ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the particularly difficult task often faced by fostered and adopted children. In psychoanalytic theory, the story of Oedipus has been used since Freud, to illuminate the difficulties for children in allowing their parents to come together, and the desire to take the place of one parent in sexual union with the other. The story of Oedipus is generally used to illustrate the universal difficulty for humans in managing their violent and sexual feelings towards their parents. Freud’s conceptualization of the Oedipus complex marked a move in his thinking away from feeling that his patients had been seduced in childhood, to one in which he emphasized incestuous phantasies in his patients. However, it is important to note that Freud did not, as is often thought, therefore dismiss the possibility of actual abuse. The Oedipus myth demonstrates so well the complicated interplay of internal and external forces, and how necessary it is to attend to both.
