Last week’s episode of Lost was a Jack episode, so you know what that means: it’s Daddy issues time!  I don’t know about you, but I thought Lost had dropped this thread, never to pick it up again, sometime around when Locke and Sawyer strangled Locke’s dad with some rusty chains in the Black Rock.

“Lighthouse,” however, got me thinking that not only are the Daddy issues back at center stage now in season six, but that maybe they’ve been the main theme of the show all along.  The way I see it, Jack’s quest to resolve his relationship with his possibly-evil ghost dad—whether by reconciling with him or destroying him—will resolve his faith vs. science issues, his fate vs. free will issues, and his relationship with Jacob and the Man in Black.

[Enjoy today's guest post by Craig Spivack. Don't forget to leave some feedback in the comments.]

Video games are an important part of culture, but are rarely psychoanalyzed in the same way that literature and film are. One famous video game that deals with Oedipal conflicts and phallic imagery is Star Fox 64. The story of the game encompasses many of Freud’s psychoanalytic ideas, and speaks to the game player.

[This weekend, we're pleased to bring you two Star Trek related guest posts, this first by André Callot. As always, let us know what you think!]

Eyes, why should you see light who have shown me nothing but darkness? The unrelenting black of space, and also the metaphorical darkness of wanting to bone my mom.

JJ Abrams does not want to have sex with his mother.

I am sure that Mrs. Abrams is a lovely woman, and Gerry Abrams (JJ’s dad) is a very lucky man with nothing to worry about.

In this universe.

But somewhere, in a parallel world where Jim Kirk listens to the Beastie Boys and 9/11 never happened, JJ Abrams has murdered his father, married his mother and is right now wandering around Burbank with a white cane and a pair of dark sunglasses.

No, not really. JJ Abrams seems to worry about that, though.

Fringe and the new Star Trek both spring out of daddy issues. Nothing new about that. Hamlet, Robin Hood and Jesus Christ have benefitted from the power of the story of Oedipus: a story that, according to psychoanalytic theory, is so close to the male psyche that we are compelled, as a sex, to re-enact it over and over again forever.