ABSTRACT
In her introduction to The Oedipus Complex Today Hanna Segal (1989) emphasises Melanie Klein’s view that it is necessary for the baby to have first established a good relationship to the breast if he or she is to be able to manage and work through the pains of the oedipal situation. She adopts the model proposed by Britton (1989, 1992, 1998) whereby a psychic space is delineated at the heart of the oedipal triangle within which the infant is able to maintain a differentiated relationship with each of his parents, a space that Britton conceives as being an extension of the relationship container-contained as described by Bion. In this space the infant also encounters a good relationship between his parents, a relationship which is one of container-contained but one from which he is excluded, in contrast with the original relationship between the baby and the maternal breast. This leads him to distinguish the nature of the parental relationship from the connection which he has with each of them separately, and involves him in the work of separation and individuation that characterises the depressive position. She adds to Britton’s model that room for the new baby is implicit in the space thus delineated:
