(Francis Grier) Oedipus and The Couple

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111 Tavistock Clinic Series

2 Margot Waddell (Series Editor)
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Facing it Out: Clinical Perspectives on Adolescent Disturbance
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Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the Growth of the Personality
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2 Internal Landscapes and Foreign Bodies: Eating Disorders and Other Pathologies
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4 Mirror to Nature: Drama, Psychoanalysis and Society
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6 Multiple Voices: Narrative in Systemic Family Psychotherapy
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8 Psychoanalysis and Culture: A Kleinian Perspective
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Psychotic States in Children
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1 Reason and Passion: A Celebration of the Work of Hanna Segal
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3 Sent Before My Time: A Child Psychotherapist’s View of Life on a
4 Neonatal Intensive Care Unit
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6 Surviving Space: Papers on Infant Observation
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8 The Many Faces of Asperger’s Syndrome
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Therapeutic Care for Refugees: No Place Like Home
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1 Understanding Trauma: A Psychoanalytic Approach
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3 Unexpected Gains: Psychotherapy with People with Learning Disabilities
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5 Working Below the Surface: The Emotional Life of Contemporary Organizations
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7 and Jane Pooley (editors)
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OEDIPUS AND
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1 THE COUPLE
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Editor
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6 Francis Grier
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CONTRIBUTORS ix
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1 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE xiii
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3 Introduction 1
4 Francis Grier
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6 CHAPTER ONE
7 On being able to be a couple: the importance of a 9
8 “creative couple” in psychic life
9 Mary Morgan
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1 CHAPTER TWO
2 Reflective space in the intimate couple relationship: 31
3 the “marital triangle”
Stanley Ruszczynski
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CHAPTER THREE
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The couple, their marriage, and Oedipus: or, problems 49
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come in twos and threes
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Andrew Balfour
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vi CONTENTS
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2 Coming into one’s own: the oedipus complex and 73
3 the couple in late adolescence
4 Margot Waddell
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6 CHAPTER FIVE
7 Shadows of the parental couple: oedipal themes in 101
8 Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander
9 Viveka Nyberg
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1 CHAPTER SIX
2 “It seemed to have to do with something else . . .” 121
3 Henry James’ What Maisie Knew and Bion’s theory
4 of thinking
5 Sasha Brookes
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The painful truth 141
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Monica Lanman
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3 The oedipus complex as observed in work with 163
4 couples and their children
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7 CHAPTER NINE
8 Oedipus gets married: an investigation of a couple’s 181
9 shared oedipal drama
311 Joanna Rosenthall
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2 CHAPTER TEN
3 No Sex couples, catastrophic change, and the primal scene 201
4 Francis Grier
5 REFERENCES 221
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INDEX 229
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111 CONTRIBUTORS
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211 Andrew Balfour originally trained as a Clinical Psychologist at
1 University College London, and then as a Psychoanalytic Psycho-
2 therapist at the Tavistock Clinic. Subsequently, he trained as a Couple
3 Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Marital Studies
4 Institute. He currently works as a Senior Clinical Lecturer and
5 Couple Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute,
6 and as a Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Tavistock Clinic.
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8 Sasha Brookes studied English Language and Literature at Oxford
9 University, and, later, Psychology at London and Durham. She
30 taught in higher education and worked as a Relate counsellor
1 before training as a Couple Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Marital
2 Studies Institute, and as an Individual Psychotherapist with the
3 Arbours Association. She has now retired from clinical practice and
4 is engaged on a study of some of the works of Henry James, of
5 which this chapter forms a part. The Invisible Matrix, which she co-
6 edited with Pauline Hodson, was published by Karnac in 2000.
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8 Francis Grier is an Associate Member of the British Psycho-
911 analytical Society. He is also a Full Member of the Society of Couple
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x CONTRIBUTORS
111 Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists. He is a Visiting Research Lecturer

2 at the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute, where he was previously
3 a Senior Marital Psychotherapist and Clinical Lecturer. He has a pri-
4 vate practice for individuals and couples. He edited Brief Encounters
5 with Couples: Some Analytical Perspectives, which was published by
6 Karnac in 2001.
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8 Monica Lanman is a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist who works
9 with individuals and couples. She is the Clinical Co-ordinator at the
10 Tavistock Marital Studies Institute. She is the author of a number of
1 papers on working with couples, and outcome research in couple
2 psychotherapy. She is a Full Member of the Tavistock Society of
3 Psychotherapists, the British Association of Psychotherapists, and
4 the Society for Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.
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Lisa Miller is a Consultant Child Psychotherapist in the Child and
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Family Department at the Tavistock Clinic. She is particularly inter-
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ested in early development and for many years she organized the
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Under Fives’ Service at the Tavistock. Until recently she was Chair
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of the Child and Family Department. She is the Editor of the Inter-
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national Journal of Infant Observation. She has been heavily involved
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in training child psychotherapists for many years.
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3 Mary Morgan is a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Couple Psycho-
4 therapist at the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute and a founder
511 member of the Society of Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists.
6 She has taught extensively in this country and abroad on the theory
7 and practice of couple psychoanalytic psychotherapy. She has a pri-
8 vate practice in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and is a candidate at
9 the Institute of Psychoanalysis.
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1 Viveka Nyberg is a Full Member of the British Association of
2 Psychotherapists and has a part-time private practice in psycho-
3 analytic psychotherapy. She is currently undertaking the clinical
4 training in Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at the Tavistock
5 Marital Studies Institute. She is the Arts Review Editor of the BAP
6 Journal, and she has active interest in training and supervision.
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8 Joanna Rosenthall is a Senior Marital Psychotherapist and Clinical
911 Lecturer at the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute. She also has a
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CONTRIBUTORS xi
111 private practice. At TMSI she used to be the Organizing Tutor for
2 the Couple Psychotherapy Training Programme. More recently, she
3 has focused on developing training and clinical work with couples
4 within the public sector.
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6 Stanley Ruszczynski is a Principal Adult Psychotherapist at the
711 Portman Clinic (Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, London), an
8 outpatient forensic psychotherapy clinic. He is a Full Member of the
9 British Association of Psychotherapists and is in private practice as
10 a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He was previously a senior clin-
1 ician at the Tavistock Marital Studies Institute, holding the posts of
2 Deputy Director and both Clinical and Training Co-ordinator, and
3 is a Full Member of the Society of Couple Psychoanalytic Psycho-
4 therapists. He has edited and co-edited four books, including
5 Intrusiveness and Intimacy in the Couple (Karnac, 1995) and
6 Psychotherapy with Couples (Karnac, 1993), and is the author of over
7 twenty book chapters and journal articles. He is currently the Joint
8 Editor of the Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapists.
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211 Margot Waddell is a Member of the British Psychoanalytical
1 Society. She works in private practice and is a Consultant Child
2 Psychotherapist in the Adolescent Department, Tavistock Clinic,
3 London. She teaches and lectures widely both in Britain and
4 abroad. The second edition of her most recent book, Inside Lives:
5 Psychoanalysis and the Development of the Personality, was published
6 by Karnac in 2001.
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211 There has been a long tradition associated with the Tavistock of
1 working psychoanalytically with couples, dating from the forma-
2 tion of the Family Discussion Bureau in 1948. The present volume
3 belongs at the heart of this time-honoured service. The editor and
4 most of the contributors to Oedipus and the Couple are past or present
5 members and associates of what, in 1993, became known as the
6 Tavistock Marital Studies Institute.
7 The book reflects the experience and learning of this tradition,
8 but its specific focus both extends and deepens marital work itself,
9 and also makes an important contribution to wider areas of theory
30 and of clinical practice. For, in revisiting the great Oedipus myth, as
1 told by Sophocles and drawn on by Freud, the respective authors
2 explore not only ways of working with oedipal issues as they arise
3 in the clinical setting and with the cross-generational impact of such
4 issues, but also some of the less well-worked aspects of the story. In
5 doing so, they illuminate new dimensions of couple and family life,
6 and the intricacies and obstructions that derive from negotiating or
7 failing to negotiate the oedipal situation.
8 The supporting theory, as worked and reworked in successive
911 chapters, is steeped in a broad range of psychoanalytic perspectives
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xiv SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
111 and raises some current and important questions. What, for exam-
2 ple, determines the choice of a life-long partner? What are the inter-
3 nal conditions necessary for even contemplating such a choice?
4 Other questions are ones that underlie not only work with couples,
5 but also contribute important dimensions to the understanding of
6 individual adult states of mind, children, adolescents, and families.
7 The distinctively focused chapters complement each other in
8 rich and instructive ways, both theoretically and clinically, and also
9 artistically and culturally. Between them they make an important
10 contribution to a deeper understanding of the oedipal myth itself
1 and to the field of couple therapy more generally.
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3 Margot Waddell
4 Series Editor
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CHAPTER TITLE 1
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10 Francis Grier
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211 or over 100 years the myth of Oedipus has been mined by
1 generations of psychoanalysts for the insights it offers into
2 the deep levels of the human mind. Following Freud, the
3 emphasis for the most part has been on gaining understanding into
4 the mind of the individual. Couple psychoanalytic psychothera-
5 pists find the theory of the oedipus complex as valuable as do their
6 colleagues engaged in clinical work with individuals, and yet no
7 book has been specifically devoted to this core subject. This book,
8 then, is an attempt to remedy the situation and to fill an obvious
9 gap. It is an attempt to think primarily about couples from the
30 perspectives afforded by contemporary developments in theories of
1 the oedipus complex. Foremost among these, and much quoted in
2 the following chapters, is a publication that has gained almost clas-
3 sic status, The Oedipus Complex Today (Steiner, 1989), in which a lead-
4 ing group of Kleinian psychoanalysts show how the concept of the
5 oedipus complex is still at the vital core of analytic work.
6 In the myth of Oedipus we are confronted with a number of
7 couples. First, there is the couple of Laius and Jocasta, the king and
8 queen of Thebes. They are immediately presented to us as a couple
911 who cannot cope with a threesome relationship. As soon as their
1
111 first child is born they feel under deadly threat; their equilibrium is
2 fatally undermined. A catastrophe is foreseen. The myth does not
3 tell us whether they had been content as a twosome, but they
4 certainly feel they do not have the resources to cope with the far
5 more complicated emotional situation when two becomes three. As
6 Canham (2003) illustrates, it seems the parents could not cope with
7 their infant son’s projections of envy and jealousy and murderous
8 hatred. Or, perhaps, it was their own projections of these emotional
9 qualities into their son and into their new threesome relationship
10 that brought about a situation of such intensely persecutory anxiety
1 that the couple felt they could no longer tolerate it. They appear not
2 to have been able to think about the situation; to allow the more
3 difficult and complex relationship to compel them to develop
4 emotional maturity in response to its demands. Instead, they felt
5 driven to drastic action to wipe out the hated threesome. They
6 attempted to avert what they felt to be certain catastrophe by trying
711 forcibly to turn the clock backwards, to go back to their previous
8 twosome situation. In order to do this, however, they had to commit
9 murder, which was their conscious intention when they comman-
20 ded the shepherd to expose Oedipus on the mountainside. The
1 myth goes on to tell of Oedipus’s survival. If we allow ourselves to
2 imagine that their strategy had succeeded, and that the baby
3 Oedipus had actually been killed, we can see that it is very unlikely
4 that Laius’s and Jocasta’s long-term plan of returning to an idyllic
511 twosome could actually have succeeded, due to the appalling
6 persecutory guilt from which they would undoubtedly have
7 suffered. Presumably, they would then have conspired for the rest
8 of their lives to erect increasingly manic and possibly psychotic
9 defences against actually knowing in depth and owning what they
311 had done.
1 So, even in its very opening, the Oedipus myth evokes in detail
2 how appalling the dilemma of going from two to three can appear;
3 how some couples feel inescapably driven towards drastic
4 measures, including the enormous temptation to try violently to
5 turn the clock of development backwards, and yet how impossible
6 in psychic reality it is for their attempt to be successful.
7 The culmination of the myth famously concerns the tragic adult
8 couple of Oedipus and Jocasta. They believe themselves to be
911 happily married, and indeed produce children apparently without
INTRODUCTION 3
111 too much emotional turbulence. However, they gradually make the
2 discovery that in fact they are an incestuous couple, and that there-
3 fore what had previously had the appearance of integrity and love
4 had all the while actually been based on denial, lies, deceit, greed,
5 jealousy, hatred, arrogance, envy, murderousness, and possessive
6 lust. These revelations lead inexorably to the tragic outcome. This
711 climax of the narrative illustrates the universal tendency to “turn
8 a blind eye” (Steiner, 1993, Chapter 10) to what we do not want to
9 know. It also evokes the terrifying unconscious phantasy that,
10 although we may think we have successfully broken free from our
1 families of origin in choosing our sexual partners, we may be
2 duping ourselves. At a deeper level, perhaps we are merely
3 employing strangers to stand in for father, mother, brother, sister—
4 those closest family members we “really” desire incestuously. For
5 some couples, the breaking through into consciousness of this
6 underlying phantasy, perhaps through dreams, can be devastat-
7 ingly shocking, and can be felt to threaten their adult relationships
8 with catastrophe. Often enough, such couples feel compelled to
9 employ extreme defensive measures, such as stopping all sexual
211 contact, or only having sex “illicitly”, out of the marriage (para-
1 doxically felt unconsciously to be more, not less, “licit”, because
2 such relationships would be with persons felt not to represent close
3 family members), or getting into a cycle of regularly divorcing and
4 marrying new partners.
5 There is, however, another adult couple in the myth that is virtu-
6 ally never commented upon—the king and queen of Corinth. They
7 were the childless couple to whom the shepherd brought Oedipus,
8 whom they then adopted and brought up. There are no details
9 about this part of Oedipus’ life. However, the story implies that
30 they were a stable enough couple and that he was happy enough
1 with them because, on hearing that the Oracle had foretold that he
2 would kill his father, Oedipus chose to leave Corinth in order to
3 forestall and frustrate the prophecy and spare the man he thought
4 to be his father.
5 So we have two arenas of couple functioning, located in two
6 different cities—the apparently well-functioning couple in Corinth,
7 and the pathological couples in Thebes. I suggest that the myth
8 splits apart two psychological levels that actually belong together.
911 The “Corinthian” is the more externally orientated, more rational,
111 more reality-based, though often more superficial, level of func-

