Chapter 3. The Discovery of the Oedipus Complex

‘There is an unmistakable indication in the text of Sophocles’ tragedy itself that the legend of Oedipus sprang from some primaeval dream-material which had as its content the distressing disturbance of a child's relation to his parents owing to the first stirrings of sexuality. At a point when Oedipus, though he is not yet enlightened, has begun to feel troubled by his recollection of the oracle, Jocasta consoles him by referring to a dream which people dream, though, as she thinks, it has no meaning:

“Many a man ere now in dreams hath lain

With her who bare him. He hath least annoy

Who with such omens troubleth not his mind.”1

Mourning set in motion a process of intense psychical work in Freud. The Irma dream made him aware of his guilt feelings, but did not explain them to him. The ‘Close the eyes’ dream made him realise that those feelings involved his father. His new awareness had a liberating effect. For about six months after that, he stopped complaining of fatigue, moments of depression, or an intellectual block.

Yet he could not have been busier. He had a large practice. He was writing the treatise on Die infantile Cerebrallähmung (1897) which he had promised Nothnagel (he grumbled about having to do it, as he had by then lost interest in the subject). And he had embarked upon a major work on neuroses – which was never to see the light of day. He had already selected the quotations he intended to use as epigraphs to each chapter. They were the only part of the book he told Fliess about: