Oedipus (UK: /ˈiːdɪpəs/, also US: /ˈɛdə-/; Greek: Οἰδίπους «swollen foot») was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family.

The story of Oedipus is the subject of Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex, which is followed in the narrative sequence by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone. Together, these plays make up Sophocles’ three Theban plays. Oedipus represents two enduring themes of Greek myth and drama: the flawed nature of humanity and an individual’s role in the course of destiny in a harsh universe.

In the best-known version of the myth, Oedipus was born to King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes. Laius wished to thwart the prophecy, so he sent a shepherd-servant to leave Oedipus to die on a mountainside. However, the shepherd took pity on the baby and passed him to another shepherd who gave Oedipus to King Polybus and Queen Merope to raise as their own. Oedipus learned from the oracle at Delphi of the prophecy that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother but, unaware of his true parentage, believed he was fated to murder Polybus and marry Merope, and so he left for Thebes. On his way, he met an older man, who was (unbeknownst to him) his father, and killed him in a quarrel. Continuing on to Thebes, he found that the king of the city (Laius) had recently been killed and that the city was at the mercy of the Sphinx. Oedipus answered the monster’s riddle correctly, defeating it and winning the throne of the dead king – and the hand in marriage of the king’s widow, who was also (unbeknownst to him) his mother Jocasta.

Years later, to end a plague on Thebes, Oedipus searched to find who had killed Laius and discovered that he himself was responsible. Jocasta, upon realizing that she had married her own son, hanged herself. Oedipus then seized two pins from her dress and blinded himself with them.

The legend of Oedipus has been retold in many versions and was used by Sigmund Freud to name and give mythic precedent to the Oedipus complex.

Basics of the myth

Variations on the legend of Oedipus are mentioned in fragments by several ancient Greek poets including Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus and Euripides. However, the most popular version of the legend comes from the set of Theban plays by Sophocles: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.

Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta, king and queen of Thebes. Having been childless for some time, Laius consulted the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi. The Oracle prophesied that any son born to Laius would kill him. In an attempt to prevent this prophecy’s fulfillment, when Jocasta indeed bore a son, Laius had his son’s ankles pierced and tethered together so that he could not crawl; Jocasta then gave the boy to a servant to abandon («expose») on the nearby mountain. However, rather than leave the child to die of exposure, as Laius intended, the servant passed the baby on to a shepherd from Corinth, who then gave the child to another shepherd.

The infant Oedipus was eventually adopted by Polybus and Merope, the king and queen of Corinth, as they were without children of their own. Little Oedipus was named after the swelling from the injuries to his feet and ankles («swollen foot»). The word «oedema» (British English) or «edema» (American English) is from this same Greek word for swelling: οἴδημα, or oedēma.

After many years, Oedipus was told by a drunk that he was a «bastard», meaning at that time that he was not their biological son. Oedipus confronted his parents (the king and queen of Corinth) with the news, but they denied this. Oedipus went to the same oracle in Delphi that his birth parents had consulted. The oracle informed him that he was destined to murder his father and marry his mother. In an attempt to avoid such a fate, he decided not to return home to Corinth, but to travel to Thebes, which was closer to Delphi.

On the way, Oedipus came to Davlia, where three roads crossed. There he encountered a chariot driven by his birth-father, King Laius. They fought over who had the right to go first and Oedipus killed Laius when the charioteer tried to run him over. The only witness of the king’s death was a slave who fled from a caravan of slaves also traveling on the road at the time.

Continuing his journey to Thebes, Oedipus encountered a Sphinx, who would stop all travelers to Thebes and ask them a riddle. If the travelers were unable to answer her correctly, they would be killed and eaten; if they were successful, they would be free to continue on their journey. The riddle was: «What walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon, and three at night?». Oedipus answered: «Man: as an infant, he crawls on all fours; as an adult, he walks on two legs and; in old age, he uses a ‘walking’ stick». Oedipus was the first to answer the riddle correctly; the Sphinx was so embarrassed that someone had solved her riddle that she killed herself by jumping off of a cliff; in some versions, however, Oedipus kills her.

Queen Jocasta’s brother, Creon, had announced that any man who could rid the city of the Sphinx would be made king of Thebes and given the recently widowed Queen Jocasta’s hand in marriage. This marriage of Oedipus to Jocasta fulfilled the rest of the prophecy. Oedipus and Jocasta had four children: sons Eteocles and Polynices (see Seven Against Thebes) and daughters Antigone and Ismene.

Many years later, a plague of infertility struck the city of Thebes, affecting crops, livestock, and the people. Oedipus asserted that he would end the pestilence. He sent Creon to the Oracle at Delphi, seeking guidance. When Creon returned, Oedipus learned that the murderer of King Laius must be brought to justice, and Oedipus himself cursed the killer of his wife’s late husband, saying that he would be exiled. Creon also suggested that they try to find the blind prophet Tiresias, who was widely respected. Oedipus sent for Tiresias, who warned him not to seek Laius’ killer. In a heated exchange, Tiresias was provoked into exposing Oedipus himself as the killer, and the fact that Oedipus was living in shame because he did not know who his true parents were. Oedipus angrily blamed Creon for the false accusations, and the two argued. Jocasta entered and tried to calm Oedipus by telling him the story of her first-born son and his supposed death. Oedipus became nervous as he realized that he may have murdered Laius and so brought about the plague. Suddenly, a messenger arrived from Corinth with the news that King Polybus had died. Oedipus was relieved, for the prophecy could no longer be fulfilled if Polybus, whom he believed to be his birth father, was now dead.