2 tioning. The “Theban” is the deeper, much less conscious, more
3 irrational and instinctual level, containing the more intense currents
4 of love and hate. All couples could be viewed as having “Corin-
5 thian” and “Theban” dimensions. What makes each couple differ-
6 ent and particular is the greater or lesser intensity of the different
7 elements of these two levels of functioning. All couples need to
8 achieve at least some minimal degree of “Corinthian” functioning,
9 otherwise they would not be able to function at all as a couple. The
10 vast majority of couples aspire to achieve stability and good enough
1 day-to-day functioning in the external world. But this level in isola-
2 tion can be rather dry and unimaginative, at worst dull and boring.
3 Perhaps this level also always involves at least some measure of
4 semi-conscious deception of self and other, represented in the myth
5 by the Corinthian royal couple’s not disclosing to Oedipus that they
6 were his step-parents. Instead, they fostered the illusion—perhaps
711 more comforting for themselves as well as for him—that they were
8 his real parents. Margaret Rustin has suggested (personal commu-
9 nication) that perhaps what Oedipus feared, and was protecting his
20 adoptive parents from when he decided to leave Corinth, was his
1 own hatred of them for deceiving him and not disclosing his true
2 identity—thereby robbing him of his true story. The relationship
3 appears to have been a dangerously idealized one, of the defensive
4 “happy families” variety, not a truthful one that was strong enough
511 to contain the painful and conflictual emotional realities of its
6 members.
7 Inner emotional and imaginative life comes from the “Theban”
8 level but, somewhat like Pandora with her box, most couples
9 discover that when they wish to help themselves to the pleasures of
311 love they get a lot more than they bargained for. They get embroiled
1 in currents of love imbued with a passionate intensity that can
2 threaten to devour them and, much as they might wish to enjoy
3 love without hate, hatred nevertheless insists on coming out of the
4 box too. The eruption of these explosive feelings can, and theoreti-
5 cally, should, promote growth and development in the couple as
6 they try to face these difficult challenges, coming together to think
7 and struggle over how to resolve them over time. But there has
8 probably never been a couple whose emotional functioning has not,
911 from time to time, been severely rocked and at least dented by such
INTRODUCTION 5
111 challenges, and this will always result in some symptoms expres-
2 sive of this internal turbulence in their external functioning.
3 It seems, moreover, that the sum of a couple is more than the
4 addition of its parts. Even when there are just two people involved,
5 there already exist, on what one might call an elemental level, at
6 least potential conflicts between a view of the partnership as
711 comprising two “free” individuals on the one hand, and a view of
8 the partnership as an entity of its own—an item, a couple—on the
9 other. The needs and the rights of the partners as individuals and
10 as a couple will always be potentially in tension with each other.
1 One of the most common sources for such disruptions is the
2 arrival of children, when the couple expands to become a three-
3 some. Such was Laius’s and Jocasta’s initial situation. But the trou-
4 bling third party need not be a person. Each partner, over time, may
5 feel moved to take up new interests or develop particular aspects of
6 their personality. The new interest or development can be experi-
7 enced by the other partner like a third party, often enough like a
8 symbolic child, which comes between the couple and threatens the
9 closeness, intimacy, and exclusiveness of their relationship, opening
211 the door to hatred and jealousy.
1 Just as Oedipus wished to spare the man he thought was his
2 father, and so took avoiding action but, in fact, was unable to avoid
3 fulfilling the Oracle, so it often happens within couples that a part-
4 ner will have intimations that the particular current developing in
5 his or her mind—a new job, a new interest, a new friend—has the
6 potential to unsettle or even damage the relationship. Evasive
7 action is taken, designed to lessen the impact of the new develop-
8 ment, or even to stop it in its tracks. However, the very fact that
9 there has been a movement in the soul means that the clock can
30 never quite be put back. Many couples find that, even if they have
1 succeeded superficially in putting the brakes on any external devel-
2 opments that they fear might disturb the equilibrium of their part-
3 nership, it is precisely that balance which, at a deeper internal level,
4 has nevertheless been unsettled. Of course, on many occasions
5 brakes are not applied, and couples find themselves thoroughly
6 destabilized by the actual developments that they have put into
7 motion in space and time, and that have thrown them into disarray.
8 Nor is it is just the developments of individuals that threaten the
911 couple’s equilibrium. It can happen vice versa, mutatis mutandis. The
111 developmental movement can happen within the couple dimen-

2 sion, and it can be the individuals who feel threatened. A very
3 common example would be when there arises in the couple a feel-
4 ing that the time is organically approaching for them to begin to
5 have children, although each of the individual partners is still
6 wedded to his/her individual life and, indeed, to each other as
7 exclusive partners. Within such couples, each partner may feel
8 threatened by the idea of a baby, whom they fear would undermine
9 all this, including their being the other’s exclusive partner. Love
10 would have to be shared with a child, which can intensify narcis-
1 sism and bring up feelings of jealousy and fears of exclusion, and
2 can also stimulate sadistic excitement about the possibility of
3 making a weak third party suffer. Defences mount against such
4 horrible feelings even before a child has been conceived, and the
5 irony is that the two individuals can collude and cooperate in such
6 defences, as it were against the desires and intentions of the very
711 couple that they themselves comprise. One might wonder, for
8 example, whether this was a hidden part of Laius’s and Jocasta’s
9 dilemma: that they wished to conserve the narcissistically gratify-
20 ing aspects of their individual sexual relationship, but hated and
1 resisted its developmental, procreative couple aspect. When the
2 feared child arrived, their hatred and murderous hostility were
3 perhaps directed not only towards him, but also towards the
4 “developmental couple” dimension of their own relationship.
511 I would suggest that, in the broadest outline, the three adult
6 couples of the Oedipus myth present three elemental couple
7 themes. First, there is the move—developmental or potentially
8 catastrophic—from two to three. Second, the destabilizing effect of
9 learning through experience that one’s adult emotional and sexual
311 relationships are intimately and inevitably connected with, indeed
1 map more or less closely on to, one’s earliest relationships of love
2 and hate with each of one’s parents and siblings. Finally, there is the
3 need to construct a good-enough, reality-based mode of couple
4 functioning. This, however, if defensively disconnected from
5 contact with the deeper emotional currents of love and hate, may
6 become a dry wilderness, stifling life rather than promoting it.
7 The following chapters are sufficiently diverse for each to stimu-
8 late reflections and responses from readers in the particular area
911 upon which the author has chosen to focus. The authors share
INTRODUCTION 7
111 enough common ground—broadly speaking, a contemporary

2 Kleinian/object-relations psychoanalytic base—for readers to feel
3 that there is also enough of an underlying unity to facilitate mean-
4 ingful links between ideas and themes in different chapters.
5 The ten chapters have been organized into three sections. The
6 first three chapters, by Mary Morgan, Stanley Ruszczynski, and
711 Andrew Balfour, are primarily theoretical. The second section
8 comprises chapters by Margot Waddell, Viveka Nyberg, Sasha
9 Brookes, and Monica Lanman, who make use of artistic and
10 cultural themes from the worlds of literature and film to explore
1 oedipal couple issues. The final section consists of chapters by Lisa
2 Miller, Joanna Rosenthall, and myself, and these are specifically
3 clinical. The manifest focus in most chapters is on the couple,
4 but there are variations on this theme. Margot Waddell examines
5 how individuals ripen developmentally to the point where they can
6 look for and engage with another person to form a couple, a point
7 also central to Mary Morgan’s chapter. Sasha Brookes and Viveka
8 Nyberg explore the developments of a girl and a boy, respectively,
9 whose disturbed and unconventional youths are characterized by
211 their forming the third point in differing triangles with parental and
1 quasi-parental couples to the point where each of them, too, might
2 be ready, as a young woman and a young man, to participate, or
3 avoid such participation, in forming a couple of their own. Lisa
4 Miller’s chapter focuses on all three elemental players together—
5 both parents and child—in the oedipal drama as they presented
6 themselves to her in differing clinical situations.
7 Whenever the authors have made use of clinical material, they
8 have restricted themselves to using only those aspects of their
9 patients’ cases that are strictly relevant to the particular themes
30 under discussion, and they have disguised the material as far as is
1 possible while conserving necessary and salient features.
2 I think it will be seen that the authors repeatedly find them-
3 selves investigating the ramifications of the oscillating, and never
4 entirely comfortable, relationship between the “Corinthian” and
5 “Theban” levels in couples’ functioning, and how the three broad
6 problem areas are repeatedly raised, albeit in infinitely varied and
7 particular manifestations. Conflicts are engendered when there is
8 movement from two towards becoming three; the disturbing emer-
911 gence of very early “incestuous” desires and hatreds, and there is a
111 constant pull from, and flight towards, a so-called sensible and
2 rational way of relating (which never quite delivers what it
3 promises), away from feeling tilted in the direction of emotional
4 drought or tilting in the other direction, towards being flooded with
5 too much and too intensely turbulent and potentially destructive
6 emotion.
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511
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111 CHAPTER ONE

2
3
4
5
6
711 On being able to be a couple: the
8
9
importance of a “creative couple” in
10 psychic life1
1
2
3 Mary Morgan
4
5
6
7
8
9
211 “The idea of a couple coming together to produce a child is
1 central in our psychic life, whether we aspire to it, object to
2 it, realise we are produced by it, deny it, relish it, or hate it”
3 Britton, 1995, p. xi
4
5
C
6 ouples coming for therapy show us just how difficult it
7 can be to develop and sustain an intimate, adult couple
8 relationship. This begs the question, what is an intimate,
9 adult couple relationship? Clearly some important earlier psychic
30 developments occur that make it possible to become a couple. In
1 my opinion, a crystallization of these psychic developments occurs,
2 which becomes a part of the individual’s psychic structure and
3 helps to sustain him or her in a couple relationship. I shall refer
4 to this as the internalization of a “creative couple” (Morgan &
5 Ruszczynski, 1998). This development brings about a state of mind
6 and way of relating, to oneself and to the other, that is a change
7 from earlier kinds of psychic development. Because of the vagaries
8 of life the psychic development may or may not be manifested in
911 an actual couple relationship. Without this psychic development
9
111 couples in a relationship have difficulties, or the relationship is

2 severely limited.
3 My intention in this chapter is twofold. First, it is to make
4 explicit the process of psychic development as I understand it, and
5 illustrate how two particular areas—the negotiation of the oedipal
6 situation and adolescence—are crucial precursors to the develop-
7 ment of a capacity to form part of a creative couple. I will also
8 address the anxiety involved in psychic change.
9 My second intention is to describe key aspects of a creative
10 couple state of mind and way of relating to another. In particular, I
1 suggest that once an individual is part of an intimate adult couple
2 relationship, if this development has taken place, then the creative
3 couple as a psychic object can be turned to as a “third position”
4 (Britton, 1989, p. 87), to help the individuals sustain their relation-
5 ship when it is vulnerable. I hope also to show how creative this
6 relationship can be, both internally and as part of a relationship
711 with another; and how, through this relationship itself, further
8 psychic development is possible.
9
20
1 Epistemophilia and the couple in psychic development
2
3 First, I will try to put the development of a creative couple as a
4 psychic object within the context of psychic development as a
511 whole. From the beginning of life the infant is struggling to make
6 sense of experience and has an innate expectation of there being an
7 object. Klein (1930a,b) stressed Freud’s (1916–1917) assertion of an
8 epistemophilic instinct, the urge to know or understand, as a
9 component instinct of the libido. In her view, all instinctual urges
311 involved objects, external or internal (Klein, 1952a). In her work
1 with young children she could see inhibitions of epistemophilia
2 and consequent learning difficulties, because the frustration that
3 stimulated the urge to know could also give rise to sadistic
4 impulses inhibiting it. Bion (1962b) saw the epistemophilic instinct
5 in terms of the emotional links between objects, which he formu-
6 lated as being either ‘L’ (loving), ‘H’ (hating), or ‘K’ (the wish to
7 know the other). He described truth and understanding as food to
8 the mind. Similarly, Britton conceives of the desire for knowledge
911 as existing alongside love and hate: “Human beings have an urge
ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 11
111 to love, to hate, to know, and a desire to be loved, a fear of being

2 hated and a wish to be understood” (Britton, 1998a, p. 11).
3 These theories about the human being encompass the idea of an
4 infant who is trying to make emotional links with an object, and to
5 make sense of experience from the beginning of life. Although the
6 newborn infant is not fully aware of the mother as a separate object,
711 it does seem that the infant is born with an innate preconception of
8 there being an object and, therefore, of coupling or linking. The idea
9 of there being an object is very important because it means that
10 there is, in the baby’s mind, the idea of an “other” into which some-
1 thing can be evacuated, from which something can be taken in, or
2 with which he can split off or link up. Following this, as Money-
3 Kyrle (1971) has stated, it is also probable that the idea of a couple
4 coming together sexually is derived from innate knowledge. At the
5 beginning of life the infant seeks the mother’s breast, the nipple and
6 the mouth forming a vital link, both real and symbolic. There is a
7 development of this imperative later in life in the drive to create a
8 sexual couple, symbolized and sometimes actualized by the link
9 between penis and vagina. From this beginning of linking up with
211 an object (the mother) to linking up with another in an intimate
1 adult relationship, much changes and has to be struggled with and
2 negotiated. The important point about this model of development
3 is that there is a process in human development where changes
4 occur using what is already known, albeit often in an entirely new
5 configuration. It also places psychic development within the
6 context of a relationship.
7 Physiological changes in the individual and environmental
8 responses stimulate psychic development, but such development
9 may also be resisted. It may be possible to form an adult couple
30 relationship without the development that occurs through relin-
1 quishing the primary object and negotiating the oedipal situation,
2 but it will be fraught with difficulties. Intimacy, for example,
3 instead of being based on knowledge of the reality of the separate-
4 ness of the other, and the wish really to know the other, can be
5 based on an expectation of omnisciently knowing the other and/or
6 being known by the other; an experience closer to intrusion (Fisher,
7 1995; Morgan, 1995). Many couple relationships contain aspects of
8 a regressive wish to be the infant with a mother who can provide
911 everything; emotional, physical, and mental.
111 The oedipal situation

2
From Freud onwards, psychoanalysis has fruitfully employed the
3
myth of Oedipus to show the complex centrality of the primary
4
triangular relationship between a mother, a father, and a child. That
5
relationship is considered to be crucial in psychological develop-
6
ment because the meanings and patterns the child experiences in
7
that situation are likely to influence all subsequent relationships
8
made in the journey through life.
9
10 What is it that is so significant about this early triangular rela-
1 tionship? The child is involved in a nurturing relationship with a
2 mother and with a father, and in a relationship with the mother and
3 father as a couple, including their sexual relationship and their
4 capacity to produce new life. (This is no less true in the situation of
5 an absent mother or father, or in the absence of the actual parental
6 relationship.) By having a relationship with a mother and/or father,
711 coming to observe and, if all goes well, to tolerate the special link
8 between the parents, the child becomes aware of the experience of
9 being included and excluded, and of there being different types of
20 relationships. He also learns that there are generational boundaries
1 (Britton, 1989). In other words, it has a structuring role in the
2 personality. In coming to tolerate these vagaries of relating, the
3 child has to contend with an affront to his or her narcissism and
4 omnipotence. The child is not always at the centre of good rela-
511 tionships, and is needy of something that is creative and outside
6 him or herself which, if his envy and narcissism can bear it, he can
7 draw on. It is only by relinquishing the omnipotent phantasy of
8 becoming part of a sexual couple with mother or father, and by
9 recognizing and tolerating the special link between them, that the
311 child will introject the parents-as-a-couple as a psychic object. The
1 seed of the possibility of forming his or her own adult sexual couple
2 relationship is sown.
3 As indicated earlier, working through the oedipal situation does
4 not simply enhance the capacity to form a couple relationship but
5 contributes in an essential way to a growing, intrinsic knowledge of
6 what being part of a couple means. There are many aspects of this.
7 Facing the oedipal situation requires the capacity to manage loss, as
8 the idea that one could be the grown-up partner to either parent,
911 and that one could prevent the parents being a couple together, has
111 to be relinquished. If not achieved, it will be impossible to fully

