Oedipus The King, through the Eyes of Freud Both Sophocles’ Oedipus the King and Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents discuss the deeply rooted innate conflicts of mankind and the approach in which he may or may not overcome them. In Sophocles’ work, the internal conflicts are revealed as Oedipus develops a sense of guilt when he realizes that he has killed his father and married his mother. Freud invokes this concept and identifies with this Sophoclean sense of humanity’s tragic condition in his discussion of the symptoms of inner conflict and the feelings of guilt and unhappiness t