ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a particular aspect of infantile fantasies and infantile sexuality and, in particular, how their development derives a substantial contribution from interaction with the parental couple’s unconscious world. It outlines some basic contributions to the theme of the primal scene. In "A Child Is Being Beaten", Sigmund Freud showed that the component instinct is not part of a straight continuum with perversion, because it must first pass through the Oedipus complex. The chapter explains explicit that a particular perverse fantasy is unequivocally related to the Oedipus complex and to various forms of defence against it. In 1926, Freud pointed out that as a result of the long period of helplessness and dependence of the human infant, “the influence of the real external world upon it is intensified and an early differentiation between the ego and the id is promoted”.
