ABSTRACT
In his five lectures on psychoanalysis published in 1910, Sigmund Freud emphasises for the first time that the Oedipus complex is the nuclear complex of every neurosis. It is well known that Freud borrowed the name for this complex from Sophocles’ drama Oedipus Tyrannus with which he had been familiar since 1873. The universality of the Oedipus complex has been subjected to much critical discussion and its phylogenetic justification has been questioned with strong arguments. When Jocasta consoles Oedipus that in their dreams many men make love to their mothers, but they go about their life without being troubled by the idea, Freud neglects looking at the relevance of this for her relationship with Oedipus. In Freud’s view, myths are “imaginative creations of groups and peoples”. Freud notes that the latent content of the imaginative creations belongs to the “unconscious complexes of early childhood” consisting solely of “a reality experienced by the child”.
