Int J Psychoanal (2016) 97:893–913 doi: 10.1111/1745-8315.

12561

The Oedipus complex: A confrontation at the central

cross-roads of psychoanalysis1

Raul Hartke
Rua Dr. Tauphick Saadi, 230 casa 2, CEP:90.470-040, Porto Alegre, RS,
Brazil – rahartke@brturbo.com.br

(Accepted for publication 1 May 2015)

The theory of the Oedipus complex as Freud formulated it rests on the fol-
lowing pillars: the child’s characteristic sexual and aggressive impulses con-
cerning the parents, phallic monism, and the castration complex. This paper
reviews the context in which Freud discovered the Oedipus complex, as well
as Freud’s theory. It then examines the proposals of later authors whose gen-
eral Oedipal theories differ from Freud’s in an attempt to point out both their
possible correlations and confrontations with Freud. It includes Klein’s
pre-genital Oedipal theory, Lacan’s structuralist reinterpretation, Bion’s
reconception of the complex under the knowledge vertex, Green’s generalized
triangulation theory, Meltzer’s notions of the aesthetic object and sexual
mental states, and Chasseguet-Smirgel’s archaic Oedipal matrix

Keywords: Oedipus complex, phallic phase, castration, oedipal structure, psychic

development

Freud and the theory of the Oedipus complex

For Freud the access to genitality and to the choice of a sexual object in
adult life depend fundamentally on one’s adequately overcoming the Oedi-
pus complex. This is because both genitality and the choice of an object are
not biologically predetermined for human beings. Beyond this, subjects’
identities and psychopathologies, as well as their intersubjective and social
relations, are at their foundation structured around this complex. The Oedi-
pus complex is thus the nuclear complex, the structural referential focal
point of psychic life. If one amalgamates Freud’s hypotheses concerning the
primal horde’s assassination of the father and its group consequences as
developed in Totem and Taboo (1913), one can say that the Oedipus com-
plex has given rise to civilization.
This theoretical point of view represents the apogee of Freud’s protracted
deliberations on this matter. The general Oedipal theory was only definitively
established in 1923, and was further developed in Freud’s published works
between the years 1923 and 1926. It rested on a tripod formed by the concepts
of phallic organization, the Oedipus complex, and the castration complex.
I shall outline Freud’s theory and then present what seem to me to be the
important and original contributions of later authors. I shall attempt to

1
Translated from the Portuguese by Arthur Brakel.

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894 R. Hartke

establish the correlations and confrontations of these works with Freud’s

original proposals and with each other. I have included those authors who I
feel have developed formulations that address the general theory of the
complex. I shall only provide a historic overview of Freud’s conceptualiza-
tions, given that his theorizations are taken to be the reference point for the
other authors.
Freud’s discovery, which was crucial to his own self-analysis and to
the development of psychoanalysis, occurred in the autumn of 1897. He
described it in his correspondence with Fliess (Masson, 1985). The pro-
cess began with Freud discarding his theory that neurosis was caused by
real trauma occurring in childhood, i.e. trauma based on sexual seduction
by one’s father, which he announced in his letter to Fliess on September
21st 1897. According to Freud himself, he renounced his earlier theory,
because he had never managed to carry an analysis to its ‘real conclu-
sion’, i.e. to patients’ memories of an actual seduction, he realized the
impossibility of there being so many perverse fathers (including his own),
and because he believed that the unconscious contained no way to of
distinguishing between truth and fiction. Immediately after this final affir-
mation, Freud added something parenthetically that would turn out to
be crucial: “Accordingly, there would remain the solution that the sexual
fantasy invariably seizes upon the theme of the parents” (Masson, 1985,
p. 265).
In the days that followed Freud went on with his self-analysis. But he
kept searching for real scenes from the past which could be rescued from
his unconscious through the interpretation of his dreams. He discovered
that, rather than his father, the person responsible for his neurosis must
have been his nurse, who had initiated him sexually. He also affirmed that
his libido regarding his mother had been aroused when he was between two
or two-and-a-half years of age. During a trip he had slept next to her, and
he probably saw her naked. At this point the child’s sexual desire for the
mother comes on stage.
So, at the same time that Freud examines and comes face-to-face with
dilemmas concerning his patients’ neuroses, and precisely so as to under-
stand them deeply, he examines his own mental life. And he does this by
analyzing his dreams, which he continues to think of as the “royal road” to
examining the unconscious.
On 15 October, however, Freud wrote that his self-analysis had suddenly
stopped. This stoppage lasted for three days during which he experienced
the devastating sensation of ‘being tied up inside’ (Masson, 1985, p. 270).
He attributed this state of affairs to a ‘resistance to something surprisingly
new’ (p. 271) and made a brief reference to a dream in which he had felt
tremendous resentment for one of his childhood doctors, concluding that he
finally understood the meaning of a memory that for some twenty-five years
would haunt him: ‘my mother was nowhere to be found; I was crying in
despair. My brother Philipp (twenty years older than I), unlocked a ward-
robe for me, and when I did not find my mother inside it either, I cried
even more, until, slender and beautiful, she came in through the door’
(Masson, 1985, p. 271). He now understood that when he could not find his
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 The Oedipus complex: Confrontations in psychoanalysis 895

mother, he feared she had disappeared just like the nurse who had been
arrested shortly before for stealing money and toys.
Thus when Freud resumed his self-analysis, after overcoming an impor-
tant resistance, matters related to the resentment of a paternal figure (a doc-
tor) and to the fear of losing his mother, whom he suggestively described as
‘slender and beautiful’, came to the fore.
Then he suddenly revealed that:

A single idea of general value dawned on me. I have found, in my own case too,
[the phenomenon of] being in love with my mother and jealous of my father, and I
now consider it a universal event in early childhood, even if not so early as in chil-
dren who have been made hysterical [ . . . ] If this is so, we can understand the grip-
ping power of Oedipus Rex, in spite of all the objections that reason raises against
the presupposition of fate; [ . . . ] the Greek legend seizes upon a compulsion which
everyone recognizes because he senses its existence within himself. Everyone in the
audience was once a budding Oedipus in fantasy and each recoils in horror from
the dream fulfillment here transplanted into reality, with the quantity of repression
which separates his infantile state from his present one.
(Masson, 1985, p. 272).

