ABSTRACT
The heterogeneity of the subject’s feelings towards the loved person may at first sight seem impossible to work through, even if these feelings will eventually be bound together in the overcoming of the Oedipus complex. The blossoming of ambivalent genital love entails the integration of affects, because the affect of hate, when not bound to love, becomes destructive. In this chapter, the author looks at the story of Oedipus as dramatized by Sophocles in Oedipus the King, as if she were discovering it for the first time. S. Freud refers explicitly to this mythical story when he discovers what he is later to call the Oedipus complex. The author illustrates the aspect of heterogeneity with reference to two analysands for whom this unconscious dichotomization of the parental imago at first proved insoluble and unbearable. She also illustrates mainly the dichotomization of the mother imago; however, it is worth mentioning that the relationship with her father too was dichotomized.
