7. The death of Freud’s father disturbed him deeply
Freud was still developing the concepts and theories of what he termed psychotherapy when his father died in October, 1896. “The old man’s death has affected me profoundly…I now feel quite uprooted”, he wrote at the time. His studies had by then left within him a belief that his childhood had been one of abusiveness at the hands of his father, of him and of his siblings. Freud had already begun an intensive self-analysis, believing that he had been his mother’s favorite as a child, and that his father had been a rival for his mother’s affection, a rivalry in which he, Sigmund, had prevailed.
Freud’s continued analysis of himself following the death of his father led him to exonerate the latter and determine that it was he who desired the attentions of his mother at the expense of his father. He came to believe that such was a desire shared by all young boys, in all societies and levels of society, and which he came to call the Oedipal complex. He extended the complex to females in reverse, with girls rivaling their mothers for their fathers’ affection. He continued his studies of the complex without publishing them as he increased his research into the meaning and importance of dreams and the imagery within them.