2 invest in one’s own intimate couple relationship. Couple psycho-
3 therapists frequently see couples in which one or both partners are
4 still too enmeshed in a relationship with a parent, either as primary
5 object, or as an oedipal object. In this situation there is a lack of
6 emotional investment in the spouse, and the children can be drawn
711 into a relationship with a parent as support or confidant, severely
8 undermining the marriage and the children’s own oedipal develop-
9 ment. If the boundary around the parental couple’s relationship is
10 accepted, it becomes possible to see the difference between the
1 parents as a couple and the child’s relationship to the parent. Later
2 in adulthood the situation is reconfigured, as the individual
3 becomes part of an intimate couple and can bear to exclude the chil-
4 dren from aspects of the relationship. It is easier, not simply because
5 of having had that experience in relation to the parents as a couple
6 but because the experience is internalized, effecting all kinds of
7 other developments—physiological as well as psychic—occurring
8 in the individual. As Money-Kyrle describes it:
9
211 Where there has been a favourable development, and the concept
1 of the first good object is well established, together with the capa-
2 city to remember it with love, there is far less difficulty in being able
3 to recognise the parental relation as an example of the innate
4 preconception of coitus as a supremely creative act—especially if
5 this is reinforced by the memory of a good relationship between the
6 nipple and the mouth . . . and after a renewed period of mourning
for the child–parent marriage that can never be, to internalise and
7
establish a good concept of parental intercourse as the basis of a
8
subsequent marriage which may in fact take place. [Money-Kyrle,
9
1971, p. 105]
30
1
2 Adolescence
3
4 The unconscious introjection of the parents as a couple in an object
5 relationship to the child aids later psychic development, such as
6 that occurring in adolescence. For example, this triangular configur-
7 ation helps the adolescent take ownership of his own body and
8 mind, because he can be the one who chooses to exclude himself
911 from the couple and develop his own identity (Laufer, 1975). The
111 typical adolescent then develops a sense of independence that is

2 seen as the ideal. However, this is also a state of mind in which
3 independence is diametrically opposed to the young infant’s
4 absolute dependence on the mother. If relationships are seen as one
5 of these two kinds, utterly dependent or completely independent,
6 then it is easy to see how such a state of mind would be extremely
7 problematic, once in an adult couple relationship, should further
8 development not occur. There is sometimes a tendency for the
9 young adult to believe that his development is over and that he has
10 succeeded in becoming “independent”. Usually, this period of
1 experiment with oneself and one’s identity ends because of the
2 impact of a new developmental imperative to form a couple. To
3 some adults this can feel threatening, as if being part of a couple
4 means the loss of this hard-won independence. It may therefore be
5 avoided for some time, and sometimes forever. This adolescent idea
6 of independence is an illusion because it denies a fact of life, namely
711 that we all need help. Money-Kyrle (1971) conceptualizes this as the
8 “recognition of the breast as a supremely good object”, something
9 that is innately known and discovered as part of experience, though
20 something that can also be turned away from or denied. This is
1 different from a regressive wish for dependence such as the infant
2 had with mother. Both the idea of a relationship with the ideal
3 object (mother) and the idealization of independence as in the
4 adolescent state of mind are deeply problematic for the individual
511 in a couple relationship.
6 The potential we have as individuals depends upon having the
7 idea of being able to form a couple with another individual.
8 Furthermore, though actually being part of a couple may be the
9 desired state, not every individual chooses or achieves this due to
311 any number of circumstances. More important is the belief in rela-
1 tionships as a source of creativity, and this may be concretely real-
2 ized through becoming part of a couple from some other source; for
3 example, through contact with colleagues, friends, and even good
4 internal objects. The creativity of practising psychotherapists and
5 psychoanalysts surely stems from an internal dialogue with such
6 good objects.
7 Everyone struggles in coming to terms with the oedipal situa-
8 tion and, actually, the struggle seems to be an inevitable part of the
911 experience. It is, moreover, not a once and for all development.
111 Negotiating the oedipal situation is not the same thing as resolving
2 it, and difficulties in triangular situations (for example, becoming
3 parents and incorporating a third into the couple), in being part of
4 a couple, and in thinking, may continue in some form or emerge at
5 times of stress. However, for some people there is a fundamental
6 problem in this area of psychic development. Britton has described
711 two areas of difficulty. The first is where the patient cannot allow a
8 couple to come together in his or her mind, or in that of the analyst.
9 The second is an “oedipal illusion”, in which “the parental rela-
10 tionship is known but its full significance is evaded” (1989, p. 94).
1 The first situation Britton describes leads to serious difficulties
2 in thinking, and is the diametrically opposite situation to the
3 creative couple state of mind, in which it is possible to allow two
4 thoughts to come together with a creative outcome. This process is
5 reinforced by the experience of being in a relationship with another
6 person with whom thinking can take place. The analytic situation
7 that Britton describes is one in which any evidence that the analyst
8 is having this experience inside his own mind, or between him and
9 the patient, is felt as too threatening. He suggests that this is due to
211 an earlier failure of maternal containment. The oedipal couple
1 becomes equated with linking-up an idealized mother and her
2 split-off hostility that threatens a precarious relationship to the
3 primary object:
4
5 The idea of a good maternal object can only be regained by split-
6 ting off her impermeability so that now a hostile force is felt to exist,
7 which attacks his good link with his mother. Mother’s goodness is
now precarious and depends on him restricting his knowledge of
8
her. . . . The hostile force that was thought to attack his original link
9
with his mother is now equated with the oedipal father, and the
30 link between the parents is felt to reconstitute her as the non-recep-
1 tive deadly mother. The child’s original link with the good mater-
2 nal object is felt to be the source of life, and so, when it is
3 threatened, life is felt to be threatened. [Britton, 1989, p. 90]
4
5 Britton shows how difficult an analysis with such a patient is,
6 because the patient needs a relationship with the analyst in which
7 there is no psychic intercourse.
8 One might think that individuals who require this kind of relat-
911 ing would find being in an intimate adult couple relationship
111 extremely difficult. Often this is the case, or it becomes the case.
2 However, sometimes, for a while, such a couple feel they have
3 found a way of relating that relieves them of the anxieties they
4 would experience if there were more psychic intercourse. This rela-
5 tionship requires the kind of intercourse described by Britton with
6 his patient: “We were to move along a single line and meet at a
7 single point” (1989, p. 88). I described this kind of relationship in a
8 previous paper on “projective gridlock”, from which I quote the
9 example of Tom and Rachel:
10
1 Rachel reflected on how she and her husband Tom always did
2 everything together: they studied together, shared the same inter-
3 ests and operated as one. He would chose clothes for her, and when
4 they went to parties Tom would speak for both of them. It never
occurred to her that she might have a different point of view. She
5
often felt that when they talked to each other, he would lose aware-
6
ness of her presence, and it seemed that she, for her own uncon-
711
scious reasons, had gone along with this. For a long time she felt
8 quite content in this situation, except that she had never enjoyed
9 sex with Tom. Tom said that looking back, what had felt awful
20 about having sex with Rachel was that he worked out what she
1 thought, felt, and wanted to such an extent that it was like having
2 sex with himself; paradoxically, he had not really known what was
3 going on for her at all. [Morgan, 1995, p. 44]
4
511 In the second situation Britton describes, the oedipal illusion is
6 felt to protect the individual from the psychic reality of their phan-
7 tasies of the oedipal situation. This evasion has serious conse-
8 quences for the individual’s mental and emotional life. The patient
9 Britton describes had difficulty in bringing things together in his
311 mind, which affected the clarity of his thinking, and there was a
1 pervasive sense of unreality and feeling of unfulfilment in his life,
2 as well as a quality of non-consummation in all his relationships
3 and projects in life.
4 Some couples come for therapy with the problem that they are
5 unable to move forward, to make a commitment together (live
6 together or marry with the possibility of having children), or to
7 separate. This can be quite a desperate problem, particularly if the
8 female partner is reaching the end of her fertile years and if one
911 partner longs for children.
111 One such couple presented their problem as an inability to

2 decide to get married, sometimes expressed by James and at other
3 times by Ellie. They felt they probably would marry at some point,
4 but they didn’t know when that would be or how they would be
5 able to make the decision. Sometimes they felt comfortable in this
6 position, and sometimes they felt in an acute state of anxiety. James
711 was in his late forties and, although he had had previous long-term
8 relationships and, in fact, had been engaged twice, he had never
9 married. Ellie was in her early forties, and this was her first commit-
10 ted relationship. Neither of them had more than a rudimentary
1 sense of a creative couple in mind, and they were frightened of
2 repeating the dynamic of their respective parents’ relationships,
3 which were sado-masochistic in nature. In fact, their stalemated
4 situation had a sado-masochistic aspect to it, of which they were
5 unaware. There was a dynamic in the sessions that felt like tread-
6 ing water as, even when there was a sense of some intercourse
7 taking place between them, or between them and me, it didn’t seem
8 to lead to any outcome. In one session they reported feeling that
9 they had had a good discussion over the weekend with friends they
211 had been away with, and they felt that this was progress. They had
1 talked about the future, where they would live when they were
2 married, in particular Ellie’s hope that they could move closer to
3 her sister, how many children they would have, including the fact
4 they both secretly hoped to have a boy. The content of their dis-
5 cussion felt very new, and the therapist initially also heard this as
6 progress. However, as they shared more of the details, the therapist
7 became aware of how defensive this thinking was. It began to take
8 on the quality of a flight away from the painful reality of not actu-
9 ally knowing whether they could be together or not in the future. It
30 was as if they had by-passed that difficult problem and taken up
1 residence in a fantasy world of being married, of being parents, and
2 of being able to resolve things without conflict.
3 Many couples coming for help present similar difficulties rooted
4 in problems with facing or working through the oedipal situation.
5 The difficulties may be narcissistic in nature, as I have described in
6 the “projective gridlock” (Morgan, 1995). In this situation, like
7 Tom and Rachel, two different and separate people cannot come
8 together, feeling that there is only room for one in the relationship.
911 Alternatively, as with the “oedipal illusion” in James and Ellie’s
111 case, there is room for two, but they can produce nothing much
2 between them, resulting in the feeling of non-consummation that
3 Britton describes.
4
5
Anxieties aroused by development towards creative couple relating
6
7 The movement towards feeling oneself to be part of a couple in
8 which two minds come together to create something can challenge
9 both partners’ narcissism and omnipotence, which are rarely, if
10 ever, relinquished without regret, shame, sadness, and opposition.
1 However, the internalization of the creative couple as a psychic
2 object also provides the container within which the regression often
3 associated with the first phase of the capacity to experience some-
4 thing new can be contained.
5 As with every new stage of psychic development, there are anxi-
6 eties about giving up what previously felt known and secure in
711 order to step into something new and not yet known. As discussed
8 earlier, many individuals on the verge of making a committed rela-
9 tionship feel full of loss about giving up their independence and
20 autonomy. There is tremendous anxiety about giving up what was
1 previously regarded as being the achievement of a “mature” posi-
2 tion. This may be because, following the earliest developments as
3 part of a mother–baby couple, all subsequent developments have
4 been largely about becoming more separate and independent, and
511 the achievement of this relative independence is often felt to consti-
6 tute maturity. Becoming part of a couple again often stirs up anxi-
7 eties about losing this independence, raising fears of having to fit
8 in, and feelings that it will not be possible to be fully oneself in a
9 relationship. Some couples come for help in a battle, each wanting
311 to hold on to their omnipotent individuality, and seeing a relation-
1 ship as a situation where their partner should fit into their view of
2 how things should be. At its most extreme, such couples have no
3 idea that a relationship could be anything else.
4 Building on Klein’s work, Bion (1970) has conceptualized how
5 changing one’s way of thinking and relating involves dismantling
6 previous views and theories, which can have the quality of a psy-
7 chic catastrophe—a going to pieces (Grier, Chapter 10, herein). In
8 Klein’s (1946) terms, this is a move into the paranoid–schizoid posi-
911 tion. The subsequent reforming of a new set of views and theories
111 is a synthesizing move into what Klein described as the depres-

2 sive position (Klein, 1935, 1940). Creative effort can therefore be
3 viewed as a process, on a small scale, of movements to and from
4 the paranoid–schizoid and depressive positions. The tolerance of
5 a degree of disintegration, without resorting to omnipotent, primi-
6 tive defence mechanisms, or turning back to a previously held posi-
711 tion, is essential for creative thinking and living. At each point of
8 development, fluctuations between the paranoid–schizoid and
9 depressive positions will occur.
10 Britton (1998) develops these ideas, describing the process of
1 moving from the depressive position to what he calls a post-depres-
2 sive position. This entails moving from a situation of integrated
3 understanding into a new situation of uncertainty and incoherence,
4 a new paranoid–schizoid position, before moving on to a new and,
5 as yet, unimaginable resolution incorporating the new facts; a new
6 depressive position. Ruszczynski (1995) has referred to this, in
7 terms of the couple relationship, as allowing inevitable and neces-
8 sary regressions, at times towards more narcissistic relating, even in
9 a couple relationship that has the capacity for more mature relating.
211 Both these writers are describing the fact that regressive states
1 of mind and behaviour are not to be considered simply as psycho-
2 pathological states, nor as only the products of disruptions caused
3 by life transitions and environmental impingement or traumas, but
4 that such states are unavoidable, even necessary, as a result of the
5 inevitability of psychic disruption occurring at points of new learn-
6 ing and growth. Once the new learning is established, an internal
7 reintegration takes place and there can then be a move forward to
8 a new depressive position.
9 Paul and Anna, married with a young baby, had fallen into a
30 pattern familiar to many couples seeking help, in which they were
1 leading quite separate and independent lives. The husband was
2 very involved in his work, a new business he was developing, and
3 the wife was very involved with their baby, who had been con-
4 ceived after several years of infertility treatment. It was his affair
5 with a close friend of hers, shortly after the birth of their child,
6 which exposed something between them and led them to apply for
7 therapy. They were both sceptical about therapy. Anna had once
8 had counselling in connection with the infertility problems but
911 hadn’t found this helpful. Paul thought therapy would be about
111 putting him on the right track and imposing a bland alternative to
2 his more exciting, though (he also felt) destructive, existence.
3 In the early sessions, Paul was brutally honest to Anna, saying
4 that he wasn’t in love with her any more and that he was unsure if
5 he wanted to stay in the relationship, though he felt devoted to their
6 baby. Anna was extremely hurt and angry with Paul. However, at
7 this stage she was much closer than he was to a belief in the possi-
8 bility of their establishing a more creative couple relationship. She
9 dealt with his rejection by becoming emotionally and sexually with-
10 drawn. They both sought refuge from their painful situation, he in
1 his work, and she in a rather idealized relationship with their baby.
2 In the course of the therapy it became apparent that there had
3 been rejection upon rejection from the beginning of the relationship.
4 One partner would risk showing vulnerability and great need of the
5 other, and the second partner, relieved of these feelings via projec-
6 tion of them into the first partner, would turn away with renewed
711 feelings of self-sufficiency and independence. One of the things that
8 contributed to the shift in this couple’s way of relating was their
9 feeling of dependence on the therapist, which took them both by
20 surprise. On one occasion the therapist had to cancel a session at
1 short notice. In the following session the couple denied that this
2 event mattered at all, nor did it matter if they had to miss a session
3 for any reason. The therapist felt, though, that they had been quite
4 disturbed by the event. It was only several sessions later, when the
511 issue came up in relation to something else, that the couple could
6 let themselves, and the therapist, know how angry they had been.
7 Once their need for another could be grasped, initially in relation to
8 the therapist, they began to risk being more open with each other.
9 Both began to share very deep anxieties about their inadequacies in
311 a number of areas, particularly in relation to sex.
1 As the couple began to feel safer with the therapist and with
2 each other, they discovered something that neither had been able to
3 envisage earlier. Simply put, they began to feel that they had a
4 “relationship”; a third that they were invested in nurturing, but that
5 also contained them. They were, of course, still sometimes in
6 conflict, particularly when they felt let down by each other. How-
7 ever, this conflict began to be contained within their relationship,
8 and was less at risk of being acted out outside the relationship in
911 an affair, or inside the relationship in emotional withdrawal. They
111 also discovered that conflict, if containable, could lead to solutions.

