ABSTRACT
A controversy about the Oedipus complex is whether it is indeed universal and of central importance, to be regarded as ‘the nuclear complex of development’. This chapter focuses on one small area of the Oedipus complex; its first stages, when these are reached after a disturbed development. It begins with a detailed account of Leon, who at 11 years of age is nearing puberty, but whose mental life is largely occupied by defences against his disturbed relations to his primary objects and a traumatic oedipal constellation. In the earliest stages of the Oedipus complex the infant has phantasies of mother containing father’s penis or the whole father, and of father combining with mother’s breasts and vagina, all in a state of perpetual gratification. Leon’s feelings of exclusion and frustration would have been enormously increased by a new baby in reality inside mother enjoying all that he phantasized was granted in mother’s interior.
