ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis has always been preoccupied with the story of Oedipus and his inherent complexity. Although there is more than one way to read this story (Loewald, 1979; Ogden, 2006; Chodorow, 1989, 1992), it seems that the analytic thinking has always taken for granted that the oedipal complex is based on a threesome-heterosexual family configuration, meaning that a child has both a mother and a father.
Modern times allow, albeit still somewhat ambivalently, the diversity of marital and parental configurations, reflecting cultural and social changes. It is not only culture and society that allow for this, but also medical advances, namely the technology of IVF and sperm/egg donations. Some children, born from sperm or egg donation may be raised in fatherless or motherless families, raising in my opinion, the need to reconsider the oedipal complex and its resolution. In what follows I discuss employing my analytic experience with two women who chose to mother a baby via an anonymous sperm donation. My focus of attention is on the question of whether unconscious oedipal conflicts have influenced their decision to mother a fatherless child. In the analyses I discuss in this chapter, it is the child’s father who is missing, but I have come to think, from our analytic work, that the women have themselves experienced not only a paternal absence but a maternal one as well. The women’s experience of maternal absence resulted in unresolved oedipal issues which, I believe, contributed to their decision to mother a fatherless baby. It is important for me to stress that my discussion of this issue is not sociological, but psychoanalytic, meaning that my interest lies mainly within two areas: (1) The changes psychoanalytic theory should undertake in its reconsideration of the Oedipus complex, following the profound sociological changes in the family configuration, and (2) The ways psychoanalysis can assist in constructing one’s ability to live within the configuration of “three” (mother–child–father), even if the “third” is merely a mental representation.
My discussion focuses on the analyst’s role in creating an “analytic third” in the analysis, making the patient’s acknowledgment and mourning for what is not “there” possible.