Freud went on to say that the thought that this very drama must underlie
Shakespeare’s Hamlet. He offered a short analysis of that drama, but as
Masson (1985) points out he said that Hamlet murdered Laertes (Ophelia’s
brother), when in truth he murdered Polonius (Ophelia’s father) thinking
that he was his uncle, the king. Could it be that this mistake is a defense
against the Oedipal parricidal wish that Freud was in the process of discov-
ering, and which he began to relate to Hamlet’s qualms about avenging his
father’s death by killing his murderous uncle?
Thus, after a period of marked resistance, and as he was seeking out real
references for the content of his dreams, Freud discovered the Oedipal fan-
tasy, which he immediately asserted as a human universal and which consti-
tuted what in 1910 came to be known as the Oedipus complex.
Freud’s process of discovery of this complex suggests that (Hartke, 1997),
like Sophocles’s tragic Oedipus, Freud began this work incessantly searching
for the crime’s perpetrator (i.e. the perverse father who was responsible for
his sons’ and daughters’ hysteria), but he ended up realizing that he himself
had those murderous desires toward his father. And, beyond this, he discov-
ered this universal parricidal wish and the desire to possess the mother sexu-
ally a few days before the first anniversary of his father’s death (He had
died on 23 October 1896 [Gay, 1989]). However, at that time, he considered
this finding to be only something parallel to his research on the origin of
hysteria, and he maintained he only had a ‘fleeting idea’ that this would
also be present in Hamlet.
As Green (1994) points out, Freud only gave this discovery its due impor-
tance as a concept some twenty years later, and the only text in all his work
that directly addressed this theme deals with its dissolution. Thus it seems
that after this disturbing discovery, the father of psychoanalysis once more
blinds himself—just like Oedipus. At that time, and perhaps for many years

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896 R. Hartke

thereafter, he could not discern all the clinical and theoretic consequences
of his discovery. Many years later he declared that he had been perplexed
for some time after realizing that the scenes of childhood seduction his
patients described had not happened. But, he added, he had made another
discovery stemming from his mistake. That is, that neurotic symptoms had
their origin in ‘wishful phantasies’ (1925b, p. 34) and not in real facts. In
patients’ recounting scenes of seduction, he had “stumbled for the first time
upon the Oedipus complex, which was later to assume such an overwhelm-
ing importance, but which I did not recognize as yet in its disguise of phan-
tasy” (Freud, 1925b, p. 34).
Bleichmar (1991) has succeeded in synthesizing Freud’s general theory of
the Oedipal complex. For Bleichmar there are three moments of synthesis
that correspond to three different formulations. The first formulation is
contained in a letter to Fliess dated 15 October 1897 and in the section of
The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) pertaining to dreams about the death of
loved ones. At this time Freud considered sexuality to be biologically prede-
termined, and the boy child, in its status as an already sexually constituted
subject, regarded its parents under the influence of the Oedipus complex: he
sexually desired his mother and was a rival to his father. The Oedipus com-
plex was seen as having nothing to do with identity determination or with
the choice of sexual objects. It would only be a factor in the formation of
the unconscious, since incestuous and hostile Oedipal desires would need to
be expelled from consciousness by repression because they entered into con-
flict with the dominant currents in psychic life. Freud postulated a symmet-
rical parallel between male and female Oedipus complexes, and he only
took into account the so-called positive Oedipus complex.
In its second formulation, set out in Chapter 7 of Group Psychology and
the Analysis of the Ego (1921) and in Chapter 3 of The Ego and the Id
(1923a), Freud describes the complete Oedipus complex, both positive and
negative. He sees it as present in all human beings owing to our innate
bisexuality. In specific individuals the relative force of masculine and femi-
nine components would be responsible for the predominance of a direct or
inverted complex. The crucial point, however, is that sexual identity is no
longer considered predetermined. It is now seen as the result of identifica-
tions derived from introjections that occur in overcoming the complex.
Finally, in the third period, which began in The Infantile Genital Organi-
zation: An Interpolation into the Theory of Sexuality (1923b), Freud trans-
forms the castration complex into the central spring of the Oedipus
complex. In addition, he postulates a radical asymmetry as far as boys’ and
girls’ Oedipus complexes are concerned.
After this evolution it appears that there is a final version of the Freudian
Oedipal theory that requires what Freud calls the pre-Oedipal period or
“pre-history of the Oedipus complex” as a point of departure (please add
reference). For both sexes this period is characterized by an original,
intense, and exclusive relationship with the mother. During this period the
child goes from the oral to the anal phase and, finally to the phallic phase.
Freud made the latter phase explicit in 1923 in The Infantile Genital Organi-
zation, and it is one of the pillars of his Oedipal theory. It entails the
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 The Oedipus complex: Confrontations in psychoanalysis 897

unification of partial drives governed by the genital organ’s predominance.

Thus it amounts to a fully-fledged sexual organization different to the ear-
lier ones. But in this period both sexes recognize only one sexual organ, the
male one, and this is different from what will happen during puberty, when
children achieve true genital organization. Girls pay no attention to the
vagina, rather they consider the clitoris their main erogenous zone. Thus
the masculine/feminine opposition of the adult genital phase corresponds to
the phallic/castrated phase of the infantile period. Childhood genital organi-
zation is linked both to the apex of the Oedipus complex and its dissolu-
tion. Before this phase boys display an affectionate identification with their
fathers and are not rivalrous with them regarding their mothers. The wishes
and fantasies characteristic of the Oedipus complex emerge during the phal-
lic phase and betray a double orientation derived from our innate bisexual-
ity. Thus the boy child wants to take the father’s place as the mother’s love
object (positive or active Oedipus complex), or it wants to stand in for the
mother as the object of the father’s desires (negative or passive Oedipus
complex).
In that crucial moment of the Oedipus process the other pillar of the
Oedipus complex intervenes—castration anxiety as a response to the infan-
tile fantasies connected to Oedipal wishes. The castration complex was first
described in 1908. But only beginning in 1923 was it connected to the phal-
lic phase and to the Oedipus complex. At this point it became universal and
acquired decisive importance in the sexual development of both sexes. The
fear of losing one’s penis was seen as the threat of a nuclear narcissistic
wound because, beginning with the phallic phase, having a penis is consid-
ered an essential part of the ego image and is crucial for narcissistic integ-
rity. The appearance of that anxiety likely comes from the combined effect
of boys’ awareness that girls have no penis as well as from real or fanta-
sized threats arising from boys’ masturbatory activities connected to their
Oedipal fantasies. But any verbal threats could only have such an effect
after having seen a girl’s genitalia, i.e. a posteriori (Nachtr€aglich). And to
explain this anxiety’s presence in all human beings and independent of real
threats, Freud appeals to the theory of primal fantasies (Urphantasien).
Freud (1918) likens these fantasies to ‘philosophic categories’ in the Kantian
sense of organizers of people’s impressions coming from real experiences.
They could be residue inherited from human pre-history and they could be
seen as functioning like animals’ instincts.
The consequence of castration anxiety is the dissolution (Untergang) or
demolition (Zertr€ ummerung) of the Oedipus complex owing to a male’s nar-
cissistic interest in preserving his genital organ. This is something quite dif-
ferent from mere repression, and Freud (1924) goes so far as to affirm that
the Oedipus complex will later have pathogenic effects if it is only repressed.
Libidinal cathexes are abandoned, desexualized and partially sublimated.
Oedipal objects are incorporated into the Ego and give rise to identifica-
tions that constitute the nucleus of the Superego. The latency period begins
and at that moment sexual development is interrupted.
Concerning girls, Freud (1931) sees their pre-Oedipal links with their
mothers as more important and protracted than that of boys. And innate
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898 R. Hartke

