The missing link: parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex.
Ronald Britton

The oedipal situation begins with the child's recognition of the parents' relationship. In severe disorders development founders at this point, and the Oedipus complex does not appear in recognizable classical form in analysis. The failure to internalize a recognizable oedipal triangle results in a failure to integrate observation and experience. This was the case in the first patient I described. I suggest that it is a consequence of a prior failure of maternal containment.

In the second part I descibed what I call oedipal illusions as defensive phantasies against the psychic reality of the Oedipus situation, and suggested that if they persist, they prevent the normal 'working through' of the Oedipus complex,which is done through sequences of rivarly and relinquishment.

Finally, I would like to clarify my view of the normal development of the Oedipus complex. It begins with the child's recognition of the nature of the parental relationship and the child's phantasies about it. In the oedipus mith this would be represented by the story of the infant Oedipus abandoned on the hillside by his mother - a tragic version in the child's phantasy of being left to die whilst the parents sleep together. The complex unfolds further in the development of the child's rivarly with one parent for absolute possession of the other. This we see exemplified in the myth by the meeting at the crossroads where Laios bars the way, as if representing the father's obstruction of the child's wish to re-enter mother through her genital. This is what I regard at the psychic reality of the Oedipus complex, as are the fears of personal or parental death as imagined consequences.

What I have called oedipal illusion are defensive phantasies meant to occlude these psychic realities. In the myth I see the oedipal illusion as the state in which Oedipus is on the throne with his wife/mother,surrounded by his court, turning a 'blind eye', as John Steiner has put it, as to what they already half know but choose to ignore (Steiner, 1985). In this situation, where illusion reigns supreme, curiosity is felt to spell disaster. In the phantasied tragic version of the Oedipus complex the discovery of the oedipal triangle is felt to be the death of the couple: the nursing couple or the parental couple. In this phantasy the arrival of the notion of a third always murders the dyadic relationship.

I think this idea is entertained by all of us at some time; for some it appears to remain a conviction, and when it does it leads to serious psychopathology. I have suggested that it is through mourning for this lost exclusive relationship that it can be realized that the oedipal triangle does not spell the death of a relationship, but only the death of an idea of a relationship.

__________________
Steiner J. (1985): Turning a blind eye: the cover up for Oedipus. Int. Rev. Psychoanal., 12, pp. 161-172