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Whenever Jack visits his mother, he is torn between enjoying her attention to him and experiencing hostility toward her. Some readers believe that Jack\'s ambivalent feelings for his mother are indicative of an Oedipus complex, the unconscious desire of a son to be attached to his mother. When Ellis Burden abandoned six-year-old Jack and his mother, Jack concentrated all his affections on his mother. But she remarried, bringing first one stepfather into the house, then another. Jack had to share his mother\'s love with strangers. The resulting resentments, according to psychiatrists, could cause deep-seated emotional conflicts toward one\'s mother as well as toward all women. Does this theory help to explain Jack\'s emotional detachment or his love-hate relationship to his mother? Or could it be that his mother\'s materialistic nature and lack of commitment to marriage are responsible for Jack\'s behavior toward her? | |||
