Introduction

The Oedipus complex formed the kernel of Freud’s understanding of human sexuality, and he comments: ‘None of the findings of psychoanalytic research has provoked such embittered denials, such fierce opposition-or such amusing contortions-on the part of critics as this indication of the childhood impulses towards incest which persist in the unconscious’. (Freud, SE4, 1900; footnote, 1914:263).