LAIUS COMPLEX AND MOTHER-CHILD SYMBIOSISl

The Laius complex is the father's complex of fear of the son as a potential rival in his own prerogatives. I t is considered more fundamental than the Freudian Oedipus complex which describes the son's rivalry with his father, founded on the son's sexual desire for his mother. Laius is the father of Oedipus. Graber3 holds that the original guilt rests with Laius (12, p. 17f.). Since Laius wanted to kill his son, the son's complex can be regarded as secondary, as reactive (12, p. 18). It is at this point that Graber speaks of the "Laius complex," in 1957. Whether this is the first occurrence of this very striking term I am not able to determine.4 Graber points out that Freud, by talking only of an Oedipus complex, spared the more powerful partner in the father-son problem situation. Ammon5 sees the working of the Laius complex within the traditional psychoanalytic organization. Here the complex manifests itself in the stringency of requirements by which the would-be psychoanalyst is kept from independent practicing until the age of 40 or more, which Ammon calls an "infantilizing effect" (5, p. 12). Ammon does not want to do away with the Oedipus complex interpreted as