Oedipus Complex"It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous desire against our father. " - Sigmund Freud(Clark, 122)The conflict or Oedipus complex is a concept developed by Sigmund Freud to explain the origin of some psychological disorders in childhood. It is defined as the child's unconscious desire for the exclusive love of the parent of the opposite sex. This desire includes jealousy toward the same-sex parent and the unconscious wish for that parent's death. Horney states that it is not a "biologically given phenomenon", but rather a response to "provocations" from the outside world. (Horney) The “Oedipus complex” was started by Simund Freud. Freud was born on May 6, 1856 in Freiberg, Moravia, a region now in the Czech Republic. His father was a wool merchant and was forty years old when he had Sigmund, the eldest of eight children (Gay, aged 78) and lived until 1939. (Gay, 112) The term Oedipus complex is named after Oedipus Rex. The story of Oedipus is found in Sophocles' story. In the story, Oedipus was named king of Thebes in gratitude for freeing the people from a plague caused by the presence of the enigmatic Sphinx. Since Laius, the former king, had been killed shortly before, Oedipus was further honored by the hand of Queen Jocasta. Now famines and more deadly diseases are raging, and people have come to ask Oedipus to save them as before. Oedipus entrusts his brother-in-law with the task of finding the solution. Creon, Jocasta's brother, returns from the temple of Apollo with the announcement that the famine will be cured if Laius' murderer is found and driven out of the city. I... half of the paper... things that don't support Freud's idea. Freud's theory was that, according to libido theory, every human relationship is ultimately based on instinctive drives. When the theory is applied to child-parent relationships, several conclusions are suggested: “any kind of submissive devotion to a parent of the same sex is probably the expression of passive homosexuality or sexual masochistic tendencies, while a rebellious rejection of a parent of the same sex sex sex is probably an internal struggle against existing homosexual desires,” Works Cited by (Horney) Bernheimer, Charles, In the Case of Dora: Freud—Hysteria—Feminism, New York: Columbia University Press, Horney, Karen, New Ways in Psychoanalysis, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2000. Clark, David. New York: Sholden, 1995. Gay, Peter Freud, A Life of Our Time, 1988.