Daddy would you like some sausage?
Alright, Sam's arc in Supernatural as a subverted Oedipal (Freudian rather than mythical) narrative:
First, here's the Oedipal complex's basic structure: boy desires mother, has murderous/jealous thoughts toward father-as-competition. Boy sees mother's lack of penis, deduces from this a castration carried out by the father. Fear/threat of castration overwhelms the desire for the mother; boy submits to the law of the father, giving up the mother with the promise that he'll grow to fill his father's shoes, so to speak, and find a replacement mother (ie. female mate) in future.
So, how does that fit with Sam? [I should note here that I'm looking at this in terms of a metaphoric text with a character representing ideas; I'm not trying to psychoanalyse 'Sam-the-person'.]
Mary dies when Sam is a baby - arguably pre-Oedipal. Sam is practically birthed right out into the law of the father, without having a chance to pass through the mother-lust stage. The law of the father is quite blatant in the show - the Winchesters' power dynamic is quite masculine with their military/warrior training and the boys' relationship with the father - they clearly have been raised to quite literally submit to the law of the father.
So Sam's Oedipal stage plays out later, when he goes off to college. Rejecting the law of the father, the masculine warrior-hood (so to speak), he turns instead toward the 'normal', the domestic - when we first come across him it's clear that this is where he's aligned himself (he's not in a dorm, he's home-making with the little lady) - i.e. the mother. Jess is clearly visually linked to Mary in her appearance (considering Cassie, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the show is being narrow-minded in making all the love interests blonde and caucasian) as well as her death/style of death.
So then what happens? Jess is killed - castrated - by the Big Bad, and Sam submits to the law of the father with the idea that one day he will dominate (aka overcome) the dominating force (aka the demon; which is blatantly aligned with the father in the pilot, when Mary assumes the figure standing over Sam's crib is John). And (once again, but officially now) submitting to the law of the father (who, in true psychoanalytic tradition, is actually absent, and exists as ingrained on his unconscious/super-ego).
So when we see Sam in 'Shadow' talking about how he wants 'a normal life' - wants to go back to the motherly/feminine domesticity, we can take heart in what the Oedipal narrative tells us - Sam is nostalgic for this kind of pseudo-childhood, in which he (symbolically, at least) possesses the mother; but that way lies sickness (according to Freud) - Sam must accept his lot and remain in the realm of the patriachal in order to remain powerful (i.e. avoid castration, and avoid becoming like Norman Bates).
So, okay - how does all this subvert these Freudian concepts?
Because it's a contemporary cultural text that's closely connected to the contemporary culture and society - it addresses issues of gender and hegemony. It addresses the structure of a postmodern mainstream - in which consumer culture, which is traditionally aligned with the feminine (aka the mother) has become 'normal'. (Supernatural's close linking of the Winchesters' 'normal' lives with their mother figures supports this.) Traditionally when looking at the Oedipal narrative and how it reflects upon (Western) civilisation, it's in terms of the larger structure of the patriarchy and the law of the father (masculine); the hegemony is an normality dictated by the patriarchy.
And yet Supernatural posits 'normal' - the way society enforces we live - with the mother; and the Other - the Winchesters are on the outside of society, dealing with things reviled and denied by the mainstream - is aligned with the father.
That's not to say that in doing so the text is creating a heirarchy of power in the same way Freud did with his Oedipal narrative (aka the lack of penis is, without question, assumed as unthinkably bad). The 'normal' in the Supernatural 'verse is not constructed as the opposite to their life of Otherness - they did not choose that life as a violent reaction against normality. 'Normal people' in the show are constructed as being worthy (for all the shallowness of most of the freak-of-the-week characterisation), or rather, not negatively - and after all, the 'normals' are worth saving - that's what the Winchesters Jnr are doing, at any rate - Dad's off finding who killed Mom, the boys are saving the lives of people who don't exist in the Other-space.
Because the position of the Other is traditionally occupied by those outside of the hegemony - the minorities; aka all those who are not middle-class-and-above western white heterosexual non-disabled adult males. Of course, by positioning characters that fill that description in place of the Other, the text isn't only challenging that heirarchical structure, but (*cough*) inviting a queer reading (just as it is with Dean's relationship with Cassie - minority/Other!sex is so gay).
But it's also interesting to look at in terms of who/what they are fighting exactly - how the 'enemy' is positioned in the text. A lot of the time it's not as enemy, not as us-against-them conflict - rather, the monsters are frequently positioned as victims - Others who are suffering from the ill-effects of submitting to a hegemony. Think of the first woman in white in the pilot, the boy in Dead in the Water, the Wendigo and the Indian tribe in Bugs (and think of how these villians are often vanquished by being 'healed', not merely subdued/destroyed); and think of the other victims they save, how the villains are constructed - the girls in Scarecrow and Hookman; both the Scarecrow and Hookman are patriarchal/hegemonic figures attempting to enforce a traditional/patriarchal order (fertility, heterosexuality, no free love!).
Sam and Dean are the Champions Of Otherness, working on the assumption that everyone has a right to live, something underlined by the fact that they ought not traditionally be filling the role of the Other - thus breaking down the boundary/binary of norm/Other (because it's enforced through acknowledgement, whichever side you're on).
So, to get back to the Oedipal narrative - Supernatural clearly outlines it and addresses it, but through this breaking of the norm/Other binary (that is so blatant in Freud's work) manages to subvert it.
