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Revision as of 02:41, 6 September 2006 by Rdwilliams (talk | contribs)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Freud argues that the greatest works of world literature all concern parricide: Oedipus Rex, Hamlet, and The Brothers Karamazov. Freud claims that Dostoevsky's epilepsy was a function of guilt he bore at having wished for the death of his tyrannical father who was purportedly murdered by his own serfs. Ultimately, Freud claims that Karamazov is diminished by its weak Christian ending. (Freud's first extensive writing about parricide was in Totem and Taboo (1911), widely seen as his watershed work away from clinically oriented subject matter to philosophy. In it, parricide is the great crime at the base of all social evolution. (Freud drew extensively on Frazier's The Golden Bough.)