ABSTRACT
The best example of the OEdipus Complex in English literature is to be found in the poem by William Cowper, On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. Cowper was a victim of the OEdipus Complex; it was buried in his unconscious and in this poem of his he shows that the seeds that were sown fifty-two years ago were still bearing fruit. Literature can hardly furnish so good an example of the influence of the OEdipus Complex through so great a distance of time. The brother and sister complex, as it may be called, shows its effects upon the literary work of the writer. The extreme attachment of Renan to his sister Henrietta and of Wordsworth to his sister Dorothy had much to do with the nature of the literary work of these men. The effects of this extreme brotherly and sisterly love have been studied but not yet exhaustively.
