Lack of empirical basis[edit]

Studies conducted of children's attitudes to parents at the oedipal stage do not demonstrate the shifts in positive feelings that are predicted by the theory.^[52] Case studies that Freud relied upon, such as the case of Little Hans, could not be verified through research or experimentation on a larger population.^[53] Adolf Grünbaum argues that the type of evidence Freud and his followers used, the clinical productions of patients during analytic treatment, by their nature cannot provide cogent observational support for Freud's core hypotheses.^[54]


Evolutionary psychologists Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, in their 1988 book Homicide, argue that the Oedipus complex theory yields few testable predictions. They find no evidence of the Oedipus complex in people. There is evidence of parent–child conflict but it is not for sexual possession of the opposite sex-parent.^[55]


According to psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, Freud and his followers resisted subjecting his theories, including the Oedipus theory, to scientific testing and verification.^[56] Lieberman claims that investigations based in cognitive psychology either contradict or fail to support Freud's ideas.^[56]