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When Freud first drew attention to the myth of Oedipus8a he assumed that its continuing fascination, its very survival through the milennia, could only be explained if something about it evoked an echo in each of us, like a dim memory. We feel intensively with Oedipus, because we have been there, because we have all been Oedipus.8b
The reasoning is cogent: the past lives only to the extent to which it has meaning for the present. In myth, as in our own personal history, we select and preserve only what we can use. And, conversely, what is central and basic to psychological functioning should be abundantly represented in myth, should have recurred in myth throughout the ages and in all lands. But here we sense an objection to the importance which the myth of Oedipus has assumed in psychoanalytic theory: for if the issue is really that focal, then why is it symbolized in a myth so relatively recent? And why does this myth fail to stand out among the many others of its own period? Why did nothing more ever come of it than a play—a good tragedy, yes, but nothing more than that? Freud himself once pointed out11a that the most significant items in the psychic inventory of a culture are to be found in its religious concepts: then why did not the myth of Oedipus evolve into a religion?
But perhaps it has. It shall be the purpose of this paper to examine some of the religions on this earth and to see what concepts, possibly related to the Oedipus myth, they may contain. It will be necessary to go far afield; if in the end, returning to Oedipus, we