bisexuality is much more salient among girls, because among other reasons
they possess two erogenous zones: the clitoris (analog of the penis) and the
vagina. But, according to Freud, girls are unaware of their vagina until they
reach puberty. Girls’ sexual life is, thus, always divided into an initial phase
that is masculine in nature (with the clitoris as the erogenous zone) and a
later phase that is specifically feminine.
Girls’ exposure to boys’ penises imposes on them the reality of the sexes’
anatomical differences and leaves them not with the fear of castration, but
with the conviction that they were castrated. And this gives them the idea
that males are superior. They rebel against this situation and develop penis
envy. Their reactions to this are many and of fundamental importance for
their later development. They include castration denial (Verleugnung),
which gives rise to girls’ conviction that they have a penis. They reject
themselves as they are and can also develop a reaction formation responsi-
ble for “a masculinity complex” (Freud, 1931).
The most important consequence for girls’ later development is to aban-
don their mother as love object and replace her with their father. This
switch in sexual objects comes about owing mainly to their mothers’ failure
to give them a penis. They turn then to their fathers hoping to receive a
penis from them or to receive its symbolic equivalent—a child. Then a
change takes place concerning the sex of their object of desire in a manner
different from what happens with boys, and this finally introduces them to
the Oedipus complex while, in the boy, the fear of castration destroys the
Oedipal complex (Freud, 1925a). In 1931 Freud observes that the castration
complex actually puts girls in the normal, positive Oedipal situation, which
surmounts an earlier period governed by the negative complex in which girls
basically think of their fathers as rivals. By this reasoning, Freud maintains
that he does not need to give up his thesis that the Oedipus complex is the
nucleus of all neuroses—even though he recognizes that some neuroses have
their origin in patients’ primary relationships with their mothers.
Among girls there is no destruction of the complex since they have no
need for it, because they do not fear castration. Consequently, the complex
can continue full strength and only slowly be abandoned or repressed. And
Freud believes that because of this the female superego, which would be
heir to the castration complex, is less inexorable and impersonal than the
male superego.
Controversies concerning Freud’s theory of female sexual development
arose immediately after the publication of the 1925 article in which Freud
first expounded the theory. Some of these objections found their way into
Freud (1931), where he contests Horney’s theory, which she proposed in
1926—that penis envy would only emerge later on in girls’ development and
would be secondary inasmuch as it becomes a defense against feminine
impulses and the feminine relationship with the father. For Freud, deprecia-
tion and rejection of femininity among girls would basically derive from the
phallic phase’s typical masculine tendencies from which penis envy would
arise. Freud also opposes Jones, who proposed the thesis that the phallic
phase would constitute a secondary and defensive reaction among girls
rather than a genuine developmental stage.
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 The Oedipus complex: Confrontations in psychoanalysis 899

Finally, Freud rejects the backward step that Melanie Klein (1928) pro-
posed for the Oedipus complex. She places the complex’s origin in the sec-
ond year of life. For Freud this locus would bring with it a modification of
the entire theory of child development, especially that part of the theory
dealing with the pre-Oedipal connection with the mother, and it would not
correspond to the clinical findings of adult analyses.
The later controversies related to Freud’s theses regarding femininity were
reviewed by Birksted-Breen in 1993. In a later text Birksted-Breen (2005)
shows how this discussion, originally known as the ‘Freud-Jones debate’, is
still with us, albeit in different forms, and its continued discussion rather
than resolving the dispute has made the matter even more complex.

Melanie Klein: Pre-Genital Oedipus complex and the Combined

Parent Figure
For Freud, libidinal wishes, the phallic phase, and castration anxiety are the
foundation of Oedipal issues. For Klein, the bedrock is believed to be
destructive fantasies, the primary relationship with the mother’s breast, and
other anxieties more primitive than castration anxiety.
In her last systematic exposition on the Oedipus complex, Klein (1945)
takes the position that from the beginning libido and aggression are tangled
up with one another. Their development is crucially influenced by anxiety,
guilt, and depressive feelings derived from destructive fantasies in the con-
text of the so-called depressive position. Klein reaffirms her point of view
that the primary relationship with the maternal breast plays an essential
role in all later emotional and sexual development. She points out, nonethe-
less, that those partial objects are, from the beginning, associated in the
child’s mind with the mother and father as total objects. The early manifes-
tations of the Oedipus complex begin with the infant’s relationship with the
breast and are present during the first year of life.
The libido’s natural tendency to search out new sources of gratification,
along with the frustrations experienced with the breast, causes both boys
and girls to direct themselves toward the father’s penis, from which they
hope to find satisfaction for their oral impulses. The breast and the penis
are the primary objects of those impulses. Both the relationship with the
idealized gratifying breast, as well as with the bad frustrating breast, are
transferred to the penis.
Inevitable frustrations with the penis, as well as the child’s need to find
an idealized object that will protect them from the persecutory fears of
retaliation for their aggressive impulses (characteristics of the paranoid-
schizoid position) causes the child to want to return to the breast. Thus
begins an oscillation between two primary objects (penis and breast), and
this oscillation is responsible for an intimate interaction between the
positive and negative Oedipus complex inthe early days of life.
The infant’s initial control over their oral impulses promotes an introjec-
tion of the object, such that all the relationships have their counterpart in
the child’s inner world. Images of the breast and the penis also make up the
Superego’s nucleus, both in its persecutory and its protective aspects. Thus

