We can question whether the particular configuration of Freud’s own family made him especially sensitive to Oedipal issues. Twenty years separated Freud’s parents, Amalia and Jacob, the same age difference between Freud and his mother. Freud was his mother’s (but not his father’s) first born and by many accounts had a particularly close and intense relationship with her throughout his whole life. She died at age 95, only nine years before her son died.