Laius complex the words of Sophocles) "some wicked spell … . Saying the child would kill its father". Whereas Freud had laid stress on Oedipus’s filial violence against his father, George Devereux in 1953 introduced the term 'Laius complex' to cover the corresponding feelings on the part of the father – what he called the "'counter-oedipal' (Laius) complex". Later explorations of masculinity have placed the aggressive aspects of the Laius complex within the broader frame of mammalian aggression against their young: what Gershon Legman called "the killing of the male (i.e. sexually uninteresting) children by the father". Two specific psychosexual aspects of
Laius raped the king's son, Chrysippus, and carried him off to Thebes while teaching him how to drive a chariot, or as Hyginus records it, during the Nemean games. This abduction is thought to be the subject of one of the lost tragedies of Euripides. With both Amphion and Zethus having died in his absence, Laius became king of Thebes upon his return. After the rape of Chrysippus, Laius married Jocasta or Epicasta, the daughter of Menoeceus, a descendant of the Spartoi. Laius received an oracle from Delphi which told him that he must not have a child, or the child