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900 R. Hartke

for Klein (1945) the development of the Superego and the Oedipus complex
are intimately intertwined, and this point of view no longer sees the Super-
ego as heir to the Oedipus complex, as Freud would have it.
Genital impulses begin to manifest themselves at this time, towards both
the mother and the father — even when these impulses are still dominated
by a mixture of the oral, urethral, and anal libidos. Beginning with the early
months of life, the libidinal stages are superimposed on one another. Klein
(1945) presupposes that there is an unconscious, innate knowledge of the
vagina and the penis in both sexes. Based on this, she rejects the monist
phallic phase Freud proposed. For boys, genital sensations direct them
toward the father so as to possess his penis, as well as to the mother so as
to find an opening in which to insert the penis. For girls, there is an expec-
tation that they will receive the penis in their vagina. Genital wishes for the
paternal penis, which are still mixed up with oral wishes, bring about the
beginning of boys’ negative Oedipus complex and the positive complex for
girls.
According to Klein (1945), castration anxiety begins the moment that
genital sensations are felt. But since oral fantasies still prevail during that
period, among boys this anxiety takes the form of a fear that the father
will bite off their penis in retaliation for the boy’s desire to bite off their
father’s penis. This is an archaic, predominantly oral form of castration
anxiety. Even though she agrees with Freud’s thesis that castration anxiety
is the boy’s main fear, Klein (1945) maintains that this is not the only fac-
tor responsible for the decline in intensity of the Oedipus complex; she
sees this main factor as repression. This repression derives from other
archaic anxieties with different origins. The boy’s genital wishes are like-
wise repressed, owing to the fantasy that he harbors a hostile paternal
penis. As external objects are incorporated, he fear being attacked from
within by a persecuting mother or father or by the terrifying combined
parent figure that would not only destroy the boy’s penis from within, it
would also destroy all his body’s good contents, including babies. The
combined parent figure (Klein, 1928, 1952), characteristic of paranoid-schi-
zoid position, is the fantasy that one’s parents, or their sexual organs, are
united and give the parents mutual and permanent oral, anal, and genital
gratification. One of the paretn’s sexual organs contains within itself the
other one, or at least a part of the other. This corresponds, within the
context of the pre-genital, archaic Oedipus complex, to the primal scene
characteristic of the phallic phase and the Oedipus complex as Freud
described them. The Freudian primal scene in essence consists of a fanta-
sized sado-masochistic and a tergo sexual relation between the mother and
father as separate individuals.
Repression of the Oedipus complex is also promoted by depressive anxi-
eties, including the fear of one’s own penis, which can be experienced as
dangerous owing to the boy’s sadistic fantasies. In addition, this fear is
increased owing to the guilt the boy feels concerning his father. This guilt
comes from his own wish to castrate and kill his father, while at the same
time he loves his father and see him as a source of strength, protection, and
guidance. The boy also feels guilty in relation to his mother because he
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 The Oedipus complex: Confrontations in psychoanalysis 901

endangers her during his rivalry with his father, and because of his fantasy
that his mother will separate him from his father.
Among girls, the Oedipus the initial stages of the Oedipal complex are
similar to boys. But as soon as the girl’s genital impulses arise, the girl
start to want to have her father’s penis in their vagina, which is in accord
with the receptive nature of their sexual organ. Girls value the penis as a
baby provider because they have an innate, unconscious knowledge both
of their vagina and of carrying potential babies in their body. They expe-
rience these babies as a supreme endowment. Thus, contrary to Freud, in
the Kleinian conception the feminine wish to take in the penis and to get
a child from the father always precedes their wish to have their own
penis (Klein, 1945). Penis envy, although it is there, is secondary to the
desire to receive the penis, and this comes from the frustrations, anxiety,
and guilt linked to the feminine position during the positive Oedipus
complex.
The girl’s Oedipal rivalry manifests itself essentially as the wish to steal
both the paternal penis from the mother, as well as the babies she contains
in her body, since unconsciously the girl thinks of her mother as the source
of all that is good. The girl’s fantasy of the mother’s containing within her
the father’s penis, which she incorporated during coitus, is different from
the phallic mother Freud postulated. In Freud’s formulation, the mother
possesses her own penis, a sexual organ identical to that of a man.
As a consequence of that rivalry, the girl’s main and persistent anxiety is,
according to Klein (1945), the fear of having her body attacked and of hav-
ing her good internal objects destroyed by a bad retaliatory mother.
In 1952 Klein introduced the notion of primary envy directed first at the
nurturing breast. She insists that the passage from the breast to the penis
occurs so as to avoid depressive anxiety experienced in relation to the
mother. The archaic stages of both the direct and inverted Oedipus complex
provide relief and help to surmount the depressive position. Klein further
emphasizes the importance of undoing the combined parent figure, so as to
achieve the adequate evolution of the Oedipus complex. Being able to dis-
tinguish the two parents makes it possible to profit from the relationship
with both parents at the same time, and it allows children to understand
their parents’ relationship with one another, which is the precondition for
the child’s hope to be able to unite them in a loving fashion.
I have presented Klein’s proposals in great detail to emphasize their dif-
ference, not just concerning the Oedipal theory but also concerning the gen-
eral conception of psychoanalysis.
Baranger (1976) attributes these differences to Klein’s excessive genetic
focus, which sets up a different type of psychoanalysis. For Baranger, even
though the relationship with the breast may be chronologically earlier, from
the logical point of view the triangular situation comes before the dual situ-
ation. Based on a Lacanian point of view, Baranger maintains that the sym-
bolic castration that the symbolic father exercises allows the dyadic
structure mother/son to break down, and it allows the son to become a dis-
tinct unit. “‘Three’ imposes a differentiation within the dyadic union and
allows ‘one’ to appear, as the subject.” (1976, p. 300).
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902 R. Hartke

Concerning the matter of the father, who is central in the Lacanian view-
point, Baranger maintains that in the Kleinian framework the father
appears in the child’s mind merely as a secondary differentiation from the
mother. Different to Freud’s supposed phallocentrism, for Klein the father
is a substitute for the omnipotent maternal figure. The penis could only be
psychically conquered based on the primary relationship with the breast.
Baranger recognizes and appreciates Klein’s clinical findings concerning the
Oedipal phenomena that are detectible at a much younger age than Freud
maintained. However, Baranger does not agree with the theoretical conse-
quences Klein extracts from her data.
Birksted-Breen (1993) also concludes that the Kleinian theoretical orienta-
tion entails a developmental theory that gives rise to a model of psycho-
analysis that is different from with the Freudian point of view. Klein’s way
of thinking mainly considers the action of the past on the present in a linear
historical sequence in which everything, right from the beginning has
meaning. The French and Freudian outlook, on the other hand, privileges
specific developmental moments, - the memory traces of these moments
become retroactively meaningful and bring about a generalized psychic
reorganization through the Nachtr€ aglichkeit process:

This [French] perspective of Nachtr€uglichkeit underlines a view of psychical tempor-

ality and causality which departs from historical progression. It rules out a view of
the subject’s history reduced to linear determinism which envisages only the action
of the past and the present (Laplanche and Pontalis 1973). For Klein, on the other
hand, everything has a meaning from the beginning (de Mijolla 1973) and influ-
ences later development, and this is a crucial theoretical difference. This linear
development, of course, does not mean simple cause and effect, but the castration
complex (for instance) is not seen by Klein as a moment of retrospective psychic
re-structuring or a privileged moment but only as lived out in function of earlier
developments.

