 The Oedipus complex, Freud explained, was the nucleus of the neurosis and the foundational source of all art, myth, religion, philosophy, therapy – indeed of all human culture and civilization.It was the first time that anyone in the inner circle had dared to suggest that the Oedipus complex might not be the supreme causal factor in psychoanalysis.Rank was the first to use the term "pre-Oedipal" in a public psychoanalytic forum in 1925 (Rank, 1996, p. 43).