This essay discusses some questions that are still topical, have grown up all together with the psychoanalytic movement, and concern the basis itself of psychodynamic models. They are, above all, the difference between instinctual mind and relational theory, and the difference between the world of tenderness (affects) and the world of passions. An original contribution of this paper concerns the sophoclean tragedy Oedipus the King and its destiny all along the history of psychoanalysis. The Author, basing his conjectures on a textual analysis of this drama, shows that the Freudian interpretation is related to its traditional, superficial version, and consequently fails both its philological and psychological aims.
Keywords: Oedipus, anamorphosis, Oedipus the King, Freud, Adler