Oedipus Complex

The development of narcissism is usually studied from the standpoint of the drives, or more specifically of the libido. This paper considers narcissism from the standpoint of the ego and seeks to delineate separate developmental lines. From this point of view, a variety of forms may be distinguished which are ordinarily structured during the oedipal period. It is postulated that narcissism cannot be considered as truly separable from the vicissitudes of the love and hate of objects.

Even those aspects of transference which initially favor the analytic process and seem to have the least connection with resistance do become integral parts of the transference neurosis and contribute massively to some of the most subtle difficulties in the process, especially in its resolution. These phenomena are, by their very appearance of rationality and cooperation, all the more difficult to bring under analytic scrutiny.

A schematic overview of the development of male and female gender identity has been presented with an attempt to formulate a developmental line.

Although the erotic transference is believed to be universal, it is variable in its expression. Drawing on the distinction between transference resistance and resistance to the awareness of the transference, I have proposed that, in general, the erotic transference utilized as resistance is more common among women, while resistance to the awareness of the erotic transference is more common among male patients. Erotic transference as resistance poses different analytic problems from those posed by resistance to its awareness.

Erotic transferences occur on a spectrum reflecting the ease or difficulty of their management. They represent sexualized re-enactments of important childhood relationships. This phase in psychotherapy may be a transient developmental feature or in some instances, assume a formidable resistance to further insightful work. Two case illustrations are given to indicate the breadth of this spectrum. Reasons are discussed for such differences in erotic transferences and their resolutions.

This study of four of Keats's greatest poems explores a dynamic pattern in the poet's imagination: a relationship between the oral/fusional imagery and the romantic/oedipal themes. The poet's imagination seems to have been propelled backward from oedipal conflict to earlier narcissistic/oral unrest and pleasure.

In this paper I examine the interplay of love and aggression in a couple's emotional relationship. I explore the activation of dominant repressed or dissociated object relations with the parental figures, and the unconscious collusion of both partners to enact these past relationships in the present. I then examine the couple's relationship as determined by differences in male and female development, as well as the counterpart of these differences--unconscious moves toward "twinship" and complementarity.

This study is not concerned, as the title might suggest, with the actual death of the mother but with the child's experience of a mother who is physically present but internally absent due to depression. The child simultaneously introjects and splits off the mother imago, making mourning and "burial" equally impossible. The consequence of this cathectic deprivation is what the author calls "psychic holes" or "white depression".

Melanie Klein's thinking on early object love is pivotal to her vision of development. Yet within her texts it is often enmeshed in complex formulations that obscure its full significance. A greater clarity in viewing Klein's concept of early object love is achieved through tracing some of its historical origins. The author notes that it was inspired by aspects of Ferenczi's theory, hence its similarities with the concept of 'primary love' formulated by another of Ferenczi's analysands, Michael Balint.

Among the many reasons that feelings of hate develop in love relationships is the need to find and to exaggerate differences in order to maintain a sense of separateness. Freud's notion of the "narcissism of minor differences" provides a framework within which to understand this need to find disappointing differences in one's beloved. Developmental antecedents of this concern about defining and preserving one's separateness can be identified in both oedipal and preoedipal periods.