2 Paul came to understand that only when he did not have the “rela-
3 tionship” was he capable of destructive acting out, as he had done
4 in becoming involved in the affair. At the same time he rued the
5 loss of his earlier freedoms, which were accompanied by a phantasy
6 of not being in a relationship. Through mourning this loss he
711 became able to discover something else—a deep love for his wife.
8 Towards the end of therapy, the couple had been to see a play in
9 which one of the central themes was about the exploitation of
10 indigenous peoples. Suddenly, in the middle of the play Paul had a
1 revelation. He realized he had treated the woman he’d had the
2 affair with as a “lesser human being”, summoning her when he felt
3 depressed or inadequate and, at the same time, debasing his wife
4 and himself. When he’d been with his mistress he was in a state of
5 mind in which he no longer felt contained by the relationship with
6 Anna.
7 As the end of the therapy approached, Paul said to his wife,
8 “Look, if we’re going to stay together as a couple, there may be
9 difficult things we’ll have to face together. Maybe we won’t be able
211 to have more children, we’ll both get older—there may be illnesses,
1 and there will be losses.” This couple could only contemplate facing
2 these facts of life because of the strength derived from discovering
3 a creative couple relationship, which provided a container, in the
4 sense that they could imagine facing difficult things.
5 As is often the case, this couple had come for therapy at the
6 point of psychic disintegration, in the sense described by Bion and
7 Britton. Their previous way of being was no longer functioning
8 adequately as a container. They had to let it go, without yet know-
9 ing what a future different psychic state could be.
30
1
2 Aspects of creative and non-creative relating
3
4 I will now describe some aspects of creative and non-creative relat-
5 ing that manifest in the couple relationship. My purpose is to illus-
6 trate the movement between more, and less, creative relating in any
7 one couple, and to show how some couples find themselves situated
8 much more in one position or the other. This may prove useful diag-
911 nostically, and it also relates to the aim of couple psychoanalytic
111 psychotherapy, which could be conceptualized as helping the

2 couple towards more creative couple relating. Perhaps I should first
3 reiterate that the “creative couple” is primarily a psychic develop-
4 ment, one in which it is possible to allow different thoughts and feel-
5 ings to come together in one’s mind, and for something to develop
6 out of them. This capacity obviously has a major impact on an actual
7 couple relationship. If one can allow this kind of mating within
8 oneself, it becomes more likely that one can allow it to occur
9 between oneself and one’s partner. I wish to clarify that, when writ-
10 ing about the creative couple state of mind, I refer to a level of
1 psychic functioning of which individuals become capable, even
2 though they may not always achieve it. Fisher’s (1999) conceptual-
3 ization includes an oscillation between what he calls the psychic
4 state of marriage and something more narcissistic. What marks this
5 out from a more overall narcissistic relating is that this creative
6 couple state of mind has been discovered, and can be recovered.
711
8
The relationship as the third position
9
20 The development of the depressive position goes hand in hand
1 with the oedipal situation, as Britton (1998) has so clearly pointed
2 out. With the awareness of mother as a separate object, with rela-
3 tionships that can exclude the child, comes development of trian-
4 gular space and three-dimensional thinking. As well as being an
511 observer of a couple from which he is excluded, the child can start
6 to develop an idea of himself in a relationship excluding a third,
7 and being observed by a third. Eventually this third becomes inter-
8 nalized as an aspect of himself, the capacity to observe himself in
9 his own relationship. This development, what linguistics calls the
311 “meta” position, is crucial for the individual in an adult, couple
1 relationship.
2 In the creative couple state of mind, the concept of the relation-
3 ship provides a third position for the two individuals in the rela-
4 tionship. The capacity for a third position is central to the creative
5 couple, and the oedipal triangle now becomes a template for under-
6 standing oneself as part of a couple. The oedipal situation provided
7 the opportunity to develop one’s capacity to observe one’s internal
8 intercourse, and now the concept of oneself as a couple provides the
911 vantage point from which to observe oneself in a couple relation-
111 ship. When a breakdown occurs in one’s relating to the other, one
2 can take up the position of the relationship as a third, and observe
3 oneself within the relationship (Figures 1 and 2).
4 In this position the different, or sometimes opposing, perspec-
5 tive of the other is not felt to obliterate one’s own view, but can be
6 taken in to one’s psyche, and allowed to reside there and mate with
711 one’s own thought. In this way, the individual’s psychic develop-
8 ment is enhanced through an actual creative couple relationship
9 with another person. This creativity becomes possible because a
10 state of mind has been achieved in which two minds, as well as two
1 bodies, can come together and create a third.
2 Simon and Karen, a young and very affluent couple with an
3 eleven-year-old daughter and a nine-year-old son, approached
4 therapy in utter despair. Simon thought his wife was so angry and
5 irrational as to be on the point of madness. Karen was despairing
6 of the fact that, in her eyes, her husband fell acutely short of her
7 idea of what a husband should be. She had previously been
8 married and it appeared that there had been little sexual contact in
9 the relationship, which had lasted only a short time before her
211 husband had left her. Although angry with her ex-husband, Karen
1 held a conviction that, had it continued, this would have been the
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
911 Figure 1
111
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
711
8 Figure 2
9
20 ideal relationship. At the beginning of therapy, her disappointment
1 with what she and Simon had in comparison to her previous, ideal-
2 ized relationship fuelled her anger. It was only much later in the
3 therapy that the non-attainment of the ideal began to be mourned,
4 and Karen could become in touch with some of what she did have
511 with Simon.
6 There was a long phase in the therapy in which the couple had
7 no contact with the idea of a creative couple relationship, and there-
8 fore did not have the kind of relationship that they could turn to as
9 a third position. Consequently they rapidly became very dependent
311 on the therapist as a third party who could keep the relationship in
1 mind. The therapy was marked by a conflict in which Karen would
2 berate Simon for falling so far short of the mark, and Simon would
3 attempt to be reasonable and to pacify her. Karen related to her
4 husband as someone who should relieve her of pain, anxieties, and
5 depression. In order to do this he had to understand exactly how
6 she felt, and why she felt like it. Simon was a man who had diffi-
7 culty in knowing about his own feelings, and frequently failed
8 adequately to understand those of his wife. This dynamic between
911 them, which was experienced time and time again in their relation-
111 ship, left Karen feeling she had no husband, no other to turn to, and
2 left Simon feeling impotent and a failure. There was pressure on
3 this relationship to be a more of an infant–mother coupling, set up
4 as one of the partners to be contained by the other, rather than an
5 adult sexual relationship in which the two individuals can come
6 together and think.
711 There was probably a narcissistic structure in Karen that pro-
8 vided her with an illusion that actually she could manage by her-
9 self, a situation common in individuals seeking help as part of a
10 couple. This was, of course, by definition, an anti-relationship,
1 psychically quite active, which could manifest itself quite destruc-
2 tively between the couple. The relationship was founded on an
3 attack on relating. Against the background of often being emotion-
4 ally let down by her husband, Karen would also, on occasion,
5 actively destroy those times when Simon was capable of offering
6 her something that she wanted or needed. Becoming aware of
7 Simon’s capacity to meet some of her requirements terrified her,
8 because she experienced knowing about her dependence as an
9 attack on her illusory self-sufficiency. At worst she felt this to be
211 tantamount to an annihilation of her self.
1 Karen described, in a desperate way, how Simon was simply
2 “not there”. In the consulting room this was, at first, rather difficult
3 to see. Simon presented himself as a reasonable man, on the face of
4 it always trying to do things and to make things better for Karen.
5 However, in a more fundamental sense, Karen was right; her hus-
6 band was not there for her. Simon didn’t let her know how he felt
7 about anything, and sometimes was quite secretive about what he
8 actually did contribute to the relationship. This increased her diffi-
9 culties in a number of ways. She didn’t have someone else’s feel-
30 ings to come up against, to take into account and to act as a limiting
1 factor to her own feelings; she didn’t have the opportunity to be the
2 one able to think about him when he was distressed, as she was
3 always seen to be the irrational one; but, even more importantly,
4 she felt that she was not in a relationship with another person.
5 Simon could understand some of this and its impact on his wife.
6 The problem for him was that he did not feel in touch with his own
7 feelings and anxieties, which were connected to his early experience
8 of relating to an object similarly cut off from feelings. Moreover,
911 he was so frightened of his feelings, which were powerful and
111 violent—primitive because they had never been processed—that he

2 was invested in leaving Karen with all the feelings in the relation-
3 ship, and in unconsciously and sadistically allowing them to esca-
4 late. Therefore, although on the face of it Karen was the irrational
5 one, the therapist was aware of how invested Simon was in getting
6 Karen to express feelings that he was too frightened to contemplate
7 in himself.
8 After quite some time in therapy moments slowly began to
9 occur in which the couple began to discover their relationship as a
10 resource. For example, later in the therapy, their son developed
1 a condition that required a lot of medical intervention and would
2 possibly require one of them to take a period of time off work, or
3 even to leave their job. In a rare moment, instead of taking up their
4 opposing positions on the subject, they were both able to own and
5 share with each other their anxieties. They also began to get them-
6 selves into a third position, and to see how they had been dealing
711 with their anxieties by attacking each other. They could then move
8 towards something more supportive. It was an important experi-
9 ence for them to discover that this could lead to a creative solution
20 as their collaborative thinking emerged—an outcome that neither
1 had considered a possibility at the beginning.
2
3
The degree of conscious and unconscious relating
4
511 The way a couple deals with their emotions is an indication of
6 whether or not they are relating as a creative couple. The couple
7 relationship is a very emotional one, regardless of whether, or how,
8 emotion is expressed. This is due to the intimacy of this relation-
9 ship, which either breaks down, or threatens to break down, bound-
311 aries, including defences. Primitive emotions, such as dependency,
1 envy, love, and hate, are evoked. In addition, earlier internal object
2 relationships become re-enacted as the drive to work through unre-
3 solved inner conflicts takes hold.
4 It is not true that in the creative couple there is no fighting
5 between the individuals. There will inevitably be differences,
6 disagreements, frustrations, anger, and hatred. However, in the
7 creative couple relationship there is a sense that the relationship can
8 survive attacks that each individual makes on the other, and hope
911 that, out of disagreement, understanding may eventually come. In
111 this way the relationship is subjectively experienced as a resource,

2 something the individuals in the relationship can turn to in their
3 minds, with the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. This
4 is tremendously helpful to a couple that is having a difficult time
5 together because somewhere there is a belief that the relationship
6 can withstand it. Of course, not all arguments have the potential to
711 be creative, and sometimes it is quite the opposite. In the creative
8 couple relationship, however, the individuals find it possible,
9 enough of the time, to process their own emotional experiences and
10 to think about them, sometimes with the help of their partner. This
1 capacity for reflection, for being able to think about one’s own feel-
2 ings as well as a partner’s, is, as described earlier, an important part
3 of psychic development.
4 In what one might describe as a destructive argument there is
5 the tendency to rid oneself of what feels emotionally unmanage-
6 able, and to project it into the partner. Intimate relationships are a
7 fertile arena for projections. Partners are obvious objects into which
8 to project, both because of their proximity and because the bound-
9 aries between intimate couples are more permeable. Many couples
211 seek help in a state of mind where they feel unable to think about
1 their own and their partner’s unmanageable feelings, nor can they
2 think about what is happening between them. They feel the impact
3 of their own emotions, but are overwhelmed by them and, in this
4 primitive state of mind, are unable to think about them. On top of
5 this they often feel, like young infants, that the reason they are feel-
6 ing so overwhelmed is because they are being attacked from
7 outside by the partner. As described earlier, the idea holds sway
8 that the partner is responsible for both one’s happiness and one’s
9 unhappiness.
30
1
Psychic separateness
2
3 In a creative couple relationship it is possible to be psychically
4 separate within the context of an intimate relationship. This is
5 different from the early relationship between mother and baby.
6 There, mother and baby are not psychically separate, and this is
7 quite appropriate—in fact, this symbiotic relationship is a crucial
8 part of psychic development, with the infant needing to be depen-
911 dent on a mother to meet his needs. But, even for an infant, psychic
111 separateness soon becomes essential to his being and the develop-
2 ment of his personality, as Winnicott pointed out:
3
4 It is only when alone (that is to say, in the presence of someone) that
5 the infant can discover his own personal life. The pathological alter-
6 native is a false life built on reactions to external stimuli. When
7 alone in the sense that I am using the term, and only when alone,
the infant is able to do the equivalent of what in an adult would be
8
called relaxing. [Winnicott, 1958, p. 418]
9
10
One of the dilemmas many individuals encounter when they
1
become part of an intimate, adult relationship, is how to be psychi-
2
cally separate and, at the same time, intimate. If the developments
3
referred to earlier have not taken place, then the individual may
4
5 have the merged mother–baby model unconsciously in mind as a
6 mode of relating. Although I refer to this as a difficulty, it is of
711 course quite common for couples to seek and aspire to a merged
8 state of mind, feeling this to be the essence of being in love. How-
9 ever, true and sustaining love comes only with the disillusionment
20 of this idea of merger as the ideal. The relinquishment of the ideal
1 object goes hand in hand with the development of the wish really
2 to know the other, not by magically becoming “one”, but from the
3 outside, with all the limitations and frustrations that this involves.
4 The feeling of merger in the being-in-love state is so powerful
511 because one feels just like the baby with mother, i.e. fused with an
6 ideal maternal object. If the ideal of merger can be relinquished,
7 then the attractions of difference can be discovered. Once the couple
8 has given up the idea of merger as the ideal that they have to strive
9 for, it becomes more possible from time to time to move into that
311 state spontaneously, for example during sex, and to enjoy the
1 intense feeling that it arouses; and it is also more possible to move
2 out of it again, without too much regret.
3 If, however, the ideal of merger is not relinquished, and yet
4 becomes harder to sustain, difficulties will arise in the relationship.
5 Sometimes the couple are quite aware of this problem, and one or
6 both describe the feeling of not having a separate existence within
7 the relationship. Most commonly, one partner feels that the other’s
8 behaviour is responsible for his or her happiness. Conflict arises
911 around not being able to see the other as separate, as one partner
111 tries omnipotently to control the other, to make them into the kind
2 of object they want or need them to be, or to impose their own
3 version of reality on the other as if theirs is the only true version.
4 The one, more or less tyrannically, requires of the other certain
5 forms of behaviour so that life may be bearable.
6
711
8 Conclusion: a sense of containment
9
10 In this chapter I have tried to show how I understand psychic
1 development as it relates to the couple; where it founders, and
2 where, sometimes with the help of psychotherapy, the awareness of
3 creative intercourse can be discovered or recovered.
4 In living through the oedipal situation the infant has the begin-
5 nings of an idea of a couple who together, as a function of their rela-
6 tionship, “contain” the baby (Bion, 1959, 1962a). What the child
7 does with this experience and information goes through some
8 transformations on the way to his or her developing the idea of a
9 creative couple relationship. As an adult, this is encompassed in the
211 idea of a couple relationship, which can contain not only actual chil-
1 dren, but also, when needed, each partner in the relationship. It
2 is also the beginning of the idea that this couple relationship can
3 be creative, symbolized by the possibility of actual children, and
4 realized through new thoughts, ideas, and other possibilities.
5 In the creative couple state of mind, the couple feels they have
6 something to which they both relate, something they can turn to
7 that can contain each of them as individuals. It is something they
8 have in mind, and they can imagine the relationship as something
9 that has them in mind. With couples in treatment it is observable
30 both when this third element is absent and when it starts to
1 develop. The latter can be a profoundly moving experience, as in
2 the case of Paul and Anna.
3 Once this capacity to create a relationship is secure, it can then
4 help contain the regression that inevitably arises at life transitions,
5 at points of crisis or of new learning, or just in trying to manage the
6 ups and downs of everyday life, all of which are likely temporarily
7 to undermine more mature relating. It allows room for ambivalence
8 and the toleration of the inevitability of conflict and tension. This is
911 the kind of relationship in which creative solutions are sometimes
111 possible—solutions that neither of the individuals would have