This opposition between a conception of a linear development and one which

moves around moments of privileged re-structuring makes for a fundamentally dif-
ferent conception of the unconscious and psychic development, and creates a cul-
tural divide between French and Anglo-Saxon psychoanalysis which can make
dialogue meaningless if this is not understood.2
(Birksted-Breen: 1985).

Green (1995) sustains that Klein made oral fixation insurmountable or,
minimally, without par. When she gave primacy to destructivity and the
breast, she reduced erotic drives to mere defenses.

2
Birksted-Breen continues: ‘For Freud, and this is highlighted by Lacan, the castration complex refers to
that privileged moment in which earlier experiences are reorganised and given special meaning, initiating
the meaning of masculinity and femininity. It is not reducible to earlier experiences; ‘castration’ is a ‘pri-
mal phantasy’ which organises phantasy life, irrespective of personal experiences. It is, as it were,
imposed on the individual. For Klein the Oedipus complex and the castration complex are part of a pro-
gressive and ‘natural’ evolution, evolving out of lived and instinctual experiences.’ (Birksted-Breen: 1993)

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 The Oedipus complex: Confrontations in psychoanalysis 903

Lacan: The Oedipus Complex as Structure and Symbolic

Castration
In Lacanian theory the Oedipus complex is not the developmental stage of
an individual, it is a preexisting structure that the child must face. It is cre-
ated by parents who also experienced it (Green, 1990). More precisely, it is
“an intersubjective structure” (Bleichmar, 1984, p. 18): it is something that
happens outside the child and into which the child is inserted. ‘Structure’ in
this case means an organization characterized by interdependent positions
that constitute one another and that sustain each other. These positions or
places can be occupied by different personages at different times. They are
defined by something that circulates among them but does not belong
inherently to any one member. That is, one of them may have it, but is not
it. This something circulates contingently and confers a certain function to
whoever has it, and because of this whoever does not have it, wants it. For
Lacan this something is the Phallus. This is not the real penis; it is, rather,
something that appears in place of an absence.
As references to describe this Lacanian conceptualization, I shall be using
writing by Dor (1991, 1992), Bleichmar (1984), Marini (1996) and Lander
(1998) in addition to Lacan’s own texts, especially chapters 9, 10, and 11
from book 5 of The Seminars (1998).
In the first instance of the Oedipus complex the child is identified with,
or rather is everything the mother might lack in considering herself abso-
lutely complete. Since, according to Lacan, the phallus is what fills the lack,
one can say that in this first instance the child is the phallus and the mother
has the phallus; consequently, the two experience each other as a complete
narcissistic unit in which the mother – in Lacan’s theory, the imaginary
phallic mother - makes and enforces all the laws. Thereby the Oedipus com-
plex in Lacan will articulate itself less around instinctive satisfaction, as
Freud advocates, and more in the dialectical play between the narcissistic
feeling of being something versus having something temporarily (Laplanche
and Pontalis, 1991).
In the second stage, owing to the father’s intervention, the child comes
face-to-face with what Lacan calls symbolic castration. This means that the
father (more correctly the paternal function) brings about a severance, a
‘castration’, when this function intervenes in the narcissistic mother-baby
relationship. For the child this counts as evidence that he/she is not every-
thing that was missing in the mother. Likewise, the mother realizes that the
child was not all that was lacking in herself. In other words, at this point
the father appears as a disciplinarian who frustrates the child as far as his/
her (imaginary) phallic identity is concerned, and who deprives the mother
of her phallus. One must emphasize that this intercession does not primarily
rest on the actual father, rather on the importance the mother attributes to
his authority.
After this ‘castration’ the child will first imagine that the father is abso-
lute completeness from which all norms emanate, i.e. that the father is the
phallus. That is, the child still believes there is someone who is lacking in
nothing.

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904 R. Hartke

Finally, in the third stage of the complex, corresponding to its decline, the
child understands that the father likewise is not complete, nor is he the ori-
gin of all norms. He merely carries out these norms circumstantially and in
the name of something belonging to the culture, i.e. the cultural laws which
are founded on the incest prohibition, to which the father himself is also sub-
ject. This law of laws imposes the difference between the sexes and the gener-
ations. Thus it regulates all the sexual exchanges between human beings, and
it establishes the difference between nature and culture. Consequently, in this
third stage the child perceives that the mother has no phallus, that the child
is neither the phallus nor does she have one. The father does have the phal-
lus, but he is not the phallus. The phallus is an institution situated in the cul-
ture, and based on this institution everyone is symbolically castrated. This
metaphorization of the father demands the substitution of the imaginary
father (who is the phallus), for the symbolic father (who only has one cir-
cumstantially), and allows the access to the symbolic order - to language and
to the symbolic Law. A basic postulate of the Lacanian theory is the differ-
entiation between the symbolic order, the imaginary register and the Real.
So that this process can occur, however, the mother must acknowledge her
symbolic castration, and the actual father must also accept his and recognize
in this way that he is not the law, he merely exercises the law in these cir-
cumstances, in the “Name-of-the-Father”.
At this point the child begins to see the father as the mother’s object of
desire because he has the phallus. The male child then begins to covet the
phallus where it actually is, i.e. on the father. This coveting leads to his iden-
tification with the father because of his anatomy. By recognizing that no one
is the phallus, the child’s identification will not be with an Ego Ideal (an
image of narcissistic perfection and completeness), it will, instead, be with an
Ideal of the Ego. In the latter case, the child does not identify with the father
as a person, but rather with his contingent position as the upholder of a
specific function. At this point the child assumes his identity as a sexed sub-
ject with only one sex, i.e. incomplete and for that reason desiring.
Lacan’s way of thinking about Oedipal matters constituted a return to
Freud (as he himself had said). He restored the importance of the father at
a time when other analysts were precipitously veering towards the mother-
baby relationship. But Lacan’s conceptualizations also entailed a redefini-
tion of that theory, because they were based on Levi-Strauss’s structuralism
and Saussurian linguistics.
Green (1990b) recognizes Lacan’s role in restoring the paternal function.
He goes on to say that Lacan integrated castration in a general theory of
lack and gave it a philosophical stamp. This constitutes a warning against
certain banal or even na€ıve interpretations of Freudian thought, but it could
also turn that thought into an abstract concept with no clinical impact,
Green said. Green proposes that Lacan could have advocated a sort of per-
manent primacy for the phallus, and thus for insurmountable castration.
The notion of an unavoidable symbolic castration would almost danger-
ously indicate an obligatory masochistic solution of the Oedipal Complex.
In Freud, on the other hand, the solution to the castration complex would
not be in its acceptance or in the failure to accept it, it would be found in
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 The Oedipus complex: Confrontations in psychoanalysis 905

renouncing the Oedipus complex and it being channeled into sublimations,

even if this might entail the altered reappearance of the complex in other
facets of human life.
Seeing the Oedipus complex as a structure has clearly influenced other
analysts’ thinking, including Green’s, as we shall see below.

