ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a particular constellation of anxieties that have their origins in the oedipal situation, and are observable in psychotherapeutic work with adult couples. The oedipus complex has never been simply to do with sex and rivalry, as "pop" psychology may have it. Freud's account was central to the development of his theory of the mind. In the history of psychoanalysis, the understanding of the oedipus complex is one of the central developmental points for the beginning of a theory of internal object relations. According to Britton, such a relatively successful negotiation of the oedipus complex allows the possibility of empathic engagement with the subjectivity of the other, while also having a vantage point from which to view this relating, to think about it. From a Contemporary Freudian perspective, although not writing specifically with the oedipus complex as the focus, Glasser describes a very similar clinical picture of claustro-agoraphobic anxieties arising in the earliest relationship between infant and mother.
