Freud and Oedipus

by Peter L. Rudnytsky

Freud and Oedipus reassesses Freud's central concept of the Oedipus complex from the interlocking perceptives of biography, intellectual history, and Greek tragedy. Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary materials, Peter Rudnytsky establishes how Freud reached his epochal formulation through his own self-analysis and clinical work. He then places Freud's discoveries in the context of nineteenth-century German intellectual and literary history. Finally, he demonstrates how many of Freud's insights are foreshadowed in Sophocles' "Oedipus the King" and discusses the psychoanalytic and structuralist interpretation of Sophocles' Oedipus cycle as a whole.

Genres: Psychology

416 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1987

Reviews

[Jamey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkably rich in original insights, this book handles Sophocles with the gravity we owe to sacred literature. Rudnytsky's insights into Freud are likewise first-rate, as is his history of Oedipus in the transition from Senecan French neoclassicism to the Romantic vision of German Hellenism. This is a beautiful book; I've read it twice.

[Julia Deptuła]

*disso*