Bion: The Oedipus Complex and the K Link

In 1962 Bion proposed the theory that the desire to know (the K Link) is
as elementary and basic as the links of love (L) and hate (H). Considering
the presence of these three links (rather than just love and hate) from the
beginning of mental life, several basic psychoanalytic concepts need to be
re-examined (Hartke, 2013). In this case the object also becomes a provider
of meanings, originally a propitiating breast for “comprehension, experi-
ence, and wisdom” (Bion, 1962, p. 11), instead of merely being what Melt-
zer (1983) referred to as “a service object”, i.e. a gratifier or a frustrator.
For many, the unconscious also becomes essentially all that is undiscovered
or “un-evolved” in human experience and not just a depository of amorous
and destructive drives. And in addition to the anxieties that have been clas-
sically described, another anxiety acquires relevance under the K vertex:
the “nameless dread” (Bion, 1962), which is the fear of the emotional expe-
rience of total loss of meaning. This may be the most fundamental help-
lessness the (thinking) human being might feel. From this point of view,
the Oedipus complex would need to be rethought, which Bion did. In
Freud’s work and that of the others considered so far, the Oedipus com-
plex basically entails conflicts between love and hate concerning one’s pro-
genitors. However, the importance Bion gives to the K link makes the
search for truth more relevant in the face of an envied set of parents. Such
a search includes narcissistic curiosity that, owing to its intrinsic narcissism,
becomes hubristic, and hubris will bring about punishment from the par-
ents, as in the Greek tragedies. The result will be mental confusion, mad-
ness, and stupidity.
According to Bion the K vertex:

makes the sexual crime a peripheral element of a story in which the central crime is
the arrogance of Oedipus in vowing to lay base the truth at no matter what cost.
(1957, p. 86)

Bion proposes that there is a personal version of the Oedipal myth in

every human being’s mind. It is a sort of innate pre-conception that is part
of the primitive equipment necessary for a child to be able to understand
the nature of the parents’ relationship. In this sense, the pre-conception is a
precursor of the Oedipal situation. In its status as a pre-conception, it con-
stitutes a container comparable to Kant’s empty thinking. It is a type of
empty form that will allow one to recognize an aspect of reality (the case in
point being the parents’ sexual relationship). It is not a mental content to
be activated and given meaning through experience, as is the case in Freud’s
originary fantasies.

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906 R. Hartke

When Bion affirms Oedipus’s insistence in knowing the truth regardless

of the price, he is referring to Oedipus’s obstinacy (as the king of Thebes)
in uncovering Laius’s assassin. I wonder, however, whether Oedipus’s hubris
in relation to his knowledge did not come about when the Sphinx proposed
the enigma. In this sense the mythologist Paul Diel proposes (in Brand~ao,
1992) that when Oedipus confronted and defeated the Sphinx, he thought
of himself as a liberating hero for his city, i.e. ‘the world’. But in truth,
what happened was that Oedipus had turned his own anxiety and deficiency
into neurotic self-sufficiency. His narcissistic need for compensation
impeded his understanding that the enigma the Sphinx proposed alluded to
Oedipus as well – and to his history. Oedipus was the young man with
swollen feet who was already walking on three legs since he needed a cane
because of his childhood injuries.
In 1965 Bion postulated ‘O’ as the unknowable ultimate reality and the
transformation into ‘O’. From a psychoanalytic vertex ‘O’ would identify
the personality’s ultimate reality, the real self, something central to emo-
tional experience, a personal essence that cannot be known. All we can do
is go on “becoming” that real individual.

Meltzer: Sexual States of Mind and the Combined Internal

Object
Whereas in Freud we find the primal scene generally described as a sado-
masochistic relationship and in Klein we come across the menacing com-
bined parent figure, in Meltzer (1973) we start hearing much more about a
pleasurable and creative primal scene as being the nucleus of adult sexual-
ity. Meltzer, thanks to the function of his Superego Ideal, makes what he
calls the “internal combined object” the inspirational font of all human sex-
ual, intellectual, and artistic creativity. This ideal is originally constituted by
the nipple-breast. It evolves during the latter phases of the depressive posi-
tion and becomes the introjected image of the mother’s sexual relationship
with the father (mainly with his penis, testicles, and semen). This is the pri-
mal scene of the repairing coital relation characteristic of the depressive
position.
Meltzer (1973) takes up the matter of the sexual states of mind in the
unconscious underlying motivations and fantasies of sexual behavior. He
does this more because rather than sexual activity (on a descriptive level),
the unconscious itself is what interests psychoanalysts. He distinguishes
three of those states according to how the self participates in the primal
scene.
The mental state Meltzer calls adult polymorphous sexuality is uncon-
sciously based on an introjective identification with the internal parents’ cre-
ative, complex, and plentiful sexual relationship. This identification implies
an appropriate integration of one’s bisexuality, since the scene entails both
a masculine and a feminine part. Such an identification facilitates an ade-
quate identification with the other sex’s needs and anxieties. In contrast to
infantile polymorphism, this polymorphism is healthy. Since the foundation
of sex is unconscious amorous motivation, the anal and cunilingual

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 The Oedipus complex: Confrontations in psychoanalysis 907

