The Oedipus Complex

Summary: In San Francisco, California, Julie Ransom's life is just getting back to normal after her husband, a psychic medium, was brutally murdered. However, she does not achieve normalcy when someone attempts to kill her and she is saved by an FBI agent. On the other side of the country, in Maestro, Virginia, Sheriff Dixon Noble is still mourning his wife, Christie, who disappeared three years earlier. He receives a report that Christie has been spotted in San Francisco going by the name of Charlotte Pallack. Noble heads across the country to investigate. With the help of FBI agents, the mystery behind Charlotte Pallack's identity is unlocked as well as the forces behind Jule Ransom's attempted murder.
Connection to Psychology: The villain in this book is a man who speaks to his dead mother through a psychic medium and seeks out women who bear a resemblance to his dead mother. The villain is a classic example of someone who is fixated in the Phallic Stage of development. Freud's psychosexual stages were discussed in Chapter 11 starting on page 423 of our textbook. The Phallic Stage is the stage between 3 and 5 years of age when a boy experiences sexual feelings for his mother and competes with his father for the mother's affection. Freud called this set of impulses the Oedipus complex.