Sigmund Freud developed the examination of the mind using dream analysis and the analysis of the unconscious through the link of findings with attitudes toward sexuality and sexual development. .
In his extensive research and theories on sexuality during the infant stage, Freud attempts to trace the course of gender identification and to describe the many processes that the child must navigate in order to arrive at an adult sexual identity. His creation of the Oedipus complex theory is central to this process and is used to explain the structure of the mental processes as well as the cause of mental disorders.
It began with the study of a boy known as Little Hans. The analysis of a phobia in a five year old boy, explained the fear of horses for Hans. Freud believed the terror of this boy was due to feelings of anger he had internalized that related to his parents. Freud theorized that all small boys select their mother as their primary object of desire. They subconsciously wish to usurp their fathers and become their mothers' lover. Typically, these desires emerge between the ages of three and five, when a boy is in what Freud defined as the phallic stage of development. Because the child suspects that acting on these feelings would lead to danger, these desires are repressed, and leading to anxiety.
Few people believe today that the oedipal complex has any real bearing on our lives, but the Oedipus complex is a fundamental period of childhood. It has a role in the structuring of the personality and influence on the development of emotional, sexual, intellectual and social of childhood. When this period goes well, it is more likely that there is an absence of pathological disorders of childhood, adolescence and adult because the problems that come from poorly resolved conflict at this stage phallic destabilize the life of the human being by failures or painful conditions that affect not only the emotional and sexual life.