Without replying to the clinical evaluation (I am not familiar enough with psychoanalysis myself), I'd like to reflect on the cultural background, which I think is the more interesting point you raise. So the myths Freud considered to be "universal", and thus based his theories on, were in fact far from universal, and might have reflected, if at all, the cultural world of a intellectual Viennese male during the relevant time. Pondering on the entire series of articles, one has to ask oneself - did all componenets of Freudian theory and scholarship spring from the "pictures" hanging in the study of Freud's brain, a "study" shaped and designed by the culture of that moment and place?

And, if that's the case, what are the implications as to the appliccability of theory to people who were not part of this intellectual Viennese moment? Would we expect other myths, other complexes, other "universal" stories to be predominant in other people's lives and relationships? I understand that Jungian analysts are more flexible with their archetypes and myths; if anyone knows more, I'd love to learn.

Shimon, thank you for the detailed response; I am, as you probably suspected, very familiar with cultural relativism, which is why I asked this question in the first place; as to Freud's awareness to these issues, I would venture further than examining his cultural reservoir in light of the city of Vienna, but in the context of European well-educated men of the 19th century. I guess what I'm asking, to be put rather simplistically, is whether Freud (or: "a Freudian") would expect a Mongolian toddler, living in a nomad tribe on a mountain, who had never heard of Oedipus, to want to sleep with his mother and kill his father.