Freud has shown us that psychoneuroses, like hysteria and obsessions, have their origin in an infantile overattachment to the parent of the opposite sex, which remains unconscious but nevertheless is an active and disturbing element. It is perfectly natural that this condition should exist in infancy, but it disappears in the normal person. If it does not, one's entire life will be influenced by his inability to overcome the too intense love for mother or infantile hatred for the father. If a man has had an unfortunate repression in childhood such as the early death of a mother he loved intensely, his destiny in life will be affected. This fact has been understood by people from time immemorial. If an abnormal situation develops like a hatred in childhood for the mother, the child's life will be in the future shaped differently from that of most people. People especially are influenced in the way they react to the world and to love affairs by the frustration or repression of their earliest love. If they become writers their literary work is charged with a certain tone, depending on the nature of the author's relation with his parents. By this discovery of Freud's literary criticism receives a new impetus. Most literary biographers unconsciously worked in accordance with this theory, for they always stated, where possible, the relations of the writer to his parents. Freud merely formulated and proved the truth of the theory. Why were Schopenhauer and Byron such pessimists? Among the many causes that later in life contributed to impart the note of woe and despair to their work, was the fact that both men were in unusually unhappy relations with their mothers and their quarrels with them are matters of literary history. Why are men like Lafcadio Hearn and Edgar Allan Poe the unhappy Ishmaelites in literature, with their morbid and weird ideas? They both lost in infancy or early childhood mothers to whom they were greatly attached. Facts like these have great significance. It is not claimed that other factors do not go into the making of the man, but his relations with his parents is the earliest cause in determining his mental, moral and emotional make up. A man who hates his father sees in many of his future enemies the image of his father. One who is overattached to his mother looks unconsciously for her counterpart, among women, in seeking his mate. He sees a reminder of his father in those people who interfere with his plans, ambitions and conduct. He sees the father in the rivals he has in love affairs, just as in infancy he found in his father his rival in the affections of his mother. This seemingly absurd and repellent view has been scientifically demonstrated by Freud and his disciples so that I refer objectors to it to their works.