Oedipus complex facts for kids
The Oedipus complex (also spelled Œdipus complex) is an idea in psychoanalytic theory that refers to a complex set of infantile emotions and feelings characterized by the ambivalent presence of loving and hostile desires towards parents. Sigmund Freud introduced the idea in The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), and coined the term in his paper A Special Type of Choice of Object made by Men (1910)
The theory is named for the mythological figure Oedipus, whose depiction in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex served as a reference point for Freud's idea.
Background
Oedipus refers to a 5th-century BC Greek mythological character Oedipus, who unwittingly kills his father, Laius, and marries his mother, Jocasta. A play based on the myth, Oedipus Rex, was written by Sophocles, ca. 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 the Oedipus complex is a universal psychological phenomenon innate 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.
See also
In Spanish: Complejo de Edipo para niños
