ABSTRACT
In psychoanalysis, the Oedipus complex plays a central role in the structuring of the personality of each individual. The concept helps one to understand and to explain the psychopathological presentations of the self as well as the variations and changes of the individual's identification processes. The Oedipus complex is the "nucleus of neuroses" because it shows the repression of all the wishes and phantasies. These things can only be deduced, interpreted, speculated upon. The phantasies of castration play an important part in the scenario of the Oedipus complex: the threat of castration will put an end to the boy's attachment to the mother, while penis envy will motivate the girl to look for something other than the mother. All these unconscious, primal phantasies have something in common; they are all related to the question of origins, played out in the realm of sexuality.
