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In a lucid exposition of the work of Claude Daly, the author examines Daly's study of the menstruation complex. In Daly's view, the boy's sight of menstrual blood is followed by castration anxiety, repression of incestuous wishes for the mother, and fear of death. Daly supplements clinical illustrations with examples in world literature. It is notable that psychoanalysts have largely ignored Daly's contributions: Bonaparte, who made no reference to Daly's work on Poe; Rickman, who wrote Daly's obituary in 1950; and numerous analytic investigators during the past fifty years. Daly quotes Freud's searching exploration (Totem and Taboo) which concludes that we are ignorant about the origins of ambivalence in human relations. For Daly, the intense conflict stirred by the sight of routine genital bleeding of the beloved (omnipotent) mother is a significant source of such ambivalence. It was Daly's contention that his work would be ignored until psychoanalysts were able to confront the menstruation complex directly, whereupon it would have meaning not only in analytic practice, but in every area of applied psychoanalysis.