Sigmund Freud, the man whose image certainly adorns the desk of any established psychiatrist is just as complex a character as the patients he is famous for analyzing. Born into a Jewish family and growing up in an Austria characterized by the battle between the liberals and conservatives, Freud was guaranteed to face a myriad of personal obstacles. The most significant of these obstacles was his struggle to excel in the professional world. As historian Carl E. Schorske notes,

“Freud waited seventeen years in all to be given a professorship, where eight years was the norm in the medical faculty.” (Schorske, pg. 184)

His numerous professional set-backs fostered a deep resentment for the monarchy within Freud. Even when he did receive his title, Freud remarked,

“I have learned that the old world is governed by authority and I have made my first bow to authority.” (Freud, qtd in Schorske, pg. 183)

Freud experienced exactly what was typical for Jews in the late 1800s but unwilling to tackle the complexity of the political world head on, he expressed his frustrations in his interpretations of the psychological world.

The most significant of these interpretations in the political context of Austria is the Oedipus complex. With his fondness for antiquity Freud combined his observations of early childhood development with that of the myth of Oedipus to create an idea known as the Oedipus complex. According to the myth, Oedipus unknowingly kills his father, marries his mother and gouges his eyes out when he figures out what he has done. Freud takes this myth and applies it to early childhood, where he describes it as a child’s impulse to accede the role of the father and experience his sexuality through the image of his mother. Although this is the normal application of the idea in psychology, Freud's background and resentment of the monarchy would suggest another meaning.

This description of the Oedipus complex is also a manifestation of the struggle within Freud as well as the Austrian mind to rationalize their resentment of the Monarchy and their sense of nationalism. The father here represents the monarchy while the mother is the embodiment of nationalist feelings which the child hopes to maintain without the presence of the monarch, that is after the father is killed. In the 1890s, Austria's progress was a surprising parallel to this idea. The Habsburg empire, historically a stronger monarchy than that of London and Paris was finally feeling the threat of its Oedipal son, the lower class, where both "virulent nationalism and socialism" were threatening its very existence. Freud’s ideas, albeit indirectly, came from the Empire itself. Freud failed however to perceive the potential to analyze Austria directly through the methods he outlines below:

"The aim of psycho-analysis is identical in all cases; the analysis aims at laying bare the complexes which have been repressed as a result of the painful feelings associated with them, and which produce signs of resistance when there is an attempt to bring them into consciousness." (Freud, Collected Papers, Pg. 22)

The "signs of resistance" were all around him, not in his patients but also in the Empire itself. Freud's decision to ignore politics all together is a resounding error that greatly influenced people's way of thinking during the 20th century. Freud's ideas relied so much on personal self-healing that the social community failed to recognize a common problem within the Empire itself. Even if they did, they failed to acknowledge it as a serious threat.

"Although the majority of human children individually pass through the Oedipus-Complex, it must decline according to schedule when the next pre-ordained stage of development arrives. It is therefore not very important what the occasions are through which this happens or whether an such occasions are discoverable at all." (Freud, Collected Papers, pg. 270)

This quote best details the mind set of Austrians in the early 19th century, Jews alike, who saw no threat in the changing atmosphere of Europe which would soon escalate to unprecedented violence. In this case Austria would experience a harsh gouging out of their own eyes that wasn't to be detected until it was too late.