There are two divergent characteristics for which Dante is outstanding: first, his poetic love for Beatrice and, second, the creation in the Divine Comedy of the most hideous Inferno man has ever conceived. Both of these circumstances had a common source in a primal identification with the parents. In the Divine Comedy the basic Oedipus theme is elaborated with the ambivalent attitude towards the parents only thinly disguised. 'The need to achieve union with the mother in order to fulfil the craving for love and security is symbolized by Dante's striving to attain to the heavenly Paradise where the mother-symbol Beatrice resides. But the path to the achievement of the incestuous wish is blocked by the threat of castration, symbolized in the poem by the tortures of Hell and Purgatory.'