2 imagined or found on their own. One can notice this development
3 in couples in treatment, as in Simon’s and Karen’s case, when previ-
4 ously stuck situations become loosened up, as perhaps some things
5 can be relinquished, and possibilities for different ways forward
6 start to emerge.
7
8
9 Note
10
1 1. My thanks to Philip Stokoe, with whom I formulated the idea of a
2 creative couple in psychic life in 1998. This formed the basis of a paper
3 which Stanley Ruszczynski and I gave at The Tavistock Marital Studies
4 50th Anniversary Conference later that year.
5
6
711
8
9
20
1
2
3
4
511
6
7
8
9
311
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
911
111 CHAPTER TWO

2
3
4
5
6
711 Reflective space in the intimate
8
9
couple relationship: the “marital
10 triangle”*
1
2
3 Stanley Ruszczynski
4
5
6
7
8
9
211 “The vital process that drives men and women to each other,
1 to love each other, then create life, and thus achieve continu-
2 ation of the human race Freud called the oedipus complex”
3 Rey, 1994, p. 4
4
5
B
6 ritton’s (1989) paper “The missing link: parental sexuality in
7 the oedipus complex” has, in a short space of time, come to
8 influence much psychoanalytic thinking and practice with
9 individual patients. Britton delineates the significance of the
30 infant’s relationship not only to each of the parental couple indi-
1 vidually, as mother and as father, but crucially to the parental
2 couple as a couple, for individual psychic development. He develops
3 Bion’s (1962b) two-body, container–contained concept to that of a
4
5
6 *This is a revised version of a paper titled, “The ‘marital triangle’: towards
‘triangular space’ in the intimate couple relationship”, first published in the
7 Journal of the British Association of Psychotherapists, 34(3) Part 1, January 1998,
8 and, in Italian, in Interazioni: Clinica e Riecrca Psicoanalitica Individuo-Coppia-
911 Famiglia Vol. 2 1996/8 (Naples 1997).
31
111 triangular space within which observation, reflection, and thinking

2 can take place.
3 In this chapter I want to show how, in my view, the conceptual-
4 ization offered in Britton’s paper is equally useful in both theoreti-
5 cal thinking about, and psychoanalytic treatment of, couples. This
6 is perhaps no great surprise, given that the nature of the intimate
7 couple relationship is unconsciously determined by the nature of
8 the two partners’ relationships to their parents: imbued with projec-
9 tions, internalized, and enacted in their internal and external object
10 relationships (Dicks, 1967; Ruszczynski, 1992). I will briefly review
1 some of the central concepts set out in Britton’s paper, and show
2 how they may be applied to offer further understanding of the
3 dynamics in the intimate, adult couple relationship that, as a result,
4 provides an arena for continued reworking of unresolved oedipal
5 dilemmas.
6 Waddell has described how, in late adolescence, re-working
711 oedipal issues is of central significance to a person’s eventual capa-
8 city to enter into and sustain an intimate couple relationship. She
9 says that probably at no other developmental stage other than
20 infancy and young childhood are the demands of the oedipus
1 complex as prominent as during adolescence. Waddell states that
2 “among the central tasks of the period are those of separation, of
3 tolerating frustration, of living with disillusionment, of struggling
4 between the pleasure principle and the reality principle” (Waddell,
511 herein, p. 75). What strikes me about this description is that very
6 similar tasks seem to be present in the process of sustaining a
7 healthy couple relationship. These issues concern separateness and
8 attachment, disillusionment in relation to the original and neces-
9 sary idealization of the chosen partner, struggles about what is
311 desired of the other and of a shared life, what is possible in reality,
1 and, inevitably, frustration, relinquishment, and the capacity for
2 ambivalence. Waddell recognizes that these struggles are, of course,
3 lifelong. She writes, quoting Britton, that they have to be “re-
4 worked in each new life situation, at each stage of development and
5 with each major addition to experience or knowledge” (Britton,
6 1992, p. 38; in Waddell, herein, p. 74).
7 I want to explore how engaging in a couple relationship offers
8 the partners an opportunity to rework oedipal issues and poten-
911 tially develop the capacity to be a couple, a capability fundamentally
REFLECTIVE SPACE IN THE INTIMATE COUPLE RELATIONSHIP 33
111 dependent on the reasonable achievement of depressive position

2 capacities. The capacity to be a couple might, in itself, be seen as
3 a developmental stage in its own right (Morgan, 2001; Morgan
4 & Ruszczynski, 1998), as a result of which the possibility of true
5 intimacy might emerge (Fisher, 1995).
6 As stated explicitly by Britton, but inherent in the writings of
711 Klein, her colleagues, and those who followed her, the link between
8 the oedipal situation and the depressive position, and hence the
9 capacity for more mature object relationships, is well recognized.
10 Britton states it simply: “we resolve the oedipus complex by work-
1 ing through the depressive position and the depressive position by
2 working through the oedipus complex” (Britton, 1992, p. 35). This
3 tandem resolution, though a life-long struggle and never actually
4 completed, creates the capacity for, and hence the possibility of,
5 healthy relationships—including intimate couple relationships.
6 A detailed description of what exactly is meant by mature relat-
7 ing is not easy to give but, following Money-Kyrle, it would
8 certainly have to include the toleration of what he described as
9 certain irrefutable facts of life. These are the reality of dependence,
211 the multiple aspects of the oedipal situation, including the differ-
1 ences between the sexes and the generations, the supreme creativ-
2 ity of parental intercourse, and the inevitability of ageing and death
3 (Money-Kyrle, 1971, p. 443). Inherent in all of these is the toleration
4 of the loss of narcissism and omnipotence, the capacity to be
5 included and to tolerate being excluded, knowing about one’s
6 loving and hating feelings, bearing guilt, and experiencing grati-
7 tude. These are aspects of depressive capacities that come to pre-
8 dominate against the pull of more paranoid–schizoid defences and
9 functioning. The difficulties in making this transition mark the
30 borderland between more narcissistic and more mature function-
1 ing. If found intolerable, various defensive mechanisms might be
2 aroused, including perverse and sometimes violent resolutions
3 involving sado-masochistic enactments in relation to both internal
4 and external relationships (Ruszczynski, 2003).
5 To illustrate some of these dynamics, I shall give some brief
6 details about Mr and Mrs Jones (as I will call them). They are an
7 attractive and intelligent couple in their early thirties, who came for
8 treatment because of a growing sense of non-specific discomfort,
911 tension, and argumentativeness between them. They described an
111 increasingly frequent oscillation between cooperative and loving

2 contact with each other, and increasingly aggressive and explo-
3 sively angry exchanges. They work in the same profession, though
4 not together, and have a three-year-old child whose care they share
5 by both working part-time.
6 From my first contact with them there was a rather disturbing
7 sense that their marriage might be based on a narcissistic structure,
8 with a very subtle but discernible struggle by each for dominance
9 and control in their relationship. Both partners seemed to function
10 significantly by splitting and projective identification; each trying
1 to control the other, and fending off a perceived fear of being
2 controlled. They were able to have periods of loving emotional
3 contact, but these were usually brief, often highly sexual, and
4 quickly followed by a scramble for a position of control and domi-
5 nation. Each seemed to be frightened of dependence but also feared
6 being excluded, and for each, the other had to be little more than a
711 narcissistic extension of themselves. Dismissal of the separateness
8 and integrity of the other, often quite overtly in the service of gain-
9 ing a sense of superiority and power, was a more common feature
20 than cooperation.
1 In their professional lives each felt a sense of powerlessness and
2 envy towards the other, again leaving them feeling threatened and,
3 as a consequence, driven to attempt to gain a sense of dominance
4 and superiority over the other. For example, Mrs Jones was begin-
511 ning to have some of her work published and Mr Jones would often
6 quietly, but in a very calculated way, undermine her achievements
7 by questioning the worthiness of her material and ideas. At the
8 same time, his wife often enviously challenged Mr Jones about his
9 greater flexibility at work, one that she would dearly love to have.
311 Both openly flaunted their own work situations and attacked that
1 of the other.
2 Something similar took place in relation to the care of their
3 child. Each argued that the other’s parenting was poor—too rigid
4 or too lax were the usual criticisms—and that he or she was the
5 better parent. The shared parenting arrangement was quickly
6 exposed as being highly competitive, based on a desperate wish to
7 be seen as superior at parenting, and on an implied criticism of the
8 other; rather than a result of considered, appropriate division of
911 labour. There were also times when, in quite a distressing way for
111 their child, each would desperately try to hand over the child to the
2 other, feeling, it seemed, overwhelmed and threatened by his needs
3 and demands and anxious to retain their own autonomy.
4 In the transference both Mr and Mrs Jones often related to me as
5 if I were a wise sage whose every word was profound. Both would
6 see me as a preferred partner, and I was competed for in the three-
711 person dynamics of the consulting room, sometimes in quite blatant
8 ways. Behind this idealization, however, lay barely hidden deni-
9 gration and contempt, which was regularly exposed at the end of
10 sessions. The couple would leave the consulting room and, outside
1 the door, would noisily giggle and excitedly whisper to each other,
2 positioning me as the “listener in” to their apparently enviable inti-
3 macies and pleasures. In the counter-transference I initially found
4 myself feeling seduced by one or the other of them, and would then
5 feel shocked and disturbed by a sense of being suddenly rejected by
6 their conspiratorial coming together on leaving the session.
7 Occasionally, the couple would spend much of a session telling me
8 in detail about their sexual activities over the previous weekend. It
9 would be difficult for me to make any comments or observations
211 without being experienced as if I was spoiling their pleasure, and I
1 was forced into a position of being a witness to, and observer of,
2 their intimacies and excitement. It was as if any form of coupling
3 brought with it an excluded, envious victim.
4 We can see that, with this couple, pairing with another is greed-
5 ily desired, and hence pursued, or feels threatening, and so is
6 avoided. Relating to a pair is found to be unbearable because the
7 pair is felt to be excluding and provoking of feelings of persecutory
8 envy. The idealized contact or persecutory abandonment of me in
9 the transference suggests a difficulty with the toleration of both
30 dependence and separateness and difference. In the transference
1 there appears to be either an idealized two-person relationship or
2 an idealized couple with an abandoned and rejected child. The
3 couple did have some capacity to join cooperatively, and they
4 referred to that as being part of their marital history. But it seemed
5 to be a manic coming together, as if constituting a desperate defence
6 against the anxieties of an intrusive other, or a recognition of a sepa-
7 rate other. It was rare that I heard about, or experienced in the
8 consulting room, a real capacity to function or to think together as
911 a couple made up of two separate people.
111 As their history unfolded in the treatment it became clear that

2 the sense of disruption, anxiety about their status in their relation-
3 ship and outside, and the growing argumentativeness and striving
4 for control, had followed the birth of their child. Their capacity to
5 sustain a reasonably benign and cooperative couple relationship
6 was at best fragile, and became increasingly disrupted by anxieties
7 over their interactions with each other and their child. For this
8 couple the threesome relationship with their child marked a frac-
9 ture in their capacities to function more cooperatively, and more
10 paranoid functioning was beginning to emerge, with an increasing
1 tendency towards sado-masochistic interactions.
2 In terms of family histories Mr Jones was an only child. His
3 parents ran a business together and travelled abroad for work
4 purposes, leaving him with an aunt and uncle and their four chil-
5 dren. Mr Jones often felt marginalized, he said, both in his own
6 home and when with his aunt and uncle and their children. Mrs
711 Jones was the first-born, followed by a brother who was born when
8 she was six years old. Her special place was dramatically disrupted
9 by this unexpected (though for the parents very welcome) new
20 arrival. For both Mr and Mrs Jones some of the residual dynamics
1 of their respective early family lives seem to have been reactivated
2 by the arrival of their child, resulting in each of them defensively
3 turning to more narcissistic ways of relating.
4 It is not difficult to imagine that the intimate couple relationship
511 will recreate some of the oedipal conflicts first experienced in child-
6 hood, but requiring continuing working through. Issues relating to
7 dependence and independence, being included and excluded, sexu-
8 ality, procreation, and the toleration of ageing and death are inevit-
9 ably at the heart of all couple relationships. Much of the psychic
311 working through of these realities takes place naturally, mostly
1 unconsciously, in the everyday relationship of the couple. If this
2 proves insufficient, and the couple find themselves seeking psycho-
3 therapeutic help, then their attention becomes consciously focused
4 on these dynamics, both in their relationship to each other and in
5 the transference–counter-transference relationship that develops.
6 Britton (1989) has shown that for the infant and child, psychic
7 development requires the ability to relate not only to individual
8 others (i.e., to each of the parents), but to others in a relationship
911 (i.e., to the parental sexual couple). Coming to terms with the reality
111 of this triangular oedipal situation leads to the developmental

