作 者：Ronald Britton THE COMPLEX
TODAY
Clinical Implications
Ronald Britton
Michael Feldman
and
Edna O'Shaughnessy
with an introduction by
Hanna Segal
edited by
John Steiner
including Melanie Klein paper
The Oedipus Complex
in the Light of Early Anxieties
Karnac Books
London 1989
Preface John Steiner vi
Biographical notes vii
Introduction Hanna Segal 1
1. The Oedipus complex in the light of early anxieties Melanie Klein 11
2. The missing link: parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex Ronald Britton 83
3. The Oedipus complex: manifestations in the inner world and the therapeutic situation Michael Feldman 103
4. The invisible Oedipus complex Edna O'Shaughnessy 129
Index 151
By the time she had formulated the concept of the depressive position, her views on the Oedipus complex had altered in certain important respects. She established the interrelation between the Oedipus complex and the depressive position. The relation to the mother as a whole person,which gradually emerges, then carries the implication of a mother who is separate from the infant and not under the infant's control, having a life of her own, which includes principally a relationship with father, with all that it implies, including feelings of exclusion, envy and jealousy.
But, as in the depressive position, there is more integration and a diminution of paranoid anxieties, and by degrees love and concern take the upper hand over the hatred. Gradually Klein came to the conclusion that the beginnings of the Oedipus complex are not associated with the phase of maximum sadism -- an idea she came to discard -- but, on the contrary, it is linked with diminishing sadism. The awareness of ambivalence in relation to both parents and to their inter-relationship brings in defences, including some regression to splitting and paranoid anxieties as a defence against guilt. But it also brings in reparative impulses aimed not only at the restoration of the breast and mother, but also, and increasingly, at restoring a good parental couple and a good family as a whole.
In her 1945 paper, 'The Oedipus complex in the light of early anxieties', which we reprint here (chapter one), she spells out clearly the change in her views, as well as making clearer where exactly they differ from Freud's. It is her last paper on the subject, although she refers to the Oedipus complex in nearly all her later papers. For example she wrote,
The infant's capacity to enjoy at the same time the relation to both parents which is an important feature in his mental life and conflicts with his desires prompted by jealousy and anxiety to separate them depends on his feelings that they are separate individuals. This more integrated relation to the parents (which is distinct from the compulsive need to keep the parents apart from one another and to prevent their sexual intercourse) implies the greater understanding of their relation to one another and is a pre-condition for the Infants hope that he can bring them together and unite them in a happy way. [ Klein, 1952 ]
The implications and ramifications of the gradual changes that occur in the psychic organization with the onset of the depressive position are enormous. They include the discovery of ambivalence, sense of loss, guilt, a differentiation between internal and external realities, a capacity for symbolization and many others. The depressive position carries with it, not only change in the nature of the object relationships, but an important change in the whole of mental functioning.
The 1945 paper was written before her major paper, 'Notes on some schizoid mechanisms' ( Klein, 1946), in which she describes the paranoid -- schizoid position. She never worked out fully the implications of her new discoveries for a complete theory of the Oedipus complex. But she did bring in repeatedly the importance of this primitive constellation on the oedipal situation. For instance, in Envy and Gratitude ( Klein, 1957) she describes the disastrous consequences if envy rather than jealousy plays a predominant role in the Oedipus complex.
The three papers presented here as chapters two, three and four are based on some of the central ideas addumbrated by Klein, such as the link between the depressive position and the Oedipus complex, and in that context the central importance of the eventual acceptance of a genital creative parental couple and the differentiation between both generations and sexes.
Klein has always emphasized that establishing a good relation to the breast and the mother is essential if the child is to tolerate oedipal anxieties and work them through. Since then a great deal of work has been done based on
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Klein's central ideas. Her discovery of the role of projective identification in the paranoid -- schizoid position has been developed and gave rise to a more detailed understanding of the early pathology, and particularly the role of pathological forms of projective identification. All three authors use Bion's concept of the container and the contained as the prototype for the perceptions and experiences of the relationships between the parents ( Bion, 1962, 1963).
Bion extends Klein's concept of projective identification to include a primitive mental communication and interchange. The infant projects into the breast his anxiety and inchoate primitive concrete elements (beta elements). A mother capable of containing projective identification unconsciously processes those projections and responds adequately to the infant's need. When this happens, the infant can reintroject his projections, modified by understanding, and he also introjects the breast as a container capable of containing and dealing with anxiety. This forms the basis of his own capacity to deal with anxiety. This modification by understanding transforms the beta elements into alpha elements -- a higher level of mental functioning. According to Bion, a good relationship between container and contained is the basis of such later capacities as symbolizing and thinking. When the relation is severely disturbed by mother's adverse response or the infant's envy -- usually a combination of both -- it lays the basis for later psychotic disturbance.