First, here's the Oedipal complex's basic structure: boy desires mother, has murderous/jealous thoughts toward father-as-competition. Boy sees mother's lack of penis, deduces from this a castration carried out by the father. Fear/threat of castration overwhelms the desire for the mother; boy submits to the law of the father, giving up the mother with the promise that he'll grow to fill his father's shoes, so to speak, and find a replacement mother (ie. female mate) in future.
So, how does that fit with Sam? [I should note here that I'm looking at this in terms of a metaphoric text with a character representing ideas; I'm not trying to psychoanalyse 'Sam-the-person'.]
Mary dies when Sam is a baby - arguably pre-Oedipal. Sam is practically birthed right out into the law of the father, without having a chance to pass through the mother-lust stage. The law of the father is quite blatant in the show - the Winchesters' power dynamic is quite masculine with their military/warrior training and the boys' relationship with the father - they clearly have been raised to quite literally submit to the law of the father.
So Sam's Oedipal stage plays out later, when he goes off to college. Rejecting the law of the father, the masculine warrior-hood (so to speak), he turns instead toward the 'normal', the domestic - when we first come across him it's clear that this is where he's aligned himself (he's not in a dorm, he's home-making with the little lady) - i.e. the mother. Jess is clearly visually linked to Mary in her appearance (considering Cassie, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that the show is being narrow-minded in making all the love interests blonde and caucasian) as well as her death/style of death.
So then what happens? Jess is killed - castrated - by the Big Bad, and Sam submits to the law of the father with the idea that one day he will dominate (aka overcome) the dominating force (aka the demon; which is blatantly aligned with the father in the pilot, when Mary assumes the figure standing over Sam's crib is John). And (once again, but officially now) submitting to the law of the father (who, in true psychoanalytic tradition, is actually absent, and exists as ingrained on his unconscious/super-ego).
So when we see Sam in 'Shadow' talking about how he wants 'a normal life' - wants to go back to the motherly/feminine domesticity, we can take heart in what the Oedipal narrative tells us - Sam is nostalgic for this kind of pseudo-childhood, in which he (symbolically, at least) possesses the mother; but that way lies sickness (according to Freud) - Sam must accept his lot and remain in the realm of the patriachal in order to remain powerful (i.e. avoid castration, and avoid becoming like Norman Bates).
So, okay - how does all this subvert these Freudian concepts?
Because it's a contemporary cultural text that's closely connected to the contemporary culture and society - it addresses issues of gender and hegemony. It addresses the structure of a postmodern mainstream - in which consumer culture, which is traditionally aligned with the feminine (aka the mother) has become 'normal'. (Supernatural's close linking of the Winchesters' 'normal' lives with their mother figures supports this.) Traditionally when looking at the Oedipal narrative and how it reflects upon (Western) civilisation, it's in terms of the larger structure of the patriarchy and the law of the father (masculine); the hegemony is an normality dictated by the patriarchy.
And yet Supernatural posits 'normal' - the way society enforces we live - with the mother; and the Other - the Winchesters are on the outside of society, dealing with things reviled and denied by the mainstream - is aligned with the father.
That's not to say that in doing so the text is creating a heirarchy of power in the same way Freud did with his Oedipal narrative (aka the lack of penis is, without question, assumed as unthinkably bad). The 'normal' in the Supernatural 'verse is not constructed as the opposite to their life of Otherness - they did not choose that life as a violent reaction against normality. 'Normal people' in the show are constructed as being worthy (for all the shallowness of most of the freak-of-the-week characterisation), or rather, not negatively - and after all, the 'normals' are worth saving - that's what the Winchesters Jnr are doing, at any rate - Dad's off finding who killed Mom, the boys are saving the lives of people who don't exist in the Other-space.
Because the position of the Other is traditionally occupied by those outside of the hegemony - the minorities; aka all those who are not middle-class-and-above western white heterosexual non-disabled adult males. Of course, by positioning characters that fill that description in place of the Other, the text isn't only challenging that heirarchical structure, but (*cough*) inviting a queer reading (just as it is with Dean's relationship with Cassie - minority/Other!sex is so gay).
But it's also interesting to look at in terms of who/what they are fighting exactly - how the 'enemy' is positioned in the text. A lot of the time it's not as enemy, not as us-against-them conflict - rather, the monsters are frequently positioned as victims - Others who are suffering from the ill-effects of submitting to a hegemony. Think of the first woman in white in the pilot, the boy in Dead in the Water, the Wendigo and the Indian tribe in Bugs (and think of how these villians are often vanquished by being 'healed', not merely subdued/destroyed); and think of the other victims they save, how the villains are constructed - the girls in Scarecrow and Hookman; both the Scarecrow and Hookman are patriarchal/hegemonic figures attempting to enforce a traditional/patriarchal order (fertility, heterosexuality, no free love!).
Sam and Dean are the Champions Of Otherness, working on the assumption that everyone has a right to live, something underlined by the fact that they ought not traditionally be filling the role of the Other - thus breaking down the boundary/binary of norm/Other (because it's enforced through acknowledgement, whichever side you're on).
So, to get back to the Oedipal narrative - Supernatural clearly outlines it and addresses it, but through this breaking of the norm/Other binary (that is so blatant in Freud's work) manages to subvert it.