It was at the beginning of the Renaissance that Western European humanity’s quest for meaning turned back to classical literature, and a re-acquaintance with the Greek myths, where the gods are fashioned in the image of men. Freud, in his inspired reframing of the Oedipus myth, united this ancient tale of adversity with a psychoanalytic understanding of what Segal (1989, p. 1) called ‘the central conflict of the human psyche’. Klein indicated an earlier starting point for Oedipal striving than Freud, locating its inception in the second half of the first year of an infant’s life (1946 [1975]). Segal suggested subsequently (1991, pp. 85-100) that Oedipal struggles that result in a consciousness rooted predominantly in depressive reconciliation are a sine qua non for any creative undertaking. As Bion (1962) formulated it, Love, Hate and Knowledge are ‘the three factors I regard as intrinsic to the link between objects considered to be in relation to one another’ (1962, p. 93). Bion talks of K, or knowing, in relation to objects, both external and inter - nal, in what he calls a ‘commensal relationship’ – a way of formulating Klein’s ‘epistemophilic instinct’ (Segal, 1998). The complexity of this emotional experience is given ‘a system of notation’ – in other words, a way of marking out of territory involved in getting to know the other. The dialectical interplay of these elements or essential experiences will, under adequate conditions, result in a realistic and mixed picture of the self as well as of objects. In other words, to map Bion on to Freud and Klein, the acceptance and internalisation of the parental couple, which the subject paradoxically both loves and hates, allows the unfolding of knowledge of the self in the light of the reality principle.