ABSTRACT

Continuing a project to rehabilitate the oedipal concept from heteronormative presumptions, the author emphasizes the ongoing centrality of the oedipal constellation both in development and in analytic treatment. The oedipal crisis, within an intricate web of object relations, reflects the child’s confrontation with thwarted desire for either parent, a confrontation central to the development of the mind, the personality, and to one’s erotic life. The experience of oedipal exclusion becomes not solely a response to a generational boundary but to a gender boundary discouraging same-sex love. This chapter addresses the multidimensionality embedded within the oedipal phase of development and underscores that the elaboration and working through of unrequited oedipal longings within the potential space of the analytic field is one of the most profound gifts of an analysis. Recognition that our oedipal lineages for erotic life rest upon an interwoven tapestry of maternal and paternal desires works against the oedipal complex being (mis)understood in a reductive manner that alienates rather than engages.

A conceptualization of an oedipal complex is proposed that does not obscure the complexity of individual experience.