Raubmord und Verrat

Volume 3 of the 'Complete Works' is a reprint of Judith Le Soldat's theory of Oedipal development, first published in 1994, now with the title she had originally planned for it: 'Robbery, Murder and Betrayal'. Unlike the slightly ponderous title of the original publication ('A Theory of Human Misery'), long out of print, the terms murder and betrayal take us straight to the core events that mark the fateful inner conflict of Oedipal development in which, according to Le Soldat, we are inevitably enmeshed. It is no accident that the title evokes a murder mystery, for robbery, murder and betrayal not only designate three significant events in the inner Oedipal plot; the comparison also underscores the author's method in tracking down clues with the meticulous approach of a detective. The theatre of events is none other than Freud's dream of Irma's Injection, the founding dream of psychoanalysis. Le Soldat's findings reveal an entirely different and incomparably more intense drama than hitherto presumed by classical psychoanalytical notions of the Oedipus complex.