10. Freud Developed the Oedipus Complex
The Oedipus complex is based on the ancient Greek Play Oedipus Rex, in which a fortune teller told a young Oedipus that he would kill his father and marry his mother. He didn’t know who his parents were, and one day, he shot a stranger on the road and later married the stranger’s widow. Unbeknownst to him, that widow was his mother. Freud believed that this explained the heart of childhood trauma in boys: they are jealous of their fathers and want to engage in sexual behavior with their mothers.
