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Until Freud revolutionized the interpretation of the Oedipus legend, commentary on the legend had been dominated by the rational humanism of the Renaissance. This rationalistic approach is typified by the following remark of Sir Thomas Browne, taken from his Religio Medici, a work of the mid-seventeenth century:
If…there rise any doubts in my way, I do forget them, or at least defer them till my better setled judgement and more manly reason be able to resolve them; for I perceive every man's own reason is his best Oedipus, and will, upon a reasonable truce, find a way to loose those bonds wherewith the subtleties of error have enchained our more flexible and tender judgements.
Since Freud, the amount of writing devoted to the subject has dramatically increased. This fact makes it extremely difficult to cover the ever expanding body of fascinating and informative secondary literature.
The purpose of this bibliography is to present a survey of the secondary literature that pertains to the psychoanalytic interpretation of the Oedipus legend. In addition to psychoanalytic writings on the Oedipus legend (excluding Freud's own), a certain number of anthropological studies which are either psychoanalytic in approach, or may be relevant to the psychoanalytic study of the legend, have been included (See e. g. Fischer, Fortes, Heusch, Ishida, Jacobs, Kluckhohn; Malinowski, Mitchell, Ortigues, Parsons, Sidler, Stephens; Sumner, Turner). Strictly literary-critical and literary-historical studies have not been included (Benjamin is an exception).
A Supplementary Bibliography lists works that may be of use to the psychoanalytic study of the Oedipus legend: (1) Surveys of the ancient evidence (Daly, de Kock, Höfer, Lesky) and background (Thomas); (2) General studies of Oedipus