Sigmund Freud wrote a notable passage in Interpretation of Dreams regarding the destiny of Oedipus, as well as the Oedipus complex. He analyzes why this play, Oedipus Rex, written in Ancient Greece, is so effective even to a modern audience:[34]: 279–280
"His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours — because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so."
Freud goes on to indicate, however, that the “primordial urges and fears” that are his concern are not found primarily in the play by Sophocles, but exist in the myth the play is based on. He refers to Oedipus Rex as a “further modification of the legend,” one that originates in a “misconceived secondary revision of the material, which has sought to exploit it for theological purposes.”[34]: 247 [35][36]
In her article, Oedipal Textuality: Reading Freud's Reading of Oedipus, Cynthia Chase explains Oedipus Rex as a story of psychoanalysis in relation to the riddles in the story and Oedipus trying to uncover his truth. [37]
Parsifal
The Parsifal story is the "reverse" of the Oedipus myth (cf., Claude Lévi-Strauss).[38]
