Or might there be Oedipal rivalry at work?

One reason may simply be Oedipal revenge.

"Actually, there are Oedipal aspects to sports," Ferraro said.

"We cannot begin to appreciate the meaning of Oedipus if we continue to think that Oedipus was oedipal."

I don't care if this is Oedipal, or acting out. . . . Those are just words, Dad, just your words for it.

Bennett's job is not the unmasking of conspiracies but the delivery of fall guys, and his zeal to accomplish the task is not ethical so much as it is Oedipal.

The result is Oedipal and polymorphous perverse: the young man manages to become a son and lover, kill off a father and marry - or at least be kept by - a brother and sister.

'We're three happy chappies,' " Mo Ali sang out, " 'with snappy scrapes'" "Three," A.K. said, nodding, "is Oedipal."

And of an impulse that once seized him to "take a whack" at his father's head "with a golf club," he observes, "Probably it was Oedipal nonsense," as if he could simultaneously acknowledge and dismiss his feelings.

Anneke Smelik analyzed the film, writing "It is Oedipal in the sense that it is about a family, but instead of featuring the triangle of father, mother and child, the film establishes a line of mothers and daughters."

In the modern Oedipal story, it's the mother who kills the father and then takes the son.

"Does it have something to do with that which is referred to as the Oedipal complex?"

This growth in the child is the start to the resolution of the Oedipal conflict.

"There is absolutely nothing Oedipal about it," he said with a laugh.

The problem is not the usual Oedipal reaction of one generation against its father.

Only much later did he claim the same findings as evidence for Oedipal desires.

The split between these forces has an Oedipal subtext, as well.

To the extent that the author offers an explanation, it is an Oedipal one.

You were in a studio and part of a family and it was all very oedipal.

Is that somehow the secret of my Oedipal problem?

Those who are not abused follow some variant of the Oedipal path.

But, boy, does it still crackle in its Oedipal confrontations.

It left him with an Oedipal fascination with older women.

He wonders if eye trouble is a consequence of Oedipal obsession.

Would Freud have called it a kind of Oedipal complex?

Childhood, youth and age go their separate ways, with never an Oedipal taint.

Some kind of oedipal thing," he did not add.

My mom's not married, unless you count me in that creepy Oedipal way.

The night of romance was, he said, decidedly Oedipal.

So, the book turned into the history of my Oedipal complex, trying to climb out from under Mom.

Those who fall outside the Oedipal triad of mother/father/child are less subject to patriarchal authority.

But, perhaps inevitably, the father and son ended up in an Oedipal tango at the same spot: 31 percent.

But no Oedipal shivers are generated here because you've never stopped to consider the bond between mother and son.

Appearances to the contrary, these films are not standard Oedipal dramas.

Or might there be Oedipal rivalry at work?