But still in all they had to admit that he loved his mother

One of the most misunderstood concepts of Freudian psychology is the Oedipus Complex. As the joke goes, a Freudian slip is when you say one thing, and meant your mother. It's one of his more popular theories and ridiculed to the extreme.

I was one of those mockers, and the idea seems a bit extreme. At its basic definition, the Oedipus Complex "derives from the boy's unconscious rivalry with his father for the love of his mother." Of course, this then manifests itself in unhealthy ways, such as an unnatural fixation on the mother, or "a fear of castration and an identification of the father with strict authority in all forms; subsequent hostility to authority is therefore associated with the Oedipal ambivalence" (Source: A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature, Guerin et al, 134).

What a silly concept, we all say. Why would boys want to kill their fathers and have sex with their mothers? Well, not sex, perhaps, but as much as we abhor the concept, why does the Oedipus Complex appear so much in literature? And, well, in Final Fantasy games?

The most famous villain in the Final Fantasy series, Sephiroth, suffered a ridiculous Oedipal Complex. He kills his father, Hojo, and is obsessed with his mother, Jenova. He breaks her out of Shinra's headquarters, dragging her bloody, alien body all over Midgar and beyond. So although he was unhinged and responsible for mass murder and genocide, you can at least say he really loved his mother.

Seymour is also another villain in the Final Fantasy series who has an Oedipal Complex. He kills his father in anger, and then totes his personal aeon around which turns out to be - who else? - his mother. Interestingly enough, his mother-now-in-aeon-form is known as Anima, which is also the name of the complex Jungian archetype of the same moniker. "Jung gives the anima a feminine designation in the male psyche, pointing out that the 'anima-image is usually projected upon women'....In this sense, anima is the contra-sexual part of a man's psyche, the image of the opposite sex that he carries in both his personal and his collective unconsciousness" (Guerin, 181).

Along with Seymour, another character has a strong Oedpial streak - Tidus, the main character. He hates his "old man," there's no secret about that. So much he hates him that when his old man goes missing in the sea, Tidus hopes he never comes back and that he died. This complex relationship with his father is explored and played out, and - spoiler alert! - even comes to blows, fulfilling a physical manifestation and desire of Tidus' complex. Did Square intend Final Fantasy X to be just a massive mess of psychoanalytical theories?