The Oedipus complex is Freud’s most controversial and misunderstood concept. It is not about literal incestuous desire in any conscious sense. It is a theory about how children navigate their first experience of triangular relationships, how they learn to manage desire in the context of competition and prohibition, and how this early configuration shapes their entire psychological relationship to authority, sexuality, and moral conscience. Understanding the Oedipus complex requires setting aside the immediate revulsion the concept provokes and examining what Freud actually claimed about early psychosexual development. The theory is named after Sophocles’ tragedy in which Oedipus unknowingly kills his...