Still, he knew that his mother was still alive and refused to attend the funeral at Corinth. To ease the tension, the messenger then said that Oedipus was, in fact, adopted. Jocasta, finally realizing that he was her son, begged him to stop his search for Laius’ murderer. Oedipus misunderstood her motivation, thinking that she was ashamed of him because he might have been born of low birth. Jocasta, in great distress, went into the palace, where she hanged herself. Oedipus sought verification of the messenger’s story from the very same herdsman who was supposed to have left Oedipus to die as a baby. From the herdsman, Oedipus learned that the infant who was raised as the adopted son of Polybus and Merope, was the son of Laius and Jocasta. Thus, Oedipus finally realized that the man he had killed so many years before was his father and that he had married his mother.

Events after the revelation depend on the source. In Sophocles’ plays, Oedipus went in search of Jocasta and found she had killed herself. Using the pin from a brooch he took off Jocasta’s gown, Oedipus blinded himself and was then exiled. His daughter Antigone acted as his guide as he wandered through the country, finally dying at Colonus where they had been welcomed by King Theseus of Athens. However, in Euripides’ plays on the subject, Jocasta did not kill herself upon learning of Oedipus’s birth, and Oedipus was blinded by a servant of Laius. The blinding of Oedipus does not appear in sources earlier than Aeschylus. Some older sources of the myth, including Homer, state that Oedipus continued to rule Thebes after the revelations and after Jocasta’s death.

Oedipus’s two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, arranged to share the kingdom, each taking an alternating one-year reign. However, Eteocles refused to cede his throne after his year as king. Polynices brought in an army to oust Eteocles from his position and a battle ensued. At the end of the battle, the brothers killed each other, after which Jocasta’s brother, Creon, took the throne. He decided that Polynices was a «traitor», and should not be given burial rites. Defying this edict, Antigone attempted to bury her brother. In Sophocles’ Antigone, Creon had her buried in a rock cavern for defying him, whereupon she hanged herself. However, in Euripides’ lost version of the story, it appears that Antigone survives.

Ancient sources (5th century BC)

Most, if not all, of our knowledge of Oedipus, comes from the 5th century BC. Though these stories principally deal with his downfall, various details still appear on how Oedipus rose to power.

King Laius of Thebes hears of a prophecy that his infant son will one day kill him. He pierces Oedipus’ feet and leaves him out to die, but a shepherd finds him and carries him away. Years later, Oedipus, not knowing he was adopted, leaves home in fear of the same prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Laius journeys out to seek a solution to the Sphinx’s mysterious riddle. As prophesied, Oedipus and Laius cross paths, but they do not recognize each other. A fight ensues, and Oedipus kills Laius and most of his guards. Oedipus goes on to defeat the Sphinx by solving a riddle to become king. He marries the widowed Queen Jocasta, unaware that she is his mother. A plague falls on the people of Thebes. Upon discovering the truth, Oedipus blinds himself, and Jocasta hangs herself. After Oedipus is no longer king, Oedipus’s brother-sons kill each other.

Some differences with older stories emerge. The curse of Oedipus’ sons was elaborated on retroactively to include Oedipus and his father, Laius. Oedipus now steps down from the throne instead of dying in battle. Additionally, rather than his children being by a second wife, Oedipus’s children are now by Jocasta (hence, they are his brothers as well).

Pindar’s second Olympian Ode

In his second Olympian Ode, Pindar writes:

Laius’ tragic son, crossing his father’s path, killed him and fulfilled the oracle spoken of old at Pytho. And sharp-eyed Erinys saw and slew his warlike children at each other’s hands. Yet Thersandros survived fallen Polyneikes and won the honor in youthful contests and the brunt of war, a scion of aid to the house of Adrastos.

Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes trilogy (467 BC)

In 467 BC, the Athenian playwright, Aeschylus, most notably wrote a trilogy based on the myth of Oedipus, winning him the first prize at the City Dionysia. Of the plays, Laius was the first, Oedipus was second, and Seven Against Thebes was the third play and the only one to have survived.

In Seven Against Thebes, Oedipus’s sons Eteocles and Polynices kill each other warring over the throne. Much like his Oresteia, the trilogy would have detailed the tribulations of a House over three successive generations. The satyr play that followed the trilogy was called The Sphinx.

Sophocles’ Theban plays

The three surviving works of Sophocles’ «Theban plays» consist of: Oedipus Rex (also called Oedipus Tyrannus or Oedipus the King), Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. All three plays concern the fate of the City of Thebes, during and after the reign of King Oedipus, and have often been published under a single cover.

Originally, Sophocles had written the plays for three separate festival competitions, many years apart. Not only are the Theban plays not a true trilogy (three plays presented as a continuous narrative), they are not even an intentional series and contain some inconsistencies among them.

Sophocles also wrote other plays focused on Thebes, most notably the Epigoni, of which only fragments have survived.

