ABSTRACT
There is a fascinating book, Oedipus Ubiquitous written jointly by a psychiatrist and an anthropologist. They approach the question of the universality of the Oedipus complex by looking at folktales from around the world that deal with the themes of maternal incest and patricide. "Penis envy" is an idea that appears in Freud's writing quite early on. He mentions it in his Three Essays on Sexuality where he says it comes as a big surprise to children to realise that girls and boys have different genitals. In early Freud, the Oedipus complex looks like a set of relations between real people. The Oedipus complex, as Freud appears to have understood it, is just one way things could go. It may very well go this way quite often in a culture where men go out to work and women stay at home. The Oedipus complex, in the sense in which Freud installs it in Little Hans, is the perfect neurotic solution.