The three chapters are concerned with the primitive forms of the Oedipus complex, the combined parental figure, the role of projective identification and primitive psychotic forms of the Oedipus complex, either as a regressive defence or because the pre-oedipal psychotic process makes the emergence of a proper Oedipus situation impossible. A bad relation between container and contained affects crucially the beginning of the Oedipus complex. Bion ( 1970) sug-
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gested that in a good ('commensal') relationship between container and contained, the two objects 'share a third to the advantage of all three'. A bad ('parasitic') relationship, however, 'produces a third which is destructive of all three'.
As I see it, in order to preserve a tolerable relation to the breast, the infant splits off the bad aspects from both the breast and himself and creates a bad third figure. The father's penis is an ideal container for such projections. In all three chapters patients are described whose phantasy life is dominated by such bad figures, the intrusion of which is felt to be catastrophic to the relation between the child and the mother. Splitting mechanisms are also in evidence. In chapter one Melanie Klein describes in Richard how an early splitting of the breast affects his Oedipus complex. He splits between an ideal-breast mother and a bad father and a bad genital mother containing the father. However, those splits and projections are more like a regression to a more normal paranoid -- schizoid position than is the case with the more disturbed patients presented by Drs. Britton and Feldman and Mrs. O'Shaughnessy. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy describes a particular kind of splitting, which she calls 'fracturing' the parental couple, which attacks its heterosexual procreative qualities. The couple is broken apart, or fractured, into two sexual halves: one a sadistic phallus, the other a weakened masochistic female, both in phantasy felt to be ready for homosexual alliances against the other. This splitting is different in kind and imbued with far greater violence than the material of Mrs. Klein's Richard.
All three authors, but in particular Dr. Feldman, illustrate the way the patient's phantasy concerning the nature of the parental relationship not only affects the quality of his object relations and the nature of his anxieties and defences but has a profound effect on his thinking. Dr. Feldman shows how the way the parental couple come
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together in these phantasies, especially whether this is lively and pleasurable or destructive, will determine the way he experiences his own thoughts coming together in his mind. Thinking necessitates making links including the links between the parents which is what patients with disturbances in the early oedipal situation cannot bear. This is further illustrated by Dr. Britton's patient who experiences her analyst's thinking as parental intercourse and shouts, 'Stop that fucking thinking'.
From the beginning of her work with children Melanie Klein was concerned with the epistimophilic drives. She connected those with the urge to explore the maternal body, and she connected the inhibitions in learning with paranoid anxieties about the maternal body. The authors of the three chapters presented here emphasize the link between the epistomophilic drives and the discovery of the parental intercourse.
Dr. Britton formulates in an interesting way the oedipal triangle in the depressive position as defining a particular mental space within the boundary of the triangle. In this mental space the child can maintain differentiated relations with each parent, contrasting with the primitive relation to a combined parental figure, whilst recognizing at the same time the existence of the parents as a couple, with himself as an outsider -- the existence of such a mental space affecting fundamentally a freedom of mental processes. This mental space, according to Dr. Britton, is an extension of the original relation between the container and the contained as described by Bion. Certainly the original relation between the container and the contained is the basis of a later concept of the relationship between the penis and the vagina. However, there is an important difference. In the original situation the child is a participant and a beneficiary of that relationship. Recognizing the parental couple confronts him with a good contained -- container
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relationship from which he is excluded. It confronts him with separateness and separation as part of the working through of the depressive position. It also confronts him with the recognition that the nature of the link between the parents is different in kind from the relation of the child to the parents and at the moment unavailable to him. This is an interesting extension of Bion's concept. It is also a new angle on the momentous changes in the mental functioning that occur in the depressive position.
I would like to add a point to the idea as described by Dr. Britton. An important part of the difference between the infant's relation to the parents and their relationship is not only that they exchange genital gratifications, but also -- and, I think, importantly -- the fact that the parental intercourse leads to the creation of a new baby. This is always so in phantasy, even if in reality there is no new sibling. When I think of Dr. Britton's triangle as defining the space in which different links can be established between the child and the two parents, I think that space implicitly contains the room for a new baby. If a new baby appears inside mother, as in the case of Mrs. O'Shaughnes- sy's child patient, before such a space can be established -- and while the little infant is still heavily dependent on the phantasy of getting back inside mother -- psychotic disturbances can easily ensue.
All the chapters are based on central concepts first put forward by Mrs. Klein. They show, however, a considerable development and elaboration of her basic ideas. For instance, though Mrs. Klein established the existence of primitive and psychotic forms of the Oedipus complex, the chapters presented show how much work has been done in studying those early phenomena clinically. They also show a considerable advance in understanding the effect of those early processes and phantasies on such mental functions as perception and thinking. All of the chapters have to do with the distortions of thinking.
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