Oedipus Rex

As Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex begins, the people of Thebes are begging the king for help, begging him to discover the cause of the plague. Oedipus stands before them and swears to find the root of their suffering and to end it. Just then, Creon returns to Thebes from a visit to the oracle. Apollo has made it known that Thebes is harboring a terrible abomination and that the plague will only be lifted when the true murderer of old King Laius is discovered and punished for his crime. Oedipus swears to do this, not realizing that he is himself the culprit. The stark truth emerges slowly over the course of the play, as Oedipus clashes with the blind seer Tiresias, who senses the truth. Oedipus remains in strict denial, though, becoming convinced that Tiresias is somehow plotting with Creon to usurp the throne.

Realization begins to slowly dawn in Scene II of the play when Jocasta mentions out of hand that Laius was slain at a place where three roads meet. This stirs something in Oedipus’s memory and he suddenly remembers the men he fought and killed one day long ago at a place where three roads met. He realizes, horrified, that he might be the man he’s seeking. One household servant survived the attack and now lives out his old age in a frontier district of Thebes. Oedipus sends immediately for the man to either confirm or deny his guilt. At the very worst, though, he expects to find himself to be the unsuspecting murderer of a man unknown to him. The truth has not yet been made clear.

The moment of epiphany comes late in the play. At the beginning of Scene III, Oedipus is still waiting for the servant to be brought into the city, when a messenger arrives from Corinth to declare that King Polybus of Corinth is dead. Oedipus, when he hears this news, feels much relieved, because he believed that Polybus was the father whom the oracle had destined him to murder, and he momentarily believes himself to have escaped fate. He tells this all to the present company, including the messenger, but the messenger knows that it is not true. He is the man who found Oedipus as a baby in the pass of Cithaeron and gave him to King Polybus to raise. He reveals, furthermore that the servant who is being brought to the city as they speak is the very same man who took Oedipus up into the mountains as a baby. Jocasta realizes now all that has happened. She begs Oedipus not to pursue the matter further. He refuses, and she withdraws into the palace as the servant is arriving. The old man arrives, and it is clear at once that he knows everything. At the behest of Oedipus, he tells it all.

Overwhelmed with the knowledge of all his crimes, Oedipus rushes into the palace where he finds his mother-wife, dead by her own hand. Ripping a brooch from her dress, Oedipus blinds himself with it. Bleeding from the eyes, he begs his uncle and brother-in-law Creon, who has just arrived on the scene, to exile him forever from Thebes. Creon agrees to this request. Oedipus begs to hold his two daughters Antigone and Ismene with his hands one more time to have their eyes full of tears and Creon out of pity sends the girls in to see Oedipus one more time.

Oedipus at Colonus

In Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus becomes a wanderer, pursued by Creon and his men. He finally finds refuge in the holy wilderness right outside Athens, where it is said that Theseus took care of Oedipus and his daughter, Antigone. Creon eventually catches up to Oedipus. He asks Oedipus to come back from Colonus to bless his son, Eteocles. Angry that his son did not love him enough to take care of him, he curses both Eteocles and his brother, condemning them both to kill each other in battle. Oedipus dies a peaceful death; his grave is said to be sacred to the gods.

Antigone

In Sophocles’ Antigone, when Oedipus stepped down as king of Thebes, he gave the kingdom to his two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, both of whom agreed to alternate the throne every year. However, they showed no concern for their father, who cursed them for their negligence. After the first year, Eteocles refused to step down and Polynices attacked Thebes with his supporters (as portrayed in the Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus and the Phoenician Women by Euripides). The two brothers killed each other in battle. King Creon, who ascended to the throne of Thebes, decreed that Polynices was not to be buried. Antigone, Polynices’ sister, defied the order but was caught. Creon decreed that she was to be put into a stone box in the ground, this in spite of her betrothal to his son Haemon. Antigone’s sister, Ismene, then declared she had aided Antigone and wanted the same fate, but Creon eventually declined to execute her. The gods, through the blind prophet Tiresias, expressed their disapproval of Creon’s decision, which convinced him to rescind his order, and he went to bury Polynices himself. However, Antigone had already hanged herself in her tomb, rather than suffering the slow death of being buried alive. When Creon arrived at the tomb where she had been interred, his son Haemon attacked him upon seeing the body of his deceased fiancée but failing to kill Creon he killed himself. When Creon’s wife, Eurydice, was informed of the death of Haemon, she too took her own life.

Euripides’ Phoenissae, Chrysippus, and Oedipus

At the beginning of Euripides’ Phoenissae, Jocasta recalls the story of Oedipus. Generally, the play weaves together the plots of the Seven Against Thebes and Antigone. The play differs from the other tales in two major respects. First, it describes in detail why Laius and Oedipus had a feud: Laius ordered Oedipus out of the road so his chariot could pass, but proud Oedipus refused to move. Second, in the play Jocasta has not killed herself at the discovery of her incest – otherwise, she could not play the prologue, for fathomable reasons – nor has Oedipus fled into exile, but they have stayed in Thebes only to delay their doom until the fatal duel of their sons/brothers/nephews Eteocles and Polynices: Jocasta commits suicide over the two men’s dead bodies, and Antigone follows Oedipus into exile.

