The Oedipus Effect is named after the Ancient Greek myth of Oedipus Rex, where the King is informed his son will kill him and take the throne. In an effort to avoid this, the King sets into motion a chain of events that will cause it to happen. This is also known as a self fulfilling prophecy. In the case of time travel, the Oedipus Effect refers to the reaction the timeline has to attempting to go back and alter your own time stream.
Altering the Past
Altering the past causes temporal changes to progress through time in ripples of temporal energy like a stone being thrown into a pond. Each ripple reacts off of every object in encounters causing other ripples until the kinetic energy dies down and the pond is calm again. In the case of altering the timeline, these ripples are made of temporal energy which progresses through time/space in a roughly spheroid pattern from point of origin, though in this case more like a glome or 3-sphere (a sphere bound by 4 dimensions).
Since the time stream has a natural balance brought by a timeline moving smoothly and in an orderly fashion from one point in time to another, physical forces are at work to stabilize and maintain this equilibrium. Any alteration in the timeline creates effects to counterbalance the temporal entropy (that is, the randomness caused by altering a previous point in the timeline). When this entropy builds after a change is made, it is released as a temporal wave.
Altering Your Own Timeline
Having any impact at all on your own time-stream (the causal chain of events of your own past) is not only against Solas Tempus regulations but also very dangerous. In the event that a person own time stream is altered, it is probable that any alteration could cause yourself to not go back in time in the first place. In the event of a minor alteration which does not result in the act of going back in time being prevented, the timeline sends out a destructive temporal wave that will attempt to alter your own history. If it is prevented from altering you - due a sufficiently powerful temporal shield - you would find yourself in a world where you might be unaware (sometimes completely) of your own past. This, however, is the best case scenario when altering your own timeline.
Causality Paradox
Should an alteration to the timeline prevent yourself from going back in time and causing the alteration, a causality paradox is formed. This will put the time stream into a completely out of balance state which will trigger a number of potential outcomes.
Fixed Event
This can create a temporarily fixed event where a series of events must happen. In this instance the laws of quantum probability become fixated upon the single event occurring. If the event does not occur, the effect intensifies creating more and more improbable situations in which the problem event occurs until enough entropy builds up in the time-stream to release an Infinity Wave.
Time Loop
A temporal causality loop occurs where a folded pocket of space-time is created containing the person going back into time and ending in the event itself which is changed. The only way to break the causality loop is to let the event happen. If the event continues to not happen, the loop intensifies until the pocket of space-time collapses in upon itself.
Eradication
In some way time rearranges itself to remove the event of going back in time from the timeline, to leave the original timeline intact. In this case the person or ship that actually travels back in time is erased from the timeline or altered to such a degree that the move back in time cannot happen. The extent to which this occurs is heavily dependent on the magnitude of the change, it is possible for this to cause an Infinity Wave as well if enough temporal entropy builds up.
Reset
If a causality paradox occurs that is so massive that enough entropy builds up surrounding the event, it can be released in an Infinity Wave which will completely wipe out and reorganize the current timeline. In this case it is predictable that the entire timeline and all of its components will be radically altered into a completely new configuration.
Theory / Fact
While some experimental data has given concrete examples of expressions of these effects on a small scale, there is no data on how the timeline would react to a large paradox. It is possible that any one of (or one that is yet unknown) the theories here will come to pass. In any event, if enough temporal entropy is build up from continued changing of ones own time stream occurs, that temporal entropy will be released as a catastrophic Infinity Wave.