.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's a.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, what is it?
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  Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you.
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  Speaker 2: So we should just quickly go over the Greek myth
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  Speaker 2: of Oedipus, in which it was so named for Oedipus
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  Speaker 2: was abandoned at birth and then fulfilled a prophecy, killing
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  Speaker 2: his father, the king and marrying his mother, the queen,
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  Speaker 2: whom he did not know because he was abandoned at birth.
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  Speaker 2: That was his father and his mother. He ended up
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  Speaker 2: having four kids with his mother, and after learning this,
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  Speaker 2: Queen Jocasta hanged herself and Oedipus gouged out his eyes.
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  Speaker 2: Perhaps appropriate action, yeah in his case at.
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  Speaker 1: Least, yeah, so grossed out, he gouged out his own eyes.
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  Speaker 1: And to be clear to the Greeks, the point of
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  Speaker 1: this myth was not like, how gross is this? It
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  Speaker 1: was like it was about how like the inevitability of
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  Speaker 1: faith and the inability of humans to like change their
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  Speaker 1: fate or their destiny, because he was this was a
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  Speaker 1: prophecy that he ended up fulfilling despite trying really hard
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  Speaker 1: not to write. Freud was like, I like that really
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  Speaker 1: gross part. I'm going to use that to describe these
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  Speaker 1: feelings that little kids have towards their parents.
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  Speaker 2: I like the idea, though, that someone's writing this myth
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  Speaker 2: and they're like, oh boys, I got one for you.
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  Speaker 2: This one's so gnarly. What's it about?
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  Speaker 1: Oh you just wait, Yeah, I'm not going to it's about.
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  Speaker 2: It's about destiny whatever? Sure?
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  Speaker 1: Sure? So yeah, I mean that's where that's where Freud
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  Speaker 1: picked it up. Was I mean, it is perfectly suited
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  Speaker 1: in that in that sense.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, And we'll describe from kind of directly from the
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  Speaker 2: Simply Psychology website what the edible complex is and it
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  Speaker 2: occurs during the phallic stage of development ages three to six,
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  Speaker 2: in which the source of libido or the life force
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  Speaker 2: is concentrated in the erogenous zones of the child's body.
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  Speaker 2: And during the stage, children experience an unconscious feeling of
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  Speaker 2: desire for their opposite sex parent and jealousy and envy
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  Speaker 2: toward their same sex parent.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, it makes sense, it's a little it's a little jargony.
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  Speaker 1: I also found one from Encyclopedia Britannica. It's a little
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  Speaker 1: more lay person geared. They say the Oedipus complex in
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  Speaker 1: psychoanalytic theory is a desire for sexual involvement with the
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  Speaker 1: parent of the opposite sex in a cocomminant sense of
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  Speaker 1: rivalry with the parent of the same sex. But it's
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  Speaker 1: a crucial stage in the normal development process according to
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  Speaker 1: psychoanalytic theory at least.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that part is pretty key. And what's also key
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  Speaker 2: is that Freud based this on a case one case
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  Speaker 2: study of a four year old patient that he anonymized
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  Speaker 2: as Little Hans. Apparently, Little Hans was brought in by
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  Speaker 2: his father and had recently seen the collapse of a
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  Speaker 2: horse pulling a heavy cart that really traumatized.
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  Speaker 1: Him, to traumatized anybody, Sure, and.
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  Speaker 2: He developed a fear of horses.
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  Speaker 1: Sure.
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  Speaker 2: So Hans's father said, you know what, He's developed all
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  Speaker 2: these really specific anxieties. He feels really uneasy without mom around,
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  Speaker 2: and he's really fixated on male genitalia, especially horse genitalia.
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  Speaker 1: And Freud was like, yes, yes, I see very interesting. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I'm sorry everybody. So he basically said, this all just
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  Speaker 1: makes total sense. Check this out, Hans' father. All of
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  Speaker 1: this comes from a foundational animosity that he has towards you,
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  Speaker 1: his dad, And the reason that he's afraid of horses
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  Speaker 1: because the horses represent you, his dad, and he's afraid
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  Speaker 1: that you, his dad, are going to castrate him because
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  Speaker 1: he secretly wants to sleep with his mother even though
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  Speaker 1: he's four years old. And Freud's sycophantic secretary jumped to
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  Speaker 1: his feet and started applauding, uncomfortably loudly.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, which this. You know, if he went into a
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  Speaker 2: you know, a shrink today and you heard something like this,
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  Speaker 2: you'd say, thank you for your time, I'll be going
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  Speaker 2: to see someone else.
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  Speaker 1: You can actually probably file suit for something like that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you probably could. But at the time this turned
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  Speaker 2: out to be like the foundational legacy of Freud's psychoanalysis,
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  Speaker 2: which is just you know, bananas to think about.
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  Speaker 1: Should we talk about girls first and take a break
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  Speaker 1: or break and then girls? Let's talk about girls, okay,
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  Speaker 1: because there are such things as girls, And Freud was like, well,
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  Speaker 1: I guess I should probably talk about the girls too.
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  Speaker 1: He didn't come up with the name electra complex. That
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  Speaker 1: was Carl Jung, but he did take the oedipal complex
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  Speaker 1: and apply it to girls and basically said, same thing,
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  Speaker 1: but do the old switcheroo with the parents. The girls
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  Speaker 1: want to sleep with their father and they hate their mother.
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  Speaker 1: But the whole thing is not to do with castration anxiety.