In Chrysippus, Euripides develops backstory on the curse: Laius’ sin was to have kidnapped Chrysippus, Pelops’ son, in order to violate him, and this caused the gods’ revenge on all his family. Laius was the tutor of Chrysippus, and raping his student was a severe violation of his position as both guest and tutor in the house of the royal family hosting him at the time. Extant vases show a fury hovering over the lecherous Laius as he abducts the rape victim. Furies avenged violations of good order in households, as can be seen most clearly in such texts as The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus.

Euripides wrote also an Oedipus, of which only a few fragments survive. The first line of the prologue recalled Laius’ hubristic action of conceiving a son against Apollo’s command. At some point in the action of the play, a character engaged in a lengthy and detailed description of the Sphinx and her riddle – preserved in five fragments from Oxyrhynchus, P.Oxy. 2459 (published by Eric Gardner Turner in 1962). The tragedy also featured many moral maxims on the theme of marriage, preserved in the Anthologion of Stobaeus. The most striking lines, however, state that in this play Oedipus was blinded by Laius’ attendants and that this happened before his identity as Laius’ son had been discovered, therefore marking important differences with the Sophoclean treatment of the myth, which is now regarded as the ‘standard’ version. Many attempts have been made to reconstruct the plot of the play, but none of them is more than hypothetical, because of the scanty remains that survive from its text and of the total absence of ancient descriptions or résumés – though it has been suggested that a part of Hyginus’ narration of the Oedipus myth might in fact derive from Euripides’ play. Some echoes of the Euripidean Oedipus have been traced also in a scene of Seneca’s Oedipus (see below), in which Oedipus himself describes to Jocasta his adventure with the Sphinx.

Other playwrights

At least three other 5th-century BC authors who were younger than Sophocles wrote plays about Oedipus. These include Achaeus of Eretria, Nichomachus and the elder Xenocles.

Later additions

The Bibliotheca, a Roman-era mythological handbook, includes a riddle for the Sphinx, borrowing the poetry of Hesiod:

What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?

Later addition to Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes

Due to the popularity of Sophocles’s Antigone (c. 442 BC), the ending (lines 1005–78) of Seven against Thebes was added some fifty years after Aeschylus’ death. Whereas the play (and the trilogy of which it is the last play) was meant to end with somber mourning for the dead brothers, the spurious ending features a herald announcing the prohibition against burying Polynices, and Antigone’s declaration that she will defy that edict.

Post-Classical literature

Oedipus was a figure who was also used in the Latin literature of ancient Rome. Julius Caesar wrote a play on Oedipus, but it has not survived into modern times. Ovid included Oedipus in Metamorphoses, but only as the person who defeated the Sphinx. He makes no mention of Oedipus’s troubled experiences with his father and mother. Seneca the Younger wrote his own play on the story of Oedipus in the first century AD. It differs in significant ways from the work of Sophocles.

Some scholars have argued that Seneca’s play on the myth was intended to be recited at private gatherings and not actually performed. It has however been successfully staged since the Renaissance. It was adapted by John Dryden in his very successful heroic drama Oedipus, licensed in 1678. The 1718 Oedipus was also the first play written by Voltaire. A version of Oedipus by Frank McGuinness was performed at the National Theatre in late 2008, starring Ralph Fiennes and Claire Higgins.

In the late 1960s Ola Rotimi published a novel and play, The Gods Are Not to Blame, which retell the Oedipus myth happening in the Yoruba kingdom.

In 2011, U.S. writer David Guterson published his Oedipus-inspired novel «Ed King».

In folkloristics, the myth of Oedipus is classified in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index as tale type ATU 931, «Oedipus».

Oedipus complex

In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) refers to a son’s sexual attitude towards his mother and concomitant hostility toward his father, first formed during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. A daughter’s attitude of desire for her father and hostility toward her mother is referred to as the feminine Oedipus complex. The general concept was considered by Sigmund Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), although the term itself was introduced in his paper A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men (1910).

Freud’s ideas of castration anxiety and penis envy refer to the differences of the sexes in their experience of the Oedipus complex. The complex is thought to persist into adulthood as an unconscious psychic structure which can assist in social adaptation but also be the cause of neurosis. According to sexual difference, a positive Oedipus complex refers to the child’s sexual desire for the opposite-sex parent and aversion to the same-sex parent, while a negative Oedipus complex refers to the desire for the same-sex parent and aversion to the opposite-sex parent. Freud considered that the child’s identification with the same-sex parent is the socially acceptable outcome of the complex. Failure to move on from the compulsion to satisfy a basic desire and to reconcile with the same-sex parent leads to neurosis.

The theory is named for the mythological figure Oedipus, an ancient Theban king who discovers he has unknowingly murdered his father and married his mother, whose depiction in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex had a profound influence on Freud. Freud rejected the term Electra complex, introduced by Carl Jung in 1913 as a proposed equivalent complex among young girls.

Some critics have argued that Freud, by abandoning his earlier seduction theory (which attributed neurosis to childhood sexual abuse) and replacing it with the theory of the Oedipus complex, instigated a cover-up for sexual abuse of children. Some scholars and psychologists have criticized the theory for being incapable of applying to same-sex parents, and as being incompatible with the widespread aversion to incest.

Background

Oedipus refers to a 5th-century BC Greek mythological character Oedipus, who unknowingly kills his father, Laius, and marries his mother, Jocasta. A play based on the myth, Oedipus Rex, was written by Sophocles, c. 429 BC.

