of Freud's ideas, his insight has had strong and useful influences in many fields: his research into unconscious drives has had a significant impact on criminology, sociology, and anthropology. His work changed the way many people think about personality and motivation, and caused a re-evaluation of the importance, which attaches to early family relationships and their effect on the developing personality. However, his most important influence was to inspire modern psychiatry by his examination of mental illness. However, although he inspired fields of scientific study, often his methods were not very scientific. In fact, he described himself to his friend Wilhem Fliess not as a scientist but as an 'adventurer' and his methods were often fearlessly unscientific, partly because of the new and controversial nature of his study. The main weakness of Freudian analysis is that, in order to explore the abnormal; he had to establish what 'normal' was. To do this he looked to himself, and extrapolated from his own experiences into a general theory. One of the most interesting and controversial ideas of psychoanalysis is the Odeius complex. Freud believed that in the phallic stage of development (between the years of 2 and 3) every boy dreams of his mother. However, the boy's sexual interests are soon met with the threat of castration. The successful growth involves identification with the father and assuming an active and aggressive social role in a male- dominated society. For a little girl the ideal of the Oedipus complex is different. She gives up the desire for the mother by becoming her Daddy's little girl. In fact she might become too attached to Daddy. As such feelings were unacceptable to the moral ego the female repressed them....
