The observation that the Oedipal theory of Freud has become less of a focus today of scientific research and psychoanalytic practice, without the importance of Freud's ideas being abandoned, is correct. The interpretation now of the Oedipus myth as one of the power of unconscious self-fulfilling prophecies (or expectancy confirmation processes) has become more prevalent, not only in relational and many other psychoanalyses, but in all therapies that are not exclusively behavioral. Considerable research supports the existence of such expectancy confirmation processes (Curtis, 1989; Darley & Fazio, 1980). It is Freud's contribution that what is not remembered is repeated, or that what is not conscious is enacted without awareness, that has gained prominence over the detection of specific unconscious impulses in the therapeutic treatments that have ensued.

Bernard Knox (cited in Curtis, 1989), the noted Hellenic scholar, suggested that the Oedipus myth came about when the prophecies of Gods were being questioned. Indeed, people were beginning to feel more control over their “destinies.” The psychologist Julian Jaynes hypothesized that people were becoming aware that they were hearing their own minds think, that they were not hearing the voices of gods as earlier homo sapiens believed, a conclusion Jaynes reached on the basis of a comparison of literatures before the common era. So Freud's profound insights into how people might come to “know themselves” has gained broader intellectual acceptance than the particulars of what they will learn. The power of the Oedipus myth today has become the knowledge of the tragedies that occur when people, in desperately trying to avoid their worst fears, actually, unknowingly, fulfill them.