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  Speaker 1: It's penis envying girls.
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  Speaker 2: That's right. And another what I mentioned is the first key.
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  Speaker 2: And by the way, I realized how creepy that sounded
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  Speaker 2: when I say let's talk about girls, okay, by the
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  Speaker 2: way I make it that way, okay. Good. His proposal was,
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  Speaker 2: and this is very key, was that a kid that
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  Speaker 2: does not undergo this experience of the edipal complex will
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  Speaker 2: not fully mature sexually, and they will be stuck for life.
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  Speaker 2: They're going to be stuck identifying with the opposite sex parent,
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  Speaker 2: and they will never be able to have a normal,
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  Speaker 2: socially acceptable love life and desires for people who aren't
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  Speaker 2: in their family.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. He basically said that an incomplete development through the
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  Speaker 1: edipal complex is the basis of homosexuality. That's how he
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  Speaker 1: would have put it at the time. And then the
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  Speaker 1: other problem of it is you're stuck in that portion
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  Speaker 1: of your development, doomed to forever, like, go through it,
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  Speaker 1: even though you're never going to get past it. And
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  Speaker 1: he said that guys like that turn out to be
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  Speaker 1: real Norman Baits types, and all of his colleagues were like,
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  Speaker 1: who is Norman Bates? And Freud was like, just wait,
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  Speaker 1: just wait, because he's gonna knock your socks off when
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  Speaker 1: he comes along in the early sixties.
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  Speaker 2: I guess we take our break now, all right, we'll
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  Speaker 2: be back right after this. Thanks, weet, shop shop stop.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, chuck, So we're back. So the big question is
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  Speaker 1: is all of this weird gross stuff correct?
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  Speaker 2: Answer me, Well, most psychologists today and the world of
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  Speaker 2: psychology as a whole, are pretty like bashful about even
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  Speaker 2: talking about this. They're like, can we just kind of
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  Speaker 2: forget all that stuff? We've moved on. It's completely discredited.
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  Speaker 2: Most of Freud's theories are pretty discredited at this point,
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  Speaker 2: but that's not to say that there isn't some support
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  Speaker 2: for this still.
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  Speaker 1: No, there have been papers that have come out that
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  Speaker 1: seem to very strongly support the presence of Freud's Oedipus complex,
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  Speaker 1: and one came out in two thousand and nine. It
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  Speaker 1: was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B
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  Speaker 1: and it made international news when it was published because
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  Speaker 1: they studied these similarities, the physical characteristic similarities between men's
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  Speaker 1: mothers and their wives, and they measured everything as like
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  Speaker 1: jaw link. They did everything, and they were coming up
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  Speaker 1: with correlations in like the ninety second percentile, so essentially
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  Speaker 1: like photo copies between mom and wife. And they were like, see,
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  Speaker 1: guys really want their moms. What you're gonna do? Dog's
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  Speaker 1: gonna hunt kind of thing. And like I said, it
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  Speaker 1: made international news, and luckily some other scientists were like,
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  Speaker 1: let me see your data and went through and they're like,
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  Speaker 1: this does not support your conclusions at all.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, here's the thing I'm gonna go out on a limb.
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  Speaker 2: Hold on to your hats. I'm gonna go on a
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  Speaker 2: limb and say, I've seen plenty of examples where kids
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  Speaker 2: end up married to someone that is maybe in some way,
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  Speaker 2: like like a really good parent that they had of
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  Speaker 2: the opposite sex or maybe of the same sex. Even
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  Speaker 2: I don't necessarily think like it's the looks thing, but
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  Speaker 2: like if you're like a really awesome dad, and you're
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  Speaker 2: like super fun and funny, and you know, maybe you
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  Speaker 2: have a certain job, like, and your daughter goes on
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  Speaker 2: to marry somebody who has got like a great sense
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  Speaker 2: of humor and has maybe have a similar interest as
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  Speaker 2: something your father did. Like, I think that can be
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  Speaker 2: a thing. I don't think it's always a thing, but
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  Speaker 2: it's just sort of when you're raised with a parent
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  Speaker 2: that you look up to and love and admire, you
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  Speaker 2: may seek out people like that in your life. And
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  Speaker 2: I think that's kind of all that is.
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  Speaker 1: I think similarly, and maybe even more frequently or commonly,
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  Speaker 1: people inadvertently or unconsciously seek out people who are like
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  Speaker 1: their parents in the worst ways.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, or sometimes completely seek out the opposite.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, but that's conscious.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah maybe so, But yeah, I see what you mean
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  Speaker 2: for sure.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so again there have been There was another paper
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  Speaker 1: in the eighties that studied rats that basically said, like, yes,
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  Speaker 1: these rats at least have Oedipus complexes that carry on.
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  Speaker 1: So luckily psychology came up with some other stuff that said, like, okay,
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  Speaker 1: kids do stuff like this when they're young. We don't
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  Speaker 1: think it's the Oedipus complex. And luckily, things like attachment theory,
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  Speaker 1: which we did an entire episode on that was pretty good. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: have less way less creepy. They've come along and offered
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  Speaker 1: pretty good structures for understanding child development that is just
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  Speaker 1: much less ichy than Freud's.
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  Speaker 2: So you're just gonna summarize that rat study. You're not
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: gonna talk about rat ejaculation.
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  Speaker 1: Do you want me to? No?
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: I think we should just leave that right now.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, cool, So I think more than ever short Stuff
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: is out.
• 12:26
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• 12:29
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