Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Selfish Gene Theory Explains Oedipus Complex, Olga Kosheleva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Sigmund Freud famously placed what he called Oedipus complex at the center of his explanation of psychological and psychiatric problems. Freund's analysis was based on anecdotal evidence and intuition, not on solid experiments -- as a result, for a long time, many psychologists dismissed the universality of Freud's findings. However, lately, experiments seem to confirm that indeed men, on average, select wives who resemble their mothers, and women select husbands who resemble their mothers. In this paper, we provide a possible biological explanation for this observational phenomenon.