Modern productions of Sophocles’ play were staged in Paris and Vienna in the 19th century and were phenomenally successful in the 1880s and 1890s. The Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) attended. In his book The Interpretation of Dreams, first published in 1899, he proposes that an Oedipal desire is a universal psychological phenomenon innate (phylogenetic) to human beings, and the cause of much unconscious guilt.

Freud believed that the Oedipal sentiment has been inherited through the millions of years it took for humans to evolve from apes. His view of its universality was based on his clinical observation of neurotic or normal children, his analysis of his own response to Oedipus Rex, and on the fact that the play was effective on both ancient and modern audiences. Freud describes the Oedipus myth’s timeless appeal thus:

His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours — because the Oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so.

Freud also claims that the play Hamlet «has its roots in the same soil as Oedipus Rex», and that the differences between the two plays are revealing:

In Oedipus Rex the child’s wishful fantasy that underlies it is brought into the open and realized as it would be in a dream. In Hamlet it remains repressed; and—just as in the case of a neurosis—we only learn of its existence from its inhibiting consequences.

However, in The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud makes it clear that the «primordial urges and fears» that are his concern and the basis of the Oedipal complex are inherent in the myths the play is based on, not primarily in the play itself, which Freud refers to as a «further modification of the legend» that originates in a «misconceived secondary revision of the material, which has sought to exploit it for theological purposes».

Before the idea of the Oedipus complex, Freud believed that childhood sexual trauma was the cause of neurosis. This idea, sometimes called Freud’s seduction theory, was deemphasized in favor of the Oedipus complex around 1897.

Timeline

1896. Freud publishes The Aetiology of Hysteria. The paper was criticized for theorizing that hysteria is caused by sexual abuse.

1897–1909. After his father’s death in 1896, and having seen the play Oedipus Rex, by Sophocles, Freud begins using the term «Oedipus». As Freud wrote in an 1897 letter, «I found in myself a constant love for my mother, and jealousy of my father. I now consider this to be a universal event in early childhood.»

1909–1914. Proposes that Oedipal desire is the «nuclear complex» of all neuroses; first usage of «Oedipus complex» in 1910.

1914–1918. Considers paternal and maternal incest.

1919–1926. Complete Oedipus complex; identification and bisexuality are conceptually evident in later works.

1926–1931. Applies the Oedipal theory to religion and custom.

1931–1938. Investigates the «feminine Oedipus attitude» and «negative Oedipus complex»; later the «Electra complex».

The Oedipus complex

Original formulation

Freud’s original examples of the Oedipus complex are applied only to boys or men; he never fully clarified his views on the nature of the complex in girls. He described the complex as a young boy’s hatred or desire to eliminate his father and to have sex with his mother.

Freud introduced the term «Oedipus complex» in a 1910 article titled A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men. It appears in a section of this paper describing what happens after a boy first becomes aware of prostitution:

When after this he can no longer maintain the doubt which makes his parents an exception to the universal and odious norms of sexual activity, he tells himself with cynical logic that the difference between his mother and a whore is not after all so very great, since basically they do the same thing. The enlightening information he has received has in fact awakened the memory-traces of the impressions and wishes of his early infancy, and these have led to a reactivation in him of certain mental impulses. He begins to desire his mother herself in the sense with which he has recently become acquainted, and to hate his father anew as a rival who stands in the way of this wish; he comes, as we say, under the dominance of the Oedipus complex. He does not forgive his mother for having granted the favour of sexual intercourse not to himself but to his father, and he regards it as an act of unfaithfulness.

Freud and others eventually extended this idea and embedded it in a larger body of theory.

Later theory

In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex occurs during the phallic stage of psychosexual development (age 3–6 years), although it can manifest at an earlier age.

In the phallic stage, a boy’s decisive psychosexual experience is the Oedipus complex—his son–father competition for possession of his mother. It is in this third stage of psychosexual development that the child’s genitalia is his or her primary erogenous zone; thus, when children become aware of their bodies, the bodies of other children, and the bodies of their parents, they gratify physical curiosity by undressing and exploring themselves, each other, and their genitals, so learning the anatomic differences between male and female and the gender differences between boy and girl.

Despite the mother being the parent who primarily gratifies the child’s desires, the child begins forming a discrete sexual identity—»boy», «girl»—that alters the dynamics of the parent and child relationship; the parents become objects of infantile libidinal energy. The boy directs his libido (sexual desire) toward his mother and directs jealousy and emotional rivalry against his father. The boy’s desire for his mother is concomitant with a desire for the death of his father and even an impulse to instigate that death. These desires manifest in the realm of the id, governed by the pleasure principle, but the pragmatic ego, governed by the reality principle, knows that the father is an impossible rival to overcome and the impulse is repressed. The boy’s ambivalence about his father’s place in the family, is manifested as fear of castration by the physically superior father; the fear is an irrational, subconscious manifestation of the infantile id.

In both sexes, defense mechanisms provide transitory resolutions of the conflict between the drives of the id and the drives of the ego. Repression, the blocking of unacceptable ideas and impulses from the conscious mind, is the first defence mechanism, but its action does not resolve the id–ego conflict; it merely confines the impulse in the unconscious, where it continues to exert pressure in the direction of consciousness. The second defense mechanism is identification, in which the child adapts by incorporating, into his or her (super)ego, the personality characteristics of the same-sex parent. In the case of the boy, this diminishes his castration anxiety, because his likeness to his father protects him from the consequences of their rivalry. The little girl’s anxiety is diminished in her identification with the mother, who understands that neither of them possesses a penis, and thus are not antagonists.