2 move from narcissistic to more mature object relationships and
3 heralds, in the adult, the capacity for true intimacy. This capacity
4 might be defined as the ability to tolerate both one’s separateness
5 and one’s need to relate to a valued and separate other, a tension at
6 the heart of every intimate couple relationship (Fisher, 1999;
711 Ruszczynski & Fisher, 1995).
8 When two people join together to form a relationship, they do
9 so substantially for unconscious as well as conscious reasons, via
10 mutual projective and introjective processes and identifications that
1 are sufficiently congruent to create a “marital fit”. By accepting the
2 other’s unconscious projections, each partner gives the other an
3 initial feeling of recognition and acceptance and, as a result, of
4 attachment. By unconsciously creating an equilibrium in the mutu-
5 ality of their projective and introjective identifications, the couple
6 are likely to form a relationship on the basis of shared unconscious
7 phantasies, defences, and conflicts—especially those relating to the
8 internal couple—that become externalized and enacted in their
9 marital relationship (Ruszczynski, 1992). A new opportunity is
211 created for unresolved internal conflicts to emerge and be attended
1 to, creating the possibility of further emotional development and
2 growth.
3 Couple relationships can, of course, be used more defensively:
4 one partner will be obliged to carry projected undesired or feared
5 aspects of the other, with no real intention of re-introjecting them in
6 some mediated form. Here, projective identification is used primar-
7 ily for defensive evacuative purposes, in the way initially described
8 by Klein (1946). For all couples some of the time, and for some
9 couples all of the time, the nature of their interaction is such that
30 they become psychically gridlocked (Morgan, 1995). Their relation-
1 ship is in danger of becoming a psychic retreat (Steiner, 1993),
2 unconsciously defending against the feared pain and anxieties asso-
3 ciated with such emotional work.
4 All relationships are a complex and fluid mix of both develop-
5 mental and defensive dynamics and interactions. The important
6 issue is whether there is the flexibility within the structure to allow
7 appropriate attention to both partners’ individual needs, and to the
8 needs of the relationship that they aspire to. The tension and
911 conflict that this provokes is inherent in every intimate relationship.
111 It tests the partners’ capacities to manage love and hate, be included
2 and excluded, to give up idealization and tolerate ambivalence, and
3 mourn that which has to be relinquished and lost.
4 Britton draws on Klein’s (1945) theories of the early oedipal situ-
5 ation, and on Bion’s (1962b) notion of container–contained. Britton
6 highlights how the young infant, driven by natural curiosity, is
7 confronted by a dim recognition of a link between the parents, and
8 of a difference between the relationship each of them have with him
9 and with each other. Theirs is a sexual relationship and it produces
10 new babies, certainly so in phantasy even if no new babies are born
1 (Segal, 1989). This knowledge has to become tolerable to the child’s
2 mind: otherwise it will give rise to feelings of abandonment, envy,
3 and deprivation and may be defended against by more primitive or
4 perverse solutions. If this knowledge can become tolerable and inte-
5 grated, it heralds the relinquishment of narcissism and omnipo-
6 tence, resulting in the possibility of maturer, whole-object relating,
711 including the capacity for ambivalence and the essential task of
8 mourning.
9 The toleration of this knowledge of the special link between
20 parents provides the infant with the experience of an object rela-
1 tionship in which he is not a participant, but an “observer”. This
2 gives rise to a very important capacity required for healthy relating.
3 Britton writes,
4
511 A third position then comes into existence from which object rela-
6 tionships can be observed. Given this, we can also envisage being
7 observed. This provides us with a capacity for seeing ourselves in
interaction with others and for entertaining another point of view
8
whilst retaining our own, for reflecting on ourselves whilst being
9
ourselves. [Britton, 1989, p. 87]
311
1 The development and integration of the capacity for self-reflection
2 and awareness of another, achievements of some substantial
3 psychological maturity, also show a developing capacity for
4 containment—to emotionally manage the complex varieties and
5 vicissitudes of human relating. According to Britton,
6
7 The closure of the oedipal triangle by the recognition of the link
8 joining the parents provides a limiting boundary for the internal
911 world. It creates . . . a “triangular space” i.e., a space bounded by
111 the three persons of the oedipal situation and all their potential
2 relationships. [Britton, 1989, p. 86]
3
4 Segal stresses a crucial difference between Britton’s concept of
5 triangular space and Bion’s earlier description of the container and
6 the contained. She writes,
711
8 In the original situation the child is a participant and a beneficiary
9 of that [container–contained] relationship. Recognizing the parental
10 couple confronts him with a good container–contained relationship
from which he is excluded. It confronts him with separateness
1
and separation as part of the working through of the depressive
2
position. [Segal, 1989, pp. 7–8, my italics]
3
4
It also introduces the infant to the reality of different types of relation-
5
ships, some of which he will be included in, some of which he will
6
be excluded from, and some of which he may create for himself in
7
future.
8
I would like to suggest that Britton’s conceptualization of trian-
9
gular space might be adapted so as to be seen to have a potential for
211
1 a symbolic existence within the intimate couple relationship. The
2 triangle in the couple relationship—I have called it the “marital
3 triangle”—is made of the two individuals of the partnership and
4 their relationship as the third element. The relationship may be said to
5 have a dynamic identity of its own, in addition to the identity of
6 each of the two partners. Clearly, because the relationship is made
7 up of these two same individuals, a symbolic triangle is being
8 referred to rather than one that could be drawn between a child and
9 two parents.
30 Kernberg discusses the notion of a couple relationship as an
1 object in its own right. He describes how “the couple becomes the
2 repository of both partners’ conscious and unconscious sexual
3 fantasies and desires and of their consciously and unconsciously
4 activated internalised object relations”. Consequently, the couple
5 acquires “an identity of its own in addition to the identity of each of the
6 partners” (Kernberg, 1993, p. 653, my italics). He describes, for
7 example, how over time, the interaction of the partners’ superegos
8 results in the forging of a new system, which he calls the “couple’s
911 superego” (p. 653). He proposes that:
111 The enactment of the mature superego functions in both partners is

2 reflected in each having the capacity for a sense of responsibility for
3 the other and for the couple, of concern for their relationship, and of
4 protection of the relationship against the consequences of the
unavoidable activation of aggression as a result of the inevitable
5
ambivalence in intimate relationships. [Kernberg, 1993, p. 655, my
6
italics]
7
8
Kernberg is describing healthier relating, based on the internal-
9
ization of a benign internal couple. In less healthy relationships,
10
rigid sado-masochistic enactment between the partners in their
1
interaction suggests the unconscious sharing of a more perverse
2
relationship with the internalized couple, which is intrusive, humil-
3
iating, and based on coercion and subjugation. In both cases, how-
4
ever, there is an internal couple in the minds of the two partners
5
6 with which they unconsciously identify, and which strongly influ-
711 ences the nature of the coupling they themselves produce.
8 The significant issue in relation to the couple relationship as an
9 object in its own right is that, just as the child needs to learn to toler-
20 ate the fact that the parental relationship, at times, and for its own
1 legitimate purposes, excludes him, so too the individual partners in
2 an intimate relationship have to tolerate the fact that for the purposes
3 of their relationship they may sometimes have to give up needs, inter-
4 ests, and aspects of themselves, and tolerate doing so, however
511 ambivalently. As for the infant, for the adult partner too, this relin-
6 quishment has developmental potential. If one partner refuses to
7 accept a projection (as happens occasionally in all but the most
8 disturbed or gridlocked marriages), the projector is obliged to take
9 back and accommodate their own previously disavowed aspect,
311 and accept a reality other than the one previously constructed. This
1 is a developmental move away from a more narcissistic way of
2 relating, based on projective identification, towards one based on a
3 greater degree of recognition of the separateness and integrity of
4 the other.
5 Participation in a reasonably healthy intimate couple relation-
6 ship obliges each partner to be re-united with feared aspects of the
7 self, previously split off and projected into the ever-present other.
8 This loss of a previous psychic equilibrium may feel undesirable,
911 traumatic and possibly disturbing; it may cause instability in the
111 relationship and be defended against by sado-masochistic solu-

2 tions. However, if it can be contained by the more mature aspects
3 of the partners and their relationship (or by the psychotherapeutic
4 process), then omnipotent projective identification and narcissistic
5 relating may be slowly relinquished, and lost parts of the self
6 regained. This leads to the greater integrity of each of the partners
711 and so to a more mature interaction between them as a couple.
8 For this development to take place there is a need to relinquish
9 narcissistic ways of functioning and to do the work of mourning
10 that this requires. Steiner has described the painful necessity of
1 experiencing the mourning process that arises through reclaiming
2 parts of the self from the other, and how this takes place in the
3 transference whenever the analyst is experienced as acting inde-
4 pendently, outside the patient’s control (Steiner, 1990). I suggest
5 that exactly the same process arises in the couple relationship when
6 a partner refuses to accept a projected attribute and acts indepen-
7 dently of that projection. Steiner writes that if the independence of
8 the analyst can be tolerated—and this is also true of the marital
9 partner’s independence—the loss of what he calls “the possessive
211 relationship” can be mourned, a degree of separateness results, and
1 disowned parts of the self are regained, enriching the ego. This is a
2 difficult process, eliciting anxiety, guilt and mental pain, but if this
3 can be borne, “the sequence can proceed and further separateness
4 is achieved by progressive withdrawal of projections. More realistic
5 whole-object relationships result” (Steiner, 1990, p. 89, my italics).
6 In the couple relationship the process of relinquishing projec-
7 tions will never be fully realized. Some degree of narcissistic relating
8 is inevitable, and necessary, to sustain an intimate relationship that,
9 unlike an analysis, at least promises to be interminable, for better
30 and for worse. Ordinary life transitions, such as birth and child-
1 rearing, sexuality, and ageing and death, together with unexpected
2 events and traumas, buffet all relationships. They provide lifelong
3 opportunities to confront fears and anxieties, hopes, and aspira-
4 tions, and hence rework intrapsychic and interpersonal object rela-
5 tions. A couple able to do this emotional work will go on developing
6 a relationship based on more realistic knowledge and awareness of
7 themselves and the other.
8 In as much as this can be achieved, a space is created—which I
911 have called the “marital triangle”—where the couple can reflect on
111 their own needs, the needs of the other, and on the needs of the rela-
2 tionship. Often and inevitably, these various needs will be in
3 conflict and require reflection, possible relinquishment, and tolera-
4 ble, though ambivalent, resolution.
5 The capacity to achieve this state, to create the space within the
6 marital triangle and to be a creative couple, if achievable, could be
7 said to be a developmental stage in its own right (Morgan &
8 Ruszczynski, 1998; Morgan, 2001). As Britton has pointed out, there
9 are often narcissistic problems in sharing space. Psychic space and
10 physical space overlap, he says, and both can feel to be intrusively
1 occupied by the other, arousing both claustrophobic and agora-
2 phobic anxieties (Britton, 2003). What is required to allay these
3 anxieties, he says, is not necessarily agreement, which is likely to
4 require domination and subjugation or identification, but rather
5 a capacity for reflection and understanding (Britton, 1998, 2003).
6 This capacity for reflection and thought requires the triangular
711 space that Britton has highlighted, and the capacity to make links.
8 The ways in which an individual experiences his own thoughts
9 and reflections emerging and coming together, and how these are
20 then perceived to be, and actually are, received and experienced by
1 the other, will be determined by how each partner experiences their
2 internal parental couple coming together in their phantasies; with
3 liveliness and pleasure, with destruction and aggression, or not
4 at all.
511 What the intimate adult couple therefore requires is the capacity
6 for symmetry, a capacity for the two partners to recognize their sepa-
7 rateness and difference, but to achieve a balance or congruity in
8 their interaction. Linking can only take place across a space. The
9 capacity to achieve linking suggests the ability to recognize and
311 tolerate there being two separate, though “equal”, claimants to the
1 benefits of the relationship and guardians of the relationship’s
2 needs. How possible this is will partly be based on the partners’
3 internalized perception of the nature of their parents’ interaction
4 and their capacity for harmony and symmetry. However, it may
5 also relate to the internalization of the nature of the inevitably rival-
6 rous, but also loving, sibling relationships, and to how these were
7 experienced and managed. The achievement of this capacity for
8 symmetry—which I am not suggesting can ever be complete and
911 unproblematic, as tension and conflict are inevitably part of life—
111 may be part of the developmental possibilities within the intimate,

2 adult couple relationship.
3 Evidence that the “marital triangle” exists is most clearly
4 demonstrated by the ways in which an actual third is incorporated
5 into the couple relationship. I have in mind, perhaps most obvi-
6 ously, a child, but also other “intrusions” such as, for example,
711 professional demands or demands from external family. I also have
8 in mind less concrete factors such as an illness, or a preoccupation,
9 or a particular interest, or simply a thought in the mind of one of
10 the partners. Is there a thinking space within and between the
1 couple and a capacity for symmetry, which enables them jointly to
2 reflect on the impact and meaning of this “third” on each of them—
3 as individuals and on their relationship? A “real” third will most
4 likely be accommodated within the space offered by the symbolic
5 marital triangle, irrespective of how it might actually be managed
6 on a day-to-day basis. The likely relinquishments and losses will be
7 mourned and become tolerable, perhaps with some ambivalence.
8 On the other hand, if the thinking space is absent, more psychotic
9 anxieties are likely to arise, and coercion and subjugation will
211 emerge rather than cooperation. Here, the “third” is experienced as
1 intrusive and persecutory, disruptively imposing itself into the rela-
2 tionship. In the absence of the capacity for symmetry, it might be
3 experienced as being hijacked by one of the partners at the expense
4 of the other, or as kept at a distance from or abandoned by one part-
5 ner, forcing the other to accommodate it or take responsibility for it.
6 This difficulty in finding the necessary triangular space in the rela-
7 tionship could produce shared agoraphobic and claustrophobic
8 anxieties, and result in the defensive use of sado-masochistic inter-
9 actions as attempted solutions (Ruszczynski, 2003).
30 The clinical work with a couple that I will call Mr and Mrs
1 Brown illustrates some of what I have been describing. Both are
2 actively involved in their work situations, and they have an eight-
3 year-old child. In some ways, they have remarkably similar histo-
4 ries. Both describe distant and rejecting fathers and over-attentive
5 mothers, who were narcissistically and dependently attached to
6 them as children. One important difference was that Mrs Brown
7 had a number of siblings with whom she had good relationships
8 and who offered each other a refuge from their parents. By contrast,
911 Mr Brown was an only child, and he described how his only escape
111 from his parents was by retreating into “a secret place in my

2 head”.
3 In the clinical work, Mr Brown’s profound level of anxiety and
4 paranoia emerged quickly and he related on the basis of a high
5 degree of passive aggression, projecting his angry and violent feel-
6 ings into his wife and into me. Mrs Brown also functioned narcis-
7 sistically, with denial and projective identification, but she could, at
8 times, be more sensitive to her husband and child, although this
9 was inconsistent. The couple came into treatment following severe
10 bullying and suspected abuse of their daughter at school, after
1 which their relationship seemed to break down dramatically as
2 they struggled in vain, individually and as a couple, to give their
3 child the emotional support and care she required. Such a trauma
4 would test any couple and family, but the immediacy of the col-
5 lapse, their inability to recover, and the recriminatory and violent
6 atmosphere between them marked this couple. Even at those
711 moments when Mrs Brown could have some degree of sensitivity
8 to her daughter’s situation, she became overwhelmed by a sense of
9 fury, rather than feeling enabled to attend to her child.
20 What emerged in the clinical situation was that they had a
1 marriage and a parenting style based on pseudo-independence,
2 rather than on any capacities to manage dependence and indepen-
3 dence. They could not differentiate the appropriate level of care for
4 their daughter, whom they often described as if she was no differ-
511 ent from them. It sounded as if, in an effort to manage this lack of
6 generationally appropriate parental attention, the daughter had
7 developed a degree of precocity that, unfortunately, confirmed her
8 parents’ view of her as mature and independent. When, after the
9 trauma, their daughter needed real emotional care, the parents
311 were incapable of offering it, individually or as a couple. Later in
1 the treatment the extent to which both Mr and Mrs Brown were
2 themselves identified with a very vulnerable and needy child, with
3 no internal picture of a caretaker, became clear. Consequently, they
4 unconsciously experienced their daughter’s vulnerability primarily
5 as a threat to their own psychic equilibrium.
6 Some of the dynamics emerging in the transference–counter-
7 transference relationship indicate the primitive oedipal themes
8 active within and between this couple. I often found myself strug-
911 gling to make any contact with either of them as individuals, and it
111 could feel almost futile to talk with them as a parental or sexual
2 couple. I wondered whether this showed, as indicated by their
3 history, the depth of their own difficulties in relating to their parents
4 in their own early histories. In addition, on occasion, I felt an enor-
5 mous pressure to make some sort of emotional contact with the
6 very suspicious and anxious Mr Brown. I eventually came to real-
711 ize that in my counter-transference this was a pressure to
8 strengthen and enliven him and to diminish his paranoid view that
9 I might be critical of him or bully him. This counter-transference
10 feeling of being a bully was very interesting, given that their daugh-
1 ter had been badly bullied at school—as if care and bullying were,
2 in some perverse way, linked.
3 I came to wonder whether this very strong counter-transference
4 was a projection from the couple of their shared unconscious desire
5 to reach and enliven the distant father, and bring him to life with
6 the desire that he should contain the mother’s anxieties. The
7 wished-for result would be the creation not only of a functioning
8 mother and father but also of a functioning parental couple. This
9 wish, however, is accompanied by an anxiety that to make emo-
211 tional demands of the father would be tantamount to bullying and
1 attacking a weak and vulnerable man. This may be an illustration
2 of the healthy part of the child needing to create or unite the
3 parental couple, in an unconscious acknowledgement of the impor-
4 tance of this in the oedipal situation (Feldman, 1989; Fisher, 1993),
5 without which healthy sexual relating might be difficult, if not
6 impossible (Grier, this volume, pp. 201–219).
7 The possibility of establishing a triangular space in the mind for
8 this couple, however, was very difficult. The central wish to unite
9 the parental couple was in itself the main problem area. For both
30 Mr and Mrs Brown, the search seemed to be for a father–man who
1 is neither weak nor a bully—but it was this that seemed impossible.
2 What was problematic and clinically challenging was to discern
3 whether each had an internal relationship with a narcissistic
4 mother, thereby establishing a narcissistic identification which actu-
5 ally worked against securely finding a place for the father (in the
6 transference, me). If they were to have done so, they would be
7 deprived of their illusory, narcissistic autonomy, and pseudo-
8 independence. Alternatively, they might have been deprived of the
911 triumph of being their mother’s primary object of affection. The
111 sabotage of this developmental step was likely to have been

