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Some questions regarding the evidence for the universal existence of the “Oedipal complex” with castration anxiety as its linchpin are explored and discussed by the author. An attempt is made to investigate the issue by utilizing extra-analytic evidence and some clinical findings in children, ages three to five or six. Several of the assumed normal consequential developmental advances attributable to the complex's successful resolution may be independent of that resolution, just as some of the pathology attributed to the failure of its resolution seems to be related to other origins. Freud's assumptions regarding incest desire as being innate as well as naturally guilt-laden, and information available to him regarding primitive cultures are restudied. Modern knowledge of child-parent interaction and clinical findings in sexually abused children, as well as recent discoveries in evolutionary biology, ethology, and anthropology are compared to the knowledge available to Freud. His selective use of mythology, the apparent absence of an historical precedent or parallel for a universal infantile neurosis, and the logic of its existence are discussed. The obstacles to setting up a scientific study satisfactory to psychoanalysis and capable of verification by extra-analytic investigation to ascertain whether the complex is inevitably established in the unconscious of children are briefly described.
This paper is an exploratory one; it is intended to provoke further inquiry into one of the time-honored basic concepts of psychoanalysis. Some of the contentions introduced by this paper