The satisfactory resolution of the Oedipus complex is considered important in developing the male infantile super-ego. By identifying with the father, the boy internalizes social morality, thereby potentially becoming a voluntary, self-regulating follower of societal rules, rather than merely reflexively complying out of fear of punishment. Unresolved son–father competition for the psychosexual possession of the mother might result in a phallic stage fixation that leads to the boy becoming an aggressive, over-ambitious, and vain man.

Oedipal case study

In Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy (1909), the case study of the equinophobic boy «Little Hans», Freud claimed that the relation between Hans’s fears—of horses and of his father—derived from external factors, the birth of a sister, and internal factors, the desire of the infantile id to replace his father as companion to his mother, and guilt for enjoying the masturbation normal to a boy of his age. Little Hans himself was unable to relate his fear of horses to his fear of his father. As the treating psychoanalyst, Freud noted that «Hans had to be told many things that he could not say himself» and that «he had to be presented with thoughts, which he had, so far, shown no signs of possessing».

Feminine Oedipus attitude

Freud applied the Oedipus complex to the psychosexual development of boys and girls, but later modified the female aspects of the theory as «feminine Oedipus attitude» and «negative Oedipus complex». His student–collaborator Carl Jung, in his 1913 work The Theory of Psychoanalysis, proposed the Electra complex to describe a girl’s daughter–mother competition for psychosexual possession of the father.

In the phallic stage, the feminine Oedipus attitude is the little girl’s decisive psychodynamic experience in forming a discrete sexual identity (ego). Whereas a boy develops castration anxiety, a girl develops penis envy, for she perceives that she has been castrated previously (and missing the penis), and so forms resentment towards her own kind as inferior, while simultaneously striving to claim her father’s penis through bearing a male child of her own. Furthermore, after the phallic stage, the girl’s psychosexual development includes transferring her primary erogenous zone from the infantile clitoris to the adult vagina.

Freud considered a girl’s negative Oedipus complex to be more emotionally intense than that of a boy, resulting, potentially, in a woman of submissive, insecure personality.

Freudian theoretic revision

Carl Gustav Jung

In response to Freud’s proposal of the Oedipus complex, which was initially more focused on the little boy’s experience of desire for the mother and jealous rivalry in relation of the father, student–collaborator Carl Jung proposed that girls experienced desire for the father and aggression towards the mother via what he called the Electra complex. Electra was a Greek mythologic figure who plotted matricidal revenge with Orestes, her brother, against their mother Clytemnestra and their stepfather Aegisthus, for the murder of her father Agamemnon. Like Oedipus, the character is the subject of a play by Sophocles (Electra) from the 5th century BC. Orthodox Jungian psychology uses the term «Oedipus complex» only to denote a boy’s psychosexual development. Freud himself rejected the equivalence, arguing that at this stage of development it is only the male who experiences a simultaneous love for one parent and competitive hatred for the other. For Freud, the idea of the Electra complex assumes an analogous relation between boys and girls, in relation to their same and opposite sex parents, that does not actually exist. According to Freud, the Electra complex fails to take account of the differing effects of the castration complex, and the significance of the phallus, in the two sexes, and overlooks the girl’s preoedipal attachment to the mother.

Otto Rank

In classical Freudian psychology the super-ego, «the heir to the Oedipus complex», is formed as the infant boy internalizes the familial rules of his father. In contrast, in the early 1920s, using the term «pre-Oedipal», Otto Rank proposed that a boy’s powerful mother was the source of the super-ego, in the course of normal psychosexual development. Rank’s theoretic conflict with Freud excluded him from the Freudian inner circle; nonetheless, he later developed the psychodynamic Object relations theory in 1925.

Melanie Klein

Whereas Freud proposed that the father (the paternal phallus) was central to infantile and adult psychosexual development, Melanie Klein concentrated on the early maternal relationship, proposing that Oedipal manifestations are perceptible in the first year of life, the oral stage. Her proposal was part of the «controversial discussions» (1942–44) at the British Psychoanalytical Association. The Kleinian psychologists proposed that «underlying the Oedipus complex, as Freud described it … there is an earlier layer of more primitive relationships with the Oedipal couple». She assigned «dangerous destructive tendencies not just to the father but also to the mother in her discussion of the child’s projective fantasies». Klein’s concept of the depressive position, resulting from the infant’s ambivalence toward the mother, lessened the central importance of the Oedipus complex in psychosexual development.

Wilfred Bion

«For the post-Kleinian Bion, the myth of Oedipus concerns investigatory curiosity—the quest for knowledge—rather than sexual difference; the other main character in the Oedipal drama becomes Tiresias (the false hypothesis erected against anxiety about a new theory)». As a result, «Bion regarded the central crime of Oedipus as his insistence on knowing the truth at all costs».

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan argued against removing the Oedipus complex from the center of psychosexual developmental experience. For him, the Oedipus complex «—in so far as we continue to recognize it as covering the whole field of our experience with its signification—may be said to mark the limits that our discipline assigns to subjectivity». It is that which superimposes the kingdom of culture upon the person, marking his or her introduction to the symbolic order.

Thus «a child learns what power independent of itself is as it goes through the Oedipus complex … encountering the existence of a symbolic system independent of itself». Moreover, Lacan’s proposal that «the ternary relation of the Oedipus complex» liberates the «prisoner of the dual relationship» of the son–mother relationship proved useful to later psychoanalysts; thus, for Bollas, the «achievement» of the Oedipus complex is that the «child comes to understand something about the oddity of possessing one’s own mind … discovers the multiplicity of points of view». Likewise, for Ronald Britton, «if the link between the parents perceived in love and hate can be tolerated in the child’s mind … this provides us with a capacity for seeing us in interaction with others, and … for reflecting on ourselves, whilst being ourselves». As such, in The Dove that Returns, the Dove that Vanishes (2000), Michael Parsons proposed that such a perspective permits viewing «the Oedipus complex as a life-long developmental challenge … with new kinds of Oedipal configurations that belong to later life».

In 1920, Sigmund Freud wrote that «with the progress of psychoanalytic studies the importance of the Oedipus complex has become, more and more, clearly evident; its recognition has become the shibboleth that distinguishes the adherents of psychoanalysis from its opponents»; thereby it remained a theoretic cornerstone of psychoanalysis until about 1930, when psychoanalysts began investigating the pre-Oedipal son–mother relationship within the theory of psychosexual development. Janet Malcolm reports that by the late 20th century, to the object relations psychology «avant-garde, the events of the Oedipal period are pallid and inconsequential, in comparison with the cliff-hanging psychodramas of infancy. … For Kohut, as for Winnicott and Balint, the Oedipus complex is an irrelevance in the treatment of severe pathology». Nonetheless, ego psychology continued to maintain that «the Oedipal period—roughly three-and-a-half to six years—is like Lorenz standing in front of the chick, it is the most formative, significant, moulding experience of human life … If you take a person’s adult life—his love, his work, his hobbies, his ambitions—they all point back to the Oedipus complex».

Criticism

Lack of empirical basis

Studies conducted of children’s attitudes to parents at the oedipal stage do not demonstrate the shifts in positive feelings that are predicted by the theory. Case studies that Freud relied upon, such as the case of Little Hans, could not be verified through research or experimentation on a larger population. Adolf Grünbaum argues that the type of evidence Freud and his followers used, the clinical productions of patients during analytic treatment, by their nature cannot provide cogent observational support for Freud’s core hypotheses.

Evolutionary psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, in their 1988 book Homicide, argue that the Oedipus complex theory yields few testable predictions. They find no evidence of the Oedipus complex in people. There is evidence of parent–child conflict but it is not for sexual possession of the opposite sex-parent.

According to psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, Freud and his followers resisted subjecting his theories, including the Oedipus theory, to scientific testing and verification. Lieberman claims that investigations based in cognitive psychology either contradict or fail to support Freud’s ideas.

Cover for sexual abuse

In the 1970s, social worker Florence Rush wrote that Freud’s seduction theory, which came early in his career, correctly attributed his patients’ memories of childhood trauma to the patient’s family, often the father, implying that widespread sexual abuse of children by parents was common in his society. According to Rush, the discovery of this abuse made Freud uncomfortable, so he abandoned the theory and invented the Oedipus complex to replace it. The Oedipus complex allowed him to attribute stories of childhood sexual abuse to the children themselves. Freud came to the conclusion that the stories were fantasies of hidden desires, rather than factual descriptions of trauma. Thus, Rush argues, Freud covered up illegal and immoral sexual abuse by undermining the perceptions of his patients, particularly his female patients. Rush’s theory became known as The Freudian Coverup.

A director of the Sigmund Freud Archives, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, adopted the view that Freud’s work was a cover-up for abuse after reading Freud’s unpublished letters. In his book The Assault on Truth, Masson argues that Freud misattributed accounts of sexual abuse to fabrications and fantasies of children because, for personal reasons, he was unable to accept that the accounts were real. According to Masson, among Freud’s reasons to suppress the abuse was that he did not want to be confronted by the father of a patient who was accused of committing abuse. Late in his career Freud sought to prevent colleague Sandor Ferenczi from delivering a paper that reasserted the seduction theory. Freud had hoped that his former student would abandon the theory as he himself had done, but Ferenczi delivered the paper in 1932. Masson writes that, because the theory of the Oedipus complex became widely popular, psychoanalysts continue to do damage to their patients by doubting the reality of the patient’s early memories of trauma.

Other Freud scholars argue that Masson and Rush have misrepresented the reasons and intention behind Freud’s abandonment of the seduction theory and adoption of the theory of the Oedipus complex. According to Dr. Kurt R. Eissler, who replaced Masson as director of the Freud Archives, Freud did not in any sense reject the reality of childhood sexual trauma, but realized that actual abuse was not the universal cause of neurosis he had thought it to be. New York psychiatrist Dr. Frank R. Hartmann said that «Freud realized he made a mistake in attributing all neurosis to repressed memories of actual abuse. He discovered a much broader theory which explained much more.» The historian Peter Gay, author of Freud: A Life for Our Time (1988), emphasizes that Freud continued to believe that some patients were sexually abused, but realized that there can be a difficulty in distinguishing between truth and fiction. Therefore, according to Gay, there was no sinister motive in changing his theory; Freud was a scientist seeking the facts and was entitled to change his views if new evidence was presented to him.

