ABSTRACT
It is recognized that there is an indivisible link between the Oedipus complex and the depressive position as it figures in Klein's later work and in post-Kleinian writing. A creative couple can be internalized, and the capacity strengthened for discrimination, in psychic reality, between the generations and the sexes. This chapter focuses on some detailed clinical material to show the deeply pathological consequences of incapacity to cope with oedipal struggles, in turn based in the nature of the earliest mother-baby relationship. At best, adolescence is a process of becoming; literally, of becoming an adult, and of doing so by becoming a "thinker". This is achieved by gaining and possessing a degree of self-knowledge, through engaging with the process of "engendering, disguising, attacking, and tolerating meaning"— an essential part of becoming mature.
