Oedipus (Voltaire play) Oedipus (Voltaire play) Oedipus () is a tragedy by the French dramatist and philosopher Voltaire that was first performed in 1718. It was his first play and the first literary work for which he used the pen-name Voltaire (his real name was François-Marie Arouet). Voltaire completed the play in 1717 during his 11-month imprisonment. In a letter of 1731 Voltaire wrote that when he wrote the play he was "full of my readings of the ancient authors [...] I knew very little of the theater in Paris." In adapting Sophocles' Athenian tragedy "Oedipus Rex", Voltaire attempted to rationalise the plot
Castration anxiety of the concepts related to penis envy were among his greatest accomplishments. However, these are also his most criticized theories as well—most famously by Karen Horney. Freud derived this term from the Greek tragedy "Oedipus Rex". In this tragedy, the main character, Oedipus, kills his father and marries a woman whom he does not know is his mother. Given this irony, Freud used the term Oedipus complex to indicate this unconscious desire. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex relates to a universal wish that a boy has, unknowingly, to have his mother all to himself by the removal of his