relationships, the desire to suck, indeed all the varieties of genital coitus
entail mutual pleasure and reparation at the same time that the object of
genital tendencies is to make babies. That mental state presupposes a ‘penis
and testicles’ connected to pleasure but also to procreation and creative
work. It also implies a vagina and a uterus, I might add.
In the case of infantile polymorphous sexuality, Oedipal jealousy and
competition put in motion by the evidence of the parents’ copulation, make
the child’s or the self’s infantile part unable to tolerate giving up the objects
involved in creative coitus. Nor can the child tolerate putting off the corre-
sponding gratification. Through projective identification the child tries to
insert his male or female part into the parents’ coitus. Confusion of eroge-
nous zones and the desire to experiment, typical of that mental state, bring
out a polymorphism based on projective identification, which leads to mimi-
cry and impedes the understanding of the other as a subject rather than as
a mere object. Sensuality is predominant in relation to creative aims and
brings about a voraciousness for pleasure that cannot be attained and thus
is never satisfying. It implies a penis without testicles associated with an
irresponsible thrill, phallic arrogance, and sterile diversion. I think it also
implies a vagina ready for seduction and pleasure, but without a uterus and
with no regard for procreation.
Infantile perverse sexuality comes from the alliance between the bad parts
of the self and the object, and the objectives are essentially destructive as
far as development and integration of the good and creative aspects of sex
are concerned. The basic motivation here is envy of the combined object’s
creativity, beauty and strength in mainly the parental sexual scene. The
objective is not just to destroy the scene’s good qualities, rather and espe-
cially it institutes and idealizes through “negativism” (Meltzer, 1973) every-
thing the scene means. Being, therefore, fundamentally anti-nature. This
perverse mental state entails a fecal penis that is inimical to creation and, as
I see it, a corresponding transformation of the uterus into a rectum.
Later on Meltzer (1992) began a deeper study of mental states brought
on by fantasies of invasions into the internal mother’s compartments owing
to intrusive projective identifications. He contrasted these with those states
of imagination activated from without. Those states deal with what occurs
in such spaces, i.e. head/breast, genital and rectum. He linked this process
to his concept of aesthetic conflict, including what could be called the ‘the-
ory of the aesthetic object’, which constitutes the final phase of his work,
what I have called the ‘Last Meltzer’ (Hartke, 2004; 2008).
Deeply influenced by Bion during this period, Meltzer maintains that an
essential aspect of the experience in intimate relationships comes from there
being a difference and a conflict between the perceived and admired exterior
of the other, which the senses apprehend, and the ambiguous and essentially
mysterious interior of the other, of which only one’s imagination can con-
ceive. Meltzer (1988) calls this the “aesthetic conflict”. The impact of this
situation generates a peculiar link by combining love, hate, and desire to
know on the one hand, and on the other hand, strong anti-link emotions.
Such a conflict can only be tolerated when the object reciprocates. Contrari-
wise, defenses against pain and uncertainty, insecurity, and even distrust will
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908 R. Hartke

be activated. These anxieties will be generated by the inaccessible interior,

and will give rise to retreats within the relationship, or to intrusive omnipo-
tent fantasies that are responsible for important psychopathologies. Intru-
sive fantasies seek to avoid the above anxieties through transforming the
other’s essentially mysterious interior into a mere secret that can eventually
be resolved. This amounts to an invasion of one’s privacy, which Meltzer
understands to be the spaces of the other, be they social, physical or mental,
that can only be known and shared through invitation and acceptance. Such
a violation constitutes the emotional fundament of all forms of human vio-
lence (Meltzer, 1988).
When there is reciprocity in intimate relationships, respect for each per-
son’s mysterious interior, privacy brings about an expansion of the human
capacity to imagine and create. That is, to generate, develop, and use
idiosyncratically symbolic forms to represent emotions and communicate
them to others.
Only after resolving the geographic confusion (parts of one’s self that are
confused with the object owing to intrusive projective identification), as well
as the zonal confusion (between penis and feces, for example), can one
reach the threshold of the depressive position, at which point the true geni-
tal Oedipal complex begins to take center stage. It institutes the conflicts
related to the combined object and to the privacy of parental coitus. Or, as
Meltzer would say, to the sacred intimacy and mystery of the nuptial cham-
ber (1988). The adult sexual state is the only one that recognizes, and is
inspired by, the combined object and that also respects the essential privacy
and mystery of the nuptial chamber, which Meltzer thinks of as an aesthetic
nuclear object.
Under the influence of infantile and perverse sexual states, the combined
object is attacked in many different ways, and the nuptial chamber is expe-
rienced as a secret that elicits intrusive desires to violate. Indeed, the parents
themselves often bring on these tendencies.

Green: Generalized Triangulation and the Primal Scene as the

Symbolic Matrix of the Oedipus Complex
In 1995 Green alerted us to what he considered to be current the (defensive)
disregard of sexuality in current psychoanalysis, where sexuality was no
longer seen as the primary factor in psychic development and psycho-
pathology. It was, rather, often thought of as a defense against supposed
underlying earlier or later aspects. For Green the unconscious, as Freud
maintained, is founded on sexuality and destructiveness, and the Oedipus
complex should be maintained as the central point of reference of psychic
life.
In his approach to the Oedipus complex, Green begins with Freud’s
observation that it includes the totality of the child’s relationship with his/
her parents. Green also adopts Lacan’s notion that the complex is not a
developmental phase, that it is instead a structure that antecedes the child
and makes children assume a place in their parents’ Oedipal matter before
the children actually experience it. At the same time, the child will also have

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 The Oedipus complex: Confrontations in psychoanalysis 909

to come to terms with the complex, since for Green (1995) (after Freud), all
human beings get to that point. Once the Oedipus complex is installed, it
gives new meanings to earlier experiences and determines all the later issues
related to sexual and generational issues. Even though it is essentially struc-
tural, it is also historical, to the extent that it “has a life of its own, an
apparent death, and an unconscious survival” (p. 104). Green provides a
general outline of the complex, including stages prior to its full force.
The starting point of the complex is what Green calls an open triangle.
He rejects the notion of an original exclusive relationship between the
mother and the baby, since this is a view from outside, and it ignores (mini-
mally) that the mother will always have the baby’s father in her mind. Thus
Green considered himself to be a defender of a “theory of generalized trian-
gulation” (1990).
But the triangle is held to be open because only the mother, who is the
structure’s central lynchpin, has a carnal relationship with both the father
and the child, whereas the child’s relationship with the father is mainly indi-
rect. The mother-baby link is fused, however triangulation is there as well.
The father inscribes himself within the triangle as an absent cause, the invis-
ible determinant of that link that is present in the mother’s mind. The
father’s effective manifestation will come about as an interruption in that
fused link. At this point, for the baby, the father goes from being an absent
cause to being another object in the triangle, or more specifically - the
other’s object. We now have a patent triangular situation that is still not
Oedipal, because, even though the two parental images are present and dif-
ferentiated, the child cannot yet make sense of the particular link that binds
the parents to one another. The child only understands his fraternal link
with his siblings, and at that time he is not able to understand the link
between his parents (Green, 1994). Then, besides having come to under-
stand that he is not the mother’s only object, nor is the mother the child’s
only object, the child also begins to suspect that there is some obscure,
secret link between the parents that makes the child recall his own carnal
connection with the mother. Now an other takes the child’s place during
the mother’s absences. It is at this a posteriori (Nachtr€aglich) point that the
primal scene fantasy comes into play and occasions a narcissistic blow that
is even bigger that the undoing of the fused link because it introduces “the
notion that someone else is injured: the child has been excluded from that
feared and desired relationship” (1994, p. 108).
Green (1988) insists on calling it “the primal scene fantasy” so as to make
sure that its central feature is not that it was witnessed, rather that it may
have occurred in the child’s absence. He thinks of it as “the symbolic
matrix” that will make the construction of the Oedipus complex possible, ‘a
fantasy that is isomorphic to the Oedipus complex’. (Green, 1988, p.266)
This fantasy will cause the child to want to separate the parental couple
so as to once more unite with the mother.
What follows is the Oedipal phase strictly speaking. It involves the phal-
lus’s primacy, the failed attempt to separate the primal scene couple and
from castration anxiety, coming both from the child’s jealousy projected
onto the father and from the negative Oedipus complex, which occasions
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910 R. Hartke