2 actively provoked, because if a good father were to have been
3 found, he would have stepped in and spoiled this illusory
4 mother–child oedipal couple by reclaiming the mother. In doing so
5 he would have constructed a generationally appropriate oedipal
6 situation. The relinquishment that this would have required, in the
7 acknowledgement and toleration of the primacy of the parental
8 couple, could have felt unbearable. In the transference, therefore,
9 there was a constant attack on any possibility of making use of me,
10 constantly relating to me as if I was bullying and persecuting, or
1 weak and impotent. My attempts to interpret this dynamic were
2 treated contemptuously as abstract, and unrelated to them—the
3 idea of a functioning, thinking capacity could only be perceived, at
4 best, as an abstract possibility, rather than something which might
5 relate to them emotionally.
6
711
8 Summary
9
20 In this chapter I suggest that, given that the intimate adult couple
1 relationship is likely to recreate some of the couple’s shared, unre-
2 solved oedipal conflicts, a symbolically similar process can take
3 place within the dynamics of that relationship itself. By withdraw-
4 ing the narcissistic and omnipotent projective identifications from
511 each other, the couple not only move towards a greater degree of
6 integration between themselves, but their relationship is allowed to
7 develop along the lines of more whole-object relating in its own
8 right and become established as a symbolic, third object. This
9 creates the possibility of what I have called a “marital triangle”,
311 within which there is the reflective and thinking space to address
1 the appropriate needs and requirements of each of the partners in
2 the couple, and of their relationship.
3 Couples who seek psychoanalytic treatment vary in the degree
4 to which they are capable of reworking their unresolved oedipal
5 conflicts. In the clinical situation, the psychotherapist is drawn into
6 re-enactments of the oedipal struggles, but also holds the potential
7 for being the third object to be contended with. The therapeutic role
8 is to conserve the psychoanalytic stance: to maintain a capacity to
911 observe, reflect, and comment on the dynamics in the relationship
111 between the partners and in the transference–counter-transference

2 relationship between the couple and therapist. The therapist’s task
3 is to attend to each of the two individuals and to their relationship,
4 while retaining a thinking mind so as to comment on this transfer-
5 ential involvement. This attempt enacts the very struggle at the
6 heart of the triangular oedipal situation, reconstituted in the inti-
711 mate dynamics of the couple relationship.
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
211
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
911
111
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
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2
3
4
5
6
711
8
9
20
1
2
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4
511
6
7
8
9
311
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3
4
5
6
7
8
911
111 CHAPTER THREE

2
3
4
5
6
711 The couple, their marriage, and
8
9
Oedipus: or, problems come
10 in twos and threes
1
2
3 Andrew Balfour
4
5
6
7
8
9
T
211 here can be few more relevant concepts to coupling than the
1 oedipus complex which, though it is associated with three-
2 somes, might also be said to be about the difficulty of the
3 twosome. Current thinking about the oedipus complex reveals
4 its importance in helping us to understand the difficulties adult
5 couples experience in sustaining a shared “psychic space” (Britton,
6 2000), an integration of two different psychic realities in a couple
7 relationship. In this chapter, I will explore a particular constellation
8 of anxieties that have their origins in the oedipal situation, and are
9 observable in psychotherapeutic work with adult couples. In this
30 constellation, the individual in close relationship feels caught
1 between fears of engulfment, and fears of abandonment. This has
2 been termed the “claustro-agoraphobic dilemma” (Rey, 1994), and I
3 will outline how analysts from the three different groups in the
4 British Psychoanalytic Society have described such anxieties in
5 similar terms. Each group links difficulties in the infant’s earliest
6 relations with mother to particular problems in the oedipal situa-
7 tion, leaving a legacy of claustro-agoraphobic anxieties in the adult.
8 These contemporary psychoanalytic accounts of the oedipus
911 complex are important in psychotherapeutic work with couples for
49
111 understanding the profound difficulty that close emotional involve-

2 ment with a partner presents to many of our patients.
3
4
5 Theoretical background
6
7 The oedipus complex has never been simply to do with sex and
8 rivalry, as “pop” psychology may have it. Freud’s account was
9 central to the development of his theory of the mind. His theory
10 offered the beginnings of an account of the processes of internal-
1 ization and introjection, and the development of different agencies
2 within the mind, particularly that of the ego ideal, which later
3 became an aspect of the superego. In the history of psychoanalysis,
4 the understanding of the oedipus complex is one of the central
5 developmental points for the beginning of a theory of internal
6 object relations.
711 Klein’s work took this aspect of the oedipus complex further.
8 She emphasized what she termed the “oedipal situation” (Klein,
9 1928), including the sexual relation between the parents, which
20 Freud had considered in the context of the primal scene. Klein
1 developed this thinking in her work, based on the close observation
2 of young children. She positioned the developmental importance
3 of the conflict inherent in the oedipal situation much earlier in an
4 individual’s life than Freud had.
511 Klein saw the essential features of the oedipal conflict, the diffi-
6 culties of the “three-cornered situation”, as being experienced by
7 the infant in oral and anal terms as well as the later genital stage of
8 Freud’s original formulation. This leads to a view of the oedipal
9 situation as concerned with relations between objects, as they are
311 coloured by unconscious phantasy. Of course, this anticipates the
1 development in psychoanalysis over recent decades from the clas-
2 sical emphasis on the distribution of energies to a theory of internal
3 object relations.
4
5
6 Contemporary accounts of the oedipal situation
7
8 Both post-Freudian and post-Kleinian thinkers have subsequently
911 made further developments to Klein’s thought. Britton (1998)
THE COUPLE, THEIR MARRIAGE, AND OEDIPUS 51
111 describes how certain individuals have difficulty with triangular,

2 oedipal relations because they threaten chaos and fragmentation.
3 For Britton, there is a particular aetiology underlying oedipal prob-
4 lems, which explains the difficulty of triangular, three-person rela-
5 tionships in the context of the coupling between mother and infant.
6 According to this view, a failure of containment in the mother–
711 infant relationship leads to splitting, where the phantasy of the
8 ideal, understanding, primary object is maintained at the cost of
9 projecting into the third. This is generally the father, who is then
10 experienced as the source of “malignant misunderstanding”
1 (Britton, 1998, p. 54). Therefore, parental union threatens the engulf-
2 ment of the understanding object with the misunderstanding one.
3 Consequentially, parental intercourse is experienced as catas-
4 trophic; creating a combined figure that personifies contradiction,
5 meaninglessness, chaos, and fragmentation. Steiner (1996) and
6 Segal (1988) have described the oedipal situation in similar terms.
7 Britton (1989) describes how, in working through the oedipal
8 situation, it is crucial to establish a third position whereby one can
9 know that one is excluded from the couple, and yet still know that
211 one is loved by the parents. According to Britton, such a relatively
1 successful negotiation of the oedipus complex allows the possibil-
2 ity of empathic engagement with the subjectivity of the other, while
3 also having a vantage point from which to view this relating, to
4 think about it. Britton pointed out that, as development proceeds,
5 then at best, the infant is able to achieve the capacity to be involved
6 in relating, and to reflect upon that relating, or to take up an
7 empathic position. This position is based on subjective experience
8 of contact with the other, and having the mental space to think
9 more objectively about what is going on. Hence Britton’s is an
30 account of developing the capacity for a linked separateness, a third
1 position in relation to the object, and an account of the conse-
2 quences of the failure to achieve this. Failure is associated with diffi-
3 culties in sharing psychic space with another person, as though it is
4 felt as a severe threat to psychic existence. Britton gives an account,
5 in developmental terms, of the perceived catastrophic conse-
6 quences for the infant of the link between the parents. Similarly, he
7 describes how, for the individual, the legacy is the anxiety that psy-
8 chic intercourse, the bringing together of two psychic realities, will
911 be catastrophic.
111 Writing as a contemporary psychoanalyst from the Independent

2 Group, Birkstead-Breen (1996) also describes how the failure to face
3 oedipal reality confronts the individual with the threat of internal
4 fragmentation and chaos. Birkstead-Breen takes as her starting
5 point the notion that internalizing the linkage between parents
6 provides the individual with an internal, bounded, three-dimen-
7 sional space (what Britton calls “triangular space”), and a concept
8 of being linked to, but separate from, their objects. She describes
9 this using the language of part objects, in terms internalizing what
10 she calls the linking function of the penis, to link and encompass
1 the two worlds of the parents. The “penis-as-link” is seen as the
2 elemental symbol of the relationship between them, of the comple-
3 tion of the oedipal triangle. In her view, then, failure to internalize
4 the penis-as-link results in the individual facing the threat of chaos
5 and fragmentation, due to the lack of the internal structure of a
6 bounded, internal, three-dimensional space. Instead, the individual
711 inhabits a binary world. Oedipal reality is evaded, difference is not
8 recognized, the capacity for symbol formation is under-developed,
9 and what is known as “symbolic equation” (a failure to distinguish
20 between the symbol and the thing it symbolizes, resulting from a
1 defensive fusion of self with object, or object and symbol) is domi-
2 nant (Segal, 1957). Birkstead-Breen describes how, for individuals
3 without such an internal structure, there is an oscillation between
4 fears of claustrophobic invasion, and agoraphobic dislocation. She
511 outlines how a defensive “solution” to this can be based on inter-
6 nalizing an omnipotent “phallus”, instead of the penis-as-link. The
7 former offers the phantasy of completion without need, based on a
8 denial of difference, a narcissistic avoidance of recognizing the real-
9 ity of parental intercourse. Although she writes more in part object
311 terms, her account is similar to Britton’s, particularly in the empha-
1 sis upon the claustro-agoraphobic anxieties associated with oedipal
2 difficulties. What is crucial here is that Birkstead-Breen and Britton
3 show how, for such individuals, coupling or linking with another
4 person can be felt to threaten catastrophe. Hence, lacking a capa-
5 city to be separate but linked to their objects, a “triangular space”,
6 they are caught in what is described as a claustro-agoraphobic
7 dilemma.
8 From a Contemporary Freudian perspective, although not writ-
911 ing specifically with the oedipus complex as the focus, Glasser
111 (1979) describes a very similar clinical picture of claustro-agora-

2 phobic anxieties arising in the earliest relationship between infant
3 and mother. He describes a “core complex”; a conflict the infant
4 faces between an intense desire for contact with the mother—
5 a wish, ultimately, to merge with her—and the fear of engulf-
6 ment, with the annihilation of the self a merger would entail. He
711 describes how the infant mobilizes aggression in response to this
8 “annihilation anxiety”, with the aim of self-preservation, to defend
9 itself from the threat of engulfment. The consequent withdrawal
10 and wish to destroy the mother are then associated with the
1 converse fear, that of abandonment. He sees the core complex as a
2 “pre-oedipal” phenomenon, part of the struggle of the two-person
3 relationship between mother and infant. This reflects the Con-
4 temporary Freudian view that the oedipus complex and tripartite
5 relations are an issue only later in the infant’s development. Glasser
6 describes how a mother who is unable to take in might either
7 exacerbate the anxieties associated with the core complex, or
8 respond appropriately to the infant’s needs. For example, if the
9 infant experiences the mother as unable to manage its feelings,
211 projection may increase and, as aggression is projected into the
1 mother, she may become, in the infant’s mind, more frighteningly
2 engulfing or devouring. This increases the infant’s fear of anni-
3 hilation and further fuels the need to withdraw or destroy her,
4 further exacerbating the fear of abandonment. According to this
5 account, lack of containment in the mother–infant relationship
6 might amplify the anxieties associated with the core complex,
7 increasing the infant’s aggression and so further increasing the
8 claustro-agoraphobic anxieties.
9 Glasser describes the distorting effects that the difficulties of the
30 core complex can have on the infant’s oedipal development. In
1 particular, he describes how the infant may invest the father with
2 the dangerous attributes originally experienced in relation to the
3 mother, in order to preserve the relationship with her. This has
4 much in common with Britton’s account. However, Glasser’s view
5 that the oedipus complex is an issue only later in development,
6 means that the relation between the parents does not have the
7 importance that it does in Britton’s. For Glasser, subsequent diffi-
8 culties in oedipal development are underpinned by the individual’s
911 attempt to manage this claustro-agoraphobic dilemma of early
111 infancy. Oedipal difficulties, according to Glasser, may at root

2 reflect earlier difficulties, associated with the core complex, and
3 with claustro-agoraphobic anxieties arising in the infant’s earliest
4 relations with its mother.
5
6
7
Summary
8
9
These accounts have the common view that a failure of containment
10
in the infant’s relationship with its mother leads to difficulties in
1
negotiating the oedipal situation, associated specifically with claus-
2
tro-agoraphobic anxieties. They describe how such difficulties leave
3
the individual in a position that is more akin to a straight line than
4
a triangular space, where there is no happy point between the two
5
polarities of “too close” and “too far apart”. According to Britton,
6
711 the consequence of developing triangular space is that the individ-
8 ual is held in a tension in relation to the other, where closeness to
9 the object (what Britton calls the “subjective” state) is held at one
20 point of the triangle, while at another point is the more objective
1 “otherness” of the object. The idea of triangular space is that one
2 has freedom to move within it, without losing touch with the other
3 two points, and without becoming lost in the engulfing world of the
4 subjectivity of the other, or in the lonely dislocated world of the
511 “objective” other. With the collapse of triangular space, or the fail-
6 ure to develop it, one is caught between fears of engulfment and
7 agoraphobic abandonment. The claustro-agoraphobic dilemma is
8 familiar to us clinically, particularly with borderline states, and has
9 been described by a number of psychoanalytic writers representing
311 the Kleinian, Independent, and Contemporary Freudian groups
1 (e.g., Birkstead-Breen, 1996; Britton, 1989, 1998, 2000; Glasser, 1979).
2 As one might expect, such anxieties make a very difficult business
3 of establishing stable, intimate relationships, and so an under-
4 standing of this area is important for the psychotherapist working
5 with couples.
6 Each of the following clinical examples is an amalgam of differ-
7 ent cases, which I hope gives a picture of what I am describing and
8 retains a truth to the underlying psychic experience of the couples
911 involved.
111 Clinical example 1

