the child's mind. To the uninitiated it seems inconceivable that the child should have this conflict. After careful reflection it will become clear that the tertium comparationis consists just in this narrow limitation of the fate of Œdipus within the bounds of the family. These limitations are very typical for the child, for parents are never the boundary for the adult person to the same extent. The Œdipus-complex represents an infantile conflict, but with the exaggeration of the adult. The term Œdipus-complex does not mean, naturally, that this conflict is considered as occurring in the adult form, but in a corresponding form suitable to childhood. The little son would like to have the mother all to himself and to be rid of the father. As you know, little children can sometimes force themselves between the parents in the most jealous way. The wishes and aims get, in the unconscious, a more concrete and a more drastic form. Children are small primitive people and are therefore quickly ready to kill. But as a child is, in general, harmless, so his apparently dangerous wishes are, as a rule, also harmless. I say "as a rule," as you know that children, too, sometimes give way to their impulses to murder, and this not always in any indirect fashion. But just as the child, in general, is incapable of making systematic projects, as little dangerous are his intentions to murder. The same holds good of an Œdipus-view toward the mother. The small traces of this phantasy in the conscious can easily be overlooked; therefore nearly all parents are convinced that their children have no Œdipus-complex. Parents as well as lovers are generally blind. If I now say that the Œdipus-complex is in the first place only a formula for the childish desire towards parents, and for the conflict which this craving evokes, this statement of the situation will be more readily accepted. The history of the Œdipus-phantasy is of special interest, as it teaches us very much about the development of the unconscious phantasies. Naturally, people think that the problem of Œdipus is the problem of the son. But this is, astonishingly enough, only an illusion. Under some circumstances the libido-sexualis reaches that definite differentiation of puberty corresponding to the sex of the individual relatively late. The libido sexualis has before this time an undifferentiated sexual character, which can be also termed bisexual. Therefore it is not astonishing if little girls possess the Œdipus-