the definitive renunciation of the mother’s body and gives rise to the Super-
ego.
Green (1995) asserts that even in the case of non-neurotic psychopatho-
logical structures in which sexuality would seem to play a secondary role,
sexual and genital fixations form the core of their meaning. But the danger
in these cases is not castration anxiety owing to Oedipal wishes, it is, rather,
“the breaking away from the primary object and the subject’s exclusion
owing to his recognition of the link between the parents” (1995, p. 191).
The first glimpse of this break always occurs when the actual Oedipus com-
plex’s formation draws near.

Chasseguet-Smirgel: The Archaic Matrix of the Oedipus

Complex
Whereas Freud speaks of a pre-Oedipal period and insists on the Oedipus
complex and on the castration complex as intrinsically linked to the
phallus’s primacy, and Klein proposes a pre-genital Oedipus, Chasseguet-
Smirgel refuses to speak about a pre-Oedipal period and proposes (1988,
1991a,b) an archaic matrix for the Oedipus complex, and she challenges the
monistic phallus theory.
Klein describes the infant’s primitive relationship with the breast, then a
shift toward a penis that is fantasized as being inside the mothers body, and
a consequent transformation of the mother’s body into the outer world’s
and reality’s first representative. On the other hand Chasseguet-Smirgel
(1986) postulates a more fundamental and archaic primary desire for exclu-
sive and total return to the maternal uterus, i.e. for fusion with the mother.
The maternal interior would represent the pleasure principle rather than
reality, as Klein proposed. This primary wish is the mainspring of the Oedi-
pus complex’s archaic matrix. It gives rise to the desire to destroy all obsta-
cles that get in the way. And these obstacles are originally represented by
the father’s penis, by excrement, and by the babies still inside the mother’s
body. In terms of thinking, this fantasy is a return to a level of mental func-
tioning where all flows freely along, with no hindrance. It corresponds to a
primary process dominated by the pleasure principle and totally eliminates
the reality principle. The base in reality is the insurmountable difference
between the sexes and the generations that constitute the two sides of the
same coin (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1984). The difference between the sexes
implies not that the mother has been castrated (as Freud would have it),
but that she has a vagina and that only the father’s larger, fertile penis can
satisfy her, and this makes the child recognize the difference between gener-
ations. In the Oedipal situation the child envies the father because the child
is aware of the vagina, he wants to penetrate it, and he realizes that his
‘vague caresses’ are inadequate. This antecedes castration anxiety and can
serve as a defense against the humiliating perception that his infertile, tiny
infantile penis is insufficient. Freud’s theory of phallic monism for
Chasseguet-Smirgel is an attempt at assuaging a part of the narcissistic
wound common to all humanity. And it derives from human beings’ charac-
teristic pre-maturity. This pre-maturation creates a discrepancy between

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 The Oedipus complex: Confrontations in psychoanalysis 911

Oedipal desire and one’s ability to carry it out. And this realization makes
the child defend against and deny his innate knowledge of the penis and the
vagina.

Final Considerations
It is important to stress that these different conceptualizations concerning
the Oedipus complex often reflect general psychoanalytic postulates and in
some cases these authors base their work on different epistemological
assumptions. This makes it difficult or even impossible to use any theoret-
ical framework that might systematically and coherently unite them. To
parody Klein (1928), one always runs the risk of using them to construct
a conceptual combined figure instead of a fruitful pairing. Or as Chas-
seguet-Smirgel (1991) maintains, we would be homogenizing heterogeneous
conceptualizations. One alternative would be to see these authors as focus-
ing not only on different moments but also on different dimensions of
psychic life. If so, then Freud and Klein could be seen as emphasizing the
drive dimensions of human beings. Lacan highlights people’s condition as
members of a civilization. And Bion, just like Meltzer, emphasizes our
condition as thinking subjects. Another possibility, which I see as very
current in present-day psychoanalysis, is to use all these points of view as
specific theoretical tools which are useful at different clinical moments.
We need not worry too much about conceptual coherence among them,
and if we want to we can wait for a new general theory that could put
them together.
This is why I have put the phrase ‘a confrontation at the central cross-
roads of psychoanalysis’ in my title. This confrontation, when it is not dom-
inated by the narcissism of participants, will go on being a constant and
stimulating challenge to psychoanalytic thought and research.
Speaking for myself, I would base my account on the general presupposi-
tion that humans are essentially passionate, aggressive, narcissistic beings,
as Green (1994) says, following Freud). In this vein, Bion (1962) adds that
we are also innately curious. And we are all born prematurely, as Freud
points out (1926).
Our premature birth makes the human offspring totally dependent on
the adults who take care of them for many long years. This fact facili-
tates and favors our affective ties and our psycho-social development, as
Freud made clear. But it also exposes us to myriad challenges and to
intense conflicts exactly because we are from birth beings who love, hate,
and are narcissistic and curious. To my mind, these conflicts would nec-
essarily have as critical points the need to confront and struggle with,
one way or another, and with greater or lesser success, the following
basic realities:
a. the other’s separate existence.
b. the fact that there is a special, exclusive, sexual relationship between
one’s parents from which the child is not just excluded, but also not
equipped to participate in, which implies the need to admit the differ-
ences between the sexes and the generations.

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912 R. Hartke

The psychic reactions and structures coming from the confrontation with
these realities will derive from the interaction of the child’s particular char-
acteristics with those of the adults on which he depends—in other words on
the specific relational context.
Proceeding down the path indicated by this final aspect, i.e. the rela-
tional context, and changing the vertex of how we address the matter, we
can assemble and aggregate to the theory of the Oedipus complex as an
internal conflict, and theorize that it is also a social institution that all of
us need to cope with in order to become members of civilization. Beginning
with Freud, the authors we have examined constructed their own theories
based on their specific personal, clinical, theoretical, and epistemological
baggage.

References

Baranger W (1976). El Edipo temprano”y“Complejo de Edipo” [The ‘early Oedipus’ and the ‘Oedipus
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