Sigmund Freud, in his Interpretation of Dreams, lays down the complexity of the act and the methodology required to go about interpreting dreams. He first, however, talks about the nature of what he calls the Oedipus complex: where, early in the development of the subject which includes their sexuality, their sexual desires are directed toward their parents. The male subject directs their love and desire toward their own mother, while envying and their own father because the father is currently inhabiting the position the subject wishes they were in. So it is their goal to “kill” the father and marry the mother like Oedipus Rex did in the original greek tragedy. The complex itself inhabits on the level of the unconscious, determining the actual activities of the everday conscious subject without their knowledge or conscience of the unconscious’ doings and motivations. Thus, these feelings of love and hate are not expressed or formulated in those terms by the subject in their everyday life and thinking throughout early childhood.

Freud talks about the myth of Oedipus Rex as something much more captivating to modern audiences than contemporary tragedies that use the same fatalistic themes, that it carries the same weight upon us today as it did for the ancient Greeks. He believes this to be so because it directly taps into this Oedipus complex that is within us all. Freud says Oedipus directly accomplishes our childhood wishes which have since then been repressed and turned into an object of disgust. And as well as capturing and bringing our attention to this unconscious desire, it also captures our reaction to it: violent repression. In the tale, Oedipus gauges out his own eyes after realizing he has done exactly what the oracle has told him he would do and what Oedipus alongisde his parents have tried avoiding this whole time (marrying his mother, and killing his father). This viscerality of the tale of Oedipus and the fact that it encapsulates something deep within us which has been repressed throughout our lives is something that other plays which cover the same themes cannot replicate without simply retelling the story of Oedipus Rex.

Freud contrasts this with Shakespeare’s Hamlet which covers similar topics and themes. Unlike in Oedipus Rex where Oedipus fulfills the childhood wish and the fantasy of the Oedipus complex is brought to the attention of the viewer, the Oedipus complex present within Hamlet remains repressed and something that isn’t mentioned directly whatsoever. It is something that has to be interpreted out of the progression of the narrative. Freud justifies having identified the Oedipus complex within Hamlet by highlighting the inadequacies of previous interpretations as to the hesitance of the character Hamlet in fulfilling his father’s dying wish to kill the man who married Hamlet’s mother. Freud identifies these feelings of hesitance, which he says—given the circumstances—should rather be feeling of vengeance, as due to the fact that the man is he about to kill literally fulfills the childhood wish of Hamlet that has remained long repressed. Hamlet identifies with the man who takes his father’s place and in that sense questions himself and his own morality given that he sees that he is no better. Freud then points out the presence of the Oedipus complex in the circumstances that lead Shakespeare himself to write the play, being his own father’s death. In the same sense as the interpretation of dreams leads us to understand the desires of the unconscious, Freud argues that the interpretation of creative works does the same as well in understanding the unconscious of the author.