Behind Infanticide and Incest—Personal Aspects in the Formulation of the Oedipus Complex

One of the most intriguing aspects of the crucial years in Freud\u27s life, at the end of the nineteenth century, when he was struggling with the initial formulation of the ideas that were to crystallise into the Oedipus Complex, is that during that very time almost all of his own children were going through their own oedipal periods. Under normal circumstances it would seem surely logical to presuppose some connection between the intellectual and emotional turmoil enveloping Freud and the happenings in his home at that time