D.H. Lawrence’s autobiographical novel Sons and lovers gives a striking representation of the various elements of the Oedipus complex. By writing this novel Lawrence tried to elucidate the personal problems (a consuming mother fixation and repeatedly failing relationships with girls) he experienced at the time. His future wife Frieda initiated him in Freudian theory, within which he found the scheme to undertake in a conscious, rational way a comprehensive explanation of his difficulties. In his later metapsychological essays Lawrence denies the existence of infantile sexual drives, and he defines the Oedipus complex, reduced to the incest motive, as a logical deduction, a rational conclusion by the adult being faced with partner relationship problems related to a mother fixation. Thus Lawrence raised his procedure of representing the Oedipus complex as a rational interpretation of his problems to the status of a general definition of the incest motive.
