Freud on the Oedipus complex. – The purpose of this paper is to explore what occurs during this complex and to show why it is so important to individual development.

For Freud the pre-oedipal individual is polymorphously perverse and incestuous in its desires. It is only by successfully negotiating the Oedipus complex that each individual becomes a subject with a firm sense of gender and has their sexual desires guided into a non-incestuous and heterosexual form (Freud, 1905). Freud considered this to be one of psychoanalysiss greatest discoveries….(short extract)