That's one of the main criticisms of Freud, that he based too many things around sex. But I do however rate him on the other things he came up with.

The 'attraction' isn't all about sex. Basically to sum up what Freud said about parent-child relationships, I'll use the concept of the Oedipus Complex - used for boys. Young boys have an attraction to their mothers and want to have her all to themselves (not wanting to have sex but want attention and love) but there's a problem.....the father. The boy is scared that the father may castrate him (cut his penis off), and as the boy knows he cannot win the 'battle' because the dad is bigger and stronger than him, he joins the father so it's a happy ending.

For girls, it's called the Electra Complex. Everything's the same as the Oedipus Complex except for castration, Freud believed that girls already have been castrated and to make up for that loss they have babies to compensate. I know, he has been criticised for this aswell.

I remember when I was doing a-level psychology, whenever Freud was mentioned, the girls and boys would start arguing with each other, and obviously we won 8).

What would Freud know:

[i]"The great question that has never been answered and which I have not been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul is....'What Does A Women Want'"[/i]

- Sigmund Freud

enough said.

yes yes it all sounds very sexual to me talk of castration and what not, it's all so sickly perverse, this man was clearly nuts, i remember all this stuff i took psychology at A-Levels.