ABSTRACT
In this chapter the struggle for dominance within the analytic relationship is examined in the context of the Oedipus situation. A proper analytic structure refl ects the different roles that patient and analyst play. These are related to family structures, which are represented in the patient’s internal world. A child’s place in the family is determined by reality factors such as his relative size, strength, and maturity, but his subjective sense of his role is affected by phantasy and can be distorted in particular by grandiose narcissistic illusions or delusions. These phantasies tend to be variations on the classical pattern, where in the child’s phantasy he is encouraged by his mother to adopt the role of her husband and in this way to oust his father. This pattern is illustrated in the material I am going to report. This is the archetypal structure represented in Sophocles’ play, in which Jocasta encourages Oedipus to adopt the position of king and husband. Inevitably this type of phantasy leads to a struggle over dominance as the father comes to reclaim his place in the family. In the infantile version of this phantasy, on which all the later versions are based, the struggle is also one between illusion and reality, since the child’s immaturity makes the role he has chosen to adopt unrealisable.
