ABSTRACT
Oedipus – what a strange idea. Maybe the strangest thing is that something that appeared so utterly shocking, scandalous, preposterous, and bizarre when Freud first proposed it has become so utterly domesticated and commonly received in the Zeitgeist. It takes a great effort to restore its scandalous value. Freud first came upon this idea in his correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess (in the letter dated 15 October 1897), in the process of his own self-analysis, which was carried out in close companionship with his venerated friend:
So far I have found nothing completely new, but all the complication to which I am used […] Only one idea of general value has occurred to me. I have found love of the mother and jealousy of the father in my own case too, and now believe it to be a general phenomenon of early childhood. […] If that is the case, the gripping power of Oedipus Rex […] becomes intelligible […] The Greek myth seizes on a compulsion which everyone recognizes because he has felt traces of it in himself. Every member of the audience was once a budding Oedipus in phantasy, and this dream-fulfillment played out in reality causes everyone to recoil in horror, with the full measure of repression which separates his infantile from this present state.
(Freud 1954: 221–24)