Gender role assumptions

Many scholars and psychologists observe that, because the theory of the Oedipus complex assigns distinct roles to a mother and father, it is a poor fit for families that do not use traditional gender roles.

As of November 2022 same-sex marriage is legal in 31 nations. Same-sex couples start families through adoption or surrogacy. The pillars of the family structure are diversifying to include parents who are single or of the same sex as their partner along with the traditional heterosexual, married parents. These new family structures pose new questions for the psychoanalytic theories such as the Oedipus complex that require the presence of the mother and the father in the successful development of a child.

Evidence suggests children who have been raised by parents of the same sex are not much different from children raised in a traditional family structure. The classic theory of the Oedipal drama has fallen out of favor in today’s society, according to a study by Drescher, having been criticized for its «negative implications» towards same sex parents. Many psychoanalytic thinkers such as Chodorow and Corbett are working towards changing the Oedipus complex to eliminate «automatic associations among sex, gender, and the stereotypical psychological functions deriving from these categories» and make it applicable to today’s modern society. From its Freudian conception, psychoanalysis and its theories have always relied on traditional gender roles to draw itself out.

In the 1950s, psychologists distinguished different roles in parenting for the mother and father. The role of primary caregiver is assigned to the mother. Motherly love was considered to be unconditional. While the father is assigned the role of secondary caregiver, fatherly love is conditional, responsive to the child’s tangible achievements. The Oedipus complex is compromised in the context of modern family structures, as it requires the existence of the notions of masculinity and femininity. When there is no father present there is no reason for a boy to have castration anxiety and thus resolve the complex. Psychoanalysis presents non-heteronormative relationships a sort of perversion or fetish rather than a natural occurrence. To some psychologists, this emphasis on gender norms can be a distraction in treating homosexual patients.

The 1972 book Anti-Oedipus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari is «a critique of psychoanalytic normativity and Oedipus» according to Didier Eribon. Eribon criticizes the Oedipus complex described by Freud or Lacan as an «implausible ideological construct» which is an «inferiorization process of homosexuality». According to psychologist Geva Shenkman, «To examine the application of concepts such as Oedipus complex and primal scene to male same-sex families, we must first eliminate the automatic associations among sex, gender, and the stereotypical psychological functions based on these categories.»

Postmodern psychoanalytic theories, which aim to reestablish psychoanalysis for modern times, suggest modifying or discarding the complex because it does not describe newer family structures. Shenkman suggests that a loose interpretation of the Oedipus complex in which the child seeks sexual satisfaction from any parent regardless of gender or sex, would be helpful: «From this perspective, any parental authority, or institution for that matter, may represent the taboo that gives rise to the complex». Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein proposed a theory which broke gender stereotypes but still kept traditional father-mother family structure. She assigned «dangerous destructive tendencies not just to the father but also to the mother in her discussion of the child’s projective fantasies».

Stretched theory

Anouchka Grose understands the Oedipus complex as «a way of explaining how human beings are socialised … learning to deal with disappointment». Her summary of the complex is «You have to stop trying to be everything for your primary carer, and get on with being something for the rest of the world». This post-Lacanian interpretation of the complex diverges considerably from its description in 19th century. Eribon writes that it «stretches the Oedipus complex to a point where it almost doesn’t look like Freud’s any more».

Aversion to incest

Parent-child and sibling-sibling incestuous unions are almost universally forbidden. An explanation for this incest taboo is that rather than instinctual sexual desire, there is instinctual sexual aversion against these unions. Steven Pinker wrote that «The idea that boys want to sleep with their mothers strikes most men as the silliest thing they have ever heard. Obviously, it did not seem so to Freud, who wrote that as a boy he once had an erotic reaction to watching his mother dressing. Of note is that Amalia Nathansohn Freud was relatively young during Freud’s childhood and thus of reproductive age, and Freud having a wet-nurse, may not have experienced the early intimacy that would have tipped off his perceptual system that Mrs. Freud was his mother.»

Historical mystique — Ethnocentrism

Pierre Bourdieu

In Esquisse pour une autoanalyse, Pierre Bourdieu argues that the success of the concept of Oedipus is inseparable from the prestige associated with ancient Greek culture and the relations of domination that are reinforced in the use of this myth. In other words, if Oedipus was Bantu or Baoulé, his story would probably not be viewed as a human universal. This remark recalls the historically and socially situated character of the founder of psychoanalysis.

Malinowski

Sex and Repression in Savage Society is considered «a famous critique of psychoanalysis, arguing that the ‘Oedipus complex’ described by Freud is not universal.»

Sexism

Feminist views on the Oedipus complex include criticism of the phallocentrism of the theory by philosopher Luce Irigaray among others. Irigaray charges that Freud’s work assumes a masculine perspective, epitomized by the centrality of the penis (or lack of a penis for girls) in the Oedipus complex. She thinks that Freud’s desire for a neat, symmetrical theory leads him to a contrived understanding of women as inverse men. She charges that he does not explore mother–daughter relationships and that he dogmatically assumes female sexuality will be a perfect mirror of male sexuality.