5. Sigmund Freud Was Pretty Weird
Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud is widely acknowledged as the father of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. We have him to thank for the psychiatrist couch. We also have him to thank for paying somebody hundreds of dollars an hour to nod his head while he doodles in a notepad as he listens to us drone on about our lives, before he prescribes us happy pills. Freud basically said that we are all perverts, and that deep down, all guys want to murder their fathers as a prelude to getting it on with their own mothers.
Ironically, the figure he chose to name that complex after was probably the least Oedipal person ever. In Greek mythology, Oedipus went to extreme lengths to avoid a prophecy that predicted he would murder his father and marry his mother. He only ended up doing so unwittingly, after a series of extraordinary flukes. Freud, by contrast, was pretty Oedipal himself, and openly acknowledged that he had the hots for his own mother. That paled in comparison to Freud’s theory that the root cause of child molestation was not adults who preyed upon children, but children who lusted after their parents.
