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
Oedipus Rex descendants (although many scholars regard Laius' transgressions against Chrysippus to be a late addition to the myth). When his son is born, the king consults an oracle as to his fortune. To his horror, the oracle reveals that Laius "is doomed to perish by the hand of his own son". Laius binds the infant's feet together with a pin, and orders Jocasta to kill him. Unable to kill her own son, Jocasta orders a servant to slay the infant for her. The servant then exposes the infant on a mountaintop, where he is found and rescued by a shepherd (in