RT Journal
A1 Harris JC
T1 OEdipus at colonus
JF Archives of General Psychiatry
JO Archives of General Psychiatry
YR 2010
FD May 1
VO 67
IS 5
SP 438
OP 439
DO 10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2010.50
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2010.50
AB 
Sophocles' tragic story of Oedipus, King of Thebes, was deemed by Aristotle to be the perfect tragedy. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) emphasized it in his book The Birth of Tragedy. Sophocles' plays were rediscovered in the 16th century and revived again in the 19th. When Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who first read Oedipus the King in Greek at age 17 years, later attended performances of the play, he was intrigued by the modern audience's intense response to the prophecy that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother. It was a psychological dynamic he found within himself in his self-analysis after his father's death and recognized in his patients.