2
3 This couple highlighted the threat of annihilation of individual
4 identity, an intense sense of claustrophobia, and the associated
5 threat of explosive violence.
6 Philip and Susan presented tremendous difficulties over dis-
711 agreements between them, which might start off as small issues of
8 misunderstanding, but which quickly seemed to become matters
9 of life and death. It was as if they shared a conviction that there
10 was only room for one point of view. Within the sessions, I felt that
1 I was walking on eggshells, that it was almost impossible to link the
2 experiences of the two. Instead, I felt caught in a dilemma: that I
3 could only understand one partner at the expense of the other. If one
4 were understood, the other would feel misunderstood. Susan
5 described this as an “inverse relationship”, that one person’s gain
6 was another’s loss. For example, they frequently fought during
7 the session over which partner’s experience of the chain of events
8 leading up to a row would prevail. Although sometimes beginning
9 ostensibly in a spirit of wanting to repair or to understand the con-
211 flict, such discussions would quickly escalate in intensity as details
1 were disputed. As the atmosphere became more charged I felt help-
2 less to be able to intervene in any helpful way. Susan, in particular
3 (although at other times, Philip too) would become increasingly
4 shrill and they would start to shout very loudly, as though trying to
5 force their words through their partner’s “deaf ears”. If I gave one
6 person’s account, I was felt to be giving it credence and so negating
7 the other’s experience of events. Both partners were in earnest, and
8 the other one, if they had a different version, must either be lying, or
9 else mad. Or they were felt to be cynically trying to drive the other
30 mad, misrepresenting the truth to deny the other’s experience.
1 The pattern was one of beginning to discuss a recent point of
2 disagreement, and then each individual insisting, increasingly
3 vehemently, that their way of seeing things was “right”, and
4 complaining that they were hitting a brick wall. Each partner
5 seemed to feel that the other, whom they felt utterly unable to get
6 through to, was wiping out their sense of reality. When this
7 happened during the sessions, the atmosphere became claustro-
8 phobic and there was a suffocating feeling in the room. On one
911 occasion, Susan found her husband’s quiet disagreement with her
111 unbearable, and ran out of the room, having to get away physically.
2 This echoed her behaviour on other occasions, jumping out of cars
3 during arguments, or physically withdrawing from her husband in
4 other dramatic ways. She had smashed things when in this state of
5 mind and seemed to withdraw in order to obviate the possibility of
6 violence. She described a feeling of “total misunderstanding” that
7 might overwhelm her, “but I won’t let it”. (This links to Britton’s
8 description of the fear of engulfment by the “misunderstanding”
9 object, a psychic catastrophe that one must escape from.) Such rows
10 became unbearable for both partners, as each tried to assert their
1 views—fighting, increasingly desperately, not to have their way of
2 seeing things negated. It felt that their very identities were at stake,
3 and that either one or the other had to prevail. There was no sense
4 that they might “agree to disagree”, or tolerate the idea that their
5 partner might have a different perspective on the same thing. There
6 was no perspective possible, no “third position” from which their
711 respective experiences could be reflected upon. Instead, there was
8 a bloody battle over who would prevail, fought out repeatedly
9 within the sessions. The desperation and threats of violence emerg-
20 ing when they were in this state of mind seemed to link to the claus-
1 trophobic atmosphere; the threat of engulfment by “malignant
2 misunderstanding”, and the response of trying to smash out of it
3 with violence or violent withdrawal.
4 This case contains many echoes of Glasser’s account of the
511 violence that may be mobilized when the individual feels threat-
6 ened by engulfment, and wishes to destroy the object. Generally, it
7 was Susan who expressed this, and her husband and the rest of the
8 family who were left in the lonely, dislocated position, following
9 her frequent walkouts during rows. The couple had tremendous
311 difficulty in tolerating the therapeutic situation, and, unable to
1 sustain the therapy, withdrew in a dramatic walkout from a session
2 at a point when tensions were running high.
3 The example of this couple brings home very powerfully what
4 it means to lack a third position, where two separate minds can
5 co-exist together. One person’s view is felt to exist only at the
6 expense of the other, with the ever-present threat of one psychic
7 reality being engulfed by the other. This is linked to a palpable feel-
8 ing of claustrophobia. The violent reaction, expressed ultimately in
911 withdrawal, leaves the couple in an agoraphobic position, isolated
111 and cut-off from one another. This pattern seems to link to Glasser’s
2 idea that mobilizing aggression in response to the threat of the anni-
3 hilation leaves the same individual facing the converse fear of aban-
4 donment. The specific fear demonstrated in this example is the fear
5 of engulfment by “total misunderstanding”, as Britton (1998)
6 describes. Both partners fight desperately against this, reflecting the
711 shared conviction that they inhabit a binary world, where there can
8 be only two positions—engulfment and abandonment—that they
9 constantly oscillate between.
10
1
2 Case example 2
3
4 The following clinical material illustrates how a deep difficulty of
5 two people allowing any sustained emotional involvement with
6 one another underlies the difficulties in three-way relationships that
7 this couple presents.
8 Jorge and Montse met relatively late in life, having both already
9 built successful careers. He is a both a practising lawyer and an
211 academic, she a film-maker. He, but not she, had already had con-
1 siderable experience of therapy in his country of origin. They had
2 both apparently wanted to come to this country to develop in their
3 chosen fields, though shortly after they arrived, Montse became
4 pregnant. They have a young son, aged eight, and they emphasized
5 from the outset how their difficulties seemed to have begun at
6 around the time of his birth. They had had no sexual contact since
7 his birth, and lived a life where they looked after their son but had
8 little or no emotional contact with one another. I had the impression
9 of two people who were more or less alongside one another—look-
30 ing away from one another towards some other involvement or
1 commitment.
2 From the start of therapy, I found it difficult to think of com-
3 ments or interpretations that included both of them. It was very
4 difficult to think of them as a couple, with a joint contribution to
5 their difficulties. I was pulled now towards his position, now
6 towards hers, and I found myself quickly becoming involved with
7 one of them, while the other became an onlooker. Initially, this
8 mostly followed the pattern of my thinking that Jorge had joined
911 me as a co-therapist, with Montse in the position of the vulnerable
111 patient with difficult feelings. When I was able to notice this, and
2 to put my observation into words, the situation quickly switched.
3 Now I found myself intensely involved in long exchanges with
4 Jorge, leaving Montse as an outsider looking on.
5 In the room with them I often felt a lack of physical space, a feel-
6 ing of being cramped. Metaphorically speaking, it felt as if there
7 was nowhere to sit between them. At other times, I could feel miles
8 away from them. They often began sessions in silence, keeping their
9 eyes averted from me, occasionally exchanging small glances of
10 what seemed like mutual understanding. At such times I felt very
1 much on the outside, trying to guess at what might be going on
2 inside them, feeling I had no way in. The early sessions were
3 characterized by their mistrustful challenges to me. I found myself
4 trying very hard, striving to give them “good” and insightful inter-
5 pretations. As time went on, the atmosphere over these early
6 months changed from one of awkwardness to a warm and easy one.
711 In some ways, it felt as if useful work was done during this time.
8 However, after sessions I often felt a nagging uneasiness that,
9 though at moments the work was painful and difficult, everything
20 mostly seemed to come very easily. My counter-transference experi-
1 ence was very comfortable; I started to look forward to the sessions,
2 and afterwards sometimes noticed myself feeling rather pleased
3 with myself for doing such good work.
4 During this period a number of themes emerged. In sessions the
511 couple often commented on how far apart they had been during the
6 week—working separately, taking turns to look after their son,
7 functioning in some ways as a “team”, but miles apart from one
8 another emotionally. They were, individually, good parents to their
9 child, but almost never seemed to be together as a family, as a three-
311 some. There was an idealized quality to the contact with their son.
1 Occasionally, each described intensely good experiences of involve-
2 ment with him, and the other felt excluded. Mostly, Jorge was the
3 excluded one, although this could suddenly switch and Montse
4 felt left out. They each seemed to have made a separate, absorbing
5 link with their son, to the exclusion of any corresponding link with
6 one another. The quality of the idealization of their individual
7 links with him went alongside their denigration, and loss of the
8 idealization, that had characterized their relationship at the start,
911 leaving their marriage in a devalued position.
111 Each of them described longing to get back to the “golden time”
2 of the first period of their relationship, when it had been just the
3 two of them. Of course, like many couples at the start of a relation-
4 ship, this was at a time when they were not living together, and so
5 they had an actual physical gap separating them, mediating their
6 contact with one another. Jorge commented that it was rather like
711 the arrangement Woody Allen and Mia Farrow made, in famously
8 trying to solve their difficulties with one another by each having
9 their own apartment on opposite sides of Central Park. Indeed,
10 Jorge and Montse also conveyed a fear that, should they try to get
1 close again, they would be terribly disappointed. Moments of better
2 contact or involvement with one another quickly collapsed into
3 disappointment, and a feeling of mutual recrimination. They
4 conveyed how, while each of them seemed to be able to have
5 intense involvements, for example, with their son, with myself, or
6 with their careers, they could sustain none of these for long.
7 This issue appeared to be linked to their difficulty in sharing
8 “psychic space”, in integrating their two different psychic realities,
9 as Britton (2000) puts it. The couple expressed this in a number of
211 ways. One was the conflict between them over the time they could
1 give to developing their careers, the struggle over their own devel-
2 opment as individuals, and the needs of the family. Jorge, in partic-
3 ular, feared the “pull” of family demands, and that if he did not
4 keep his working life separate, keep the ideas he was working on a
5 secret, his creativity would in some way be “sucked out of him”. He
6 would often speak of how, when trying to work at home, he only
7 ever had a few minutes before he was pulled away by the demands
8 of the family. He spoke of how painful this experience was for him,
9 and how he feared that something essential in him would be
30 “snuffed out”. He held his hand over his mouth at that moment,
1 mimicking the act of suffocation. Montse also shared this worry. It
2 was as if, for each of them, there was an idea that their individual
3 careers and needs might be swallowed up by the other, and that
4 only one person’s needs could exist at any one time. They con-
5 veyed, I felt, how ultimately their very identities were at stake.
6 Montse commented on how difficult she found living with Jorge
7 and having to be “available” to him emotionally. He tended to work
8 in a converted shed in the garden of their house, she in the attic. If
911 they were in the “shared” part of the house, Jorge might intrude on
111 Montse at any moment. On one occasion, when she was describing
2 one of the familiar rows between them over such an episode, she
3 began talking about a recent hijacking that had received a lot of
4 news coverage at the time. It felt to me that she was conveying how
5 her experience was that her mind had been “hijacked” by Jorge,
6 overtaken by his needs and preoccupations, and her own thoughts
7 killed off. They discussed how, in concrete terms, they might get the
8 right distance from one another, and find a “protected space”. How
9 could they arrange the house, in terms of “his” and “her” areas?
10 They seemed to share an underlying phantasy that something
1 vital in them, their very psychic life, would be “squeezed out” by
2 the other one—that one identity would take over the other. While
3 the fear, or underlying phantasy, appeared to be the same, their
4 defences against it differed. Montse tried to organize, on a diary
5 sheet, the times she was prepared to be available for involvement
6 with the family and contact with Jorge. The times when she was
711 “off limits” were sacrosanct to her, and terrible rows ensued if
8 she felt that Jorge had breached these “demarcation areas”, as they
9 called them. By contrast, Jorge set great store on his right to “spon-
20 taneous freedom”; to withdraw suddenly from the family if he felt
1 “creative”, or, at other times, to seek contact or involvement with
2 them if he felt in need of it. His re-entry into the family tended to
3 happen after a period of withdrawal, in which he would suddenly
4 become anxious about being alone and cut-off from his wife and
511 son. Such episodes were difficult for Montse to cope with, and she
6 complained that she and their son had become used to Jorge’s
7 absence, and then felt he was, in her words, “crashing back in”.
8 Although apparently very different, such behaviour seemed to
9 reflect each partner’s attempt to manage the fear of “psychic take-
311 over”. While it is true to say that each of them was creative and
1 successful, they idealized their “creativity” and the importance of
2 their own “reflective life”. This actually seemed to illustrate what
3 Steiner calls a psychic retreat (1996, p. 435), away from the anxieties
4 associated with the living link between them.
5 Although much of the material that emerged during this early
6 period with them was, on the face of it, very rich, I had a doubtful
7 feeling, at moments, about it being a little too easy. What was miss-
8 ing, I felt later, was any room for differences of view. My comments
911 or interpretations made sense to them, but did not seem to be
111 anything particularly new. One might say that the therapeutic situ-
2 ation of couple psychotherapy, the presence of the couple plus the
3 therapist, in some way has the potential to represent the oedipal
4 situation of a couple and a third object. At times, as I have des-
5 cribed, there were different permutations of this coupling—one or
6 other of them joining with me and the other seeming to be the
711 excluded one, either the onlooker onto a therapeutic coupling, or
8 a co-therapy team dealing with one individual patient. However,
9 during this period I think that I was in some ways joined with
10 them. Taking Britton’s formulations into account, one might say
1 that I was closely involved in a subjective contact, a close empathic
2 link that was ultimately undifferentiated. What was lacking was a
3 third position, in which I was more separate and able to think about
4 what was happening between us in the room. The loss of this posi-
5 tion was reflected in my lack of anxiety and my relative sense of
6 comfort and ease when I was in the room with them. A comfortable
7 situation seemed to be one where oedipal anxieties, which might be
8 elicited by the therapist’s third position, were to some extent
9 avoided.
211 This situation changed, rather dramatically, some months into
1 the therapy. Jorge and Montse came to a session describing how
2 they had united together the previous week to deal with several
3 difficult situations. There followed examples of uniting together
4 against the “madness” of other people that each of them had had to
5 deal with. Jorge, in particular, was preoccupied with a battle with a
6 senior colleague who, though normally referred to as a very
7 supportive and benign figure, had unusually suggested that Jorge
8 radically revise some of his recent work. Jorge was outraged by this
9 suggestion, describing his colleague’s views as “deranged”. These
30 accounts had a dramatic quality, and I started to feel under pressure
1 to support and agree with the rather triumphant position that the
2 couple had taken up in relation to the people they described. My
3 counter-transference at that moment was that it felt dangerous not
4 simply to be swept along with this prevailing view. It was very hard
5 for me to put anything back to them—all the disturbance and diffi-
6 culty had to be lodged outside of them, and I started to feel under
7 fire for implying anything different. When I ventured a comment
8 about how they were joining together to this end, Jorge reacted by
911 telling me that I had “submerged him” because my comment was
111 also addressed to her. By including them both, I seemed to have

2 dissolved his differences from Montse.
3 At the next session, this situation had intensified. I was told I
4 had behaved in a “procrustean” way, that I had fitted their experi-
5 ence into my way of seeing things. At the time, I was struck by their
6 use of this word. After the session, I looked it up. Longmans Diction-
7 ary describes its origins in a mythical robber of Ancient Greece, who
8 forced his victims to fit a certain bed by stretching them, or lopping
9 off their legs. I felt that the violence of this image conveyed the
10 experience of how my linking their own experience to my way of
1 seeing things entailed the mutilation of their own psychic reality.
2 During the session I felt they were telling me that if I was not with
3 them, I was against them. I could keep up a position of atunement
4 to their feelings, their way of seeing things, but I should not think
5 about this. I should not offer my own thoughts, based on my own
6 experience, as it differed from their way of seeing the situation. It
711 seemed at that moment as if the “irreconcilable gulf” that they often
8 described between them now lay between this couple and me. I
9 found myself full of self-doubt. Had I lost touch with them and
20 simply “got it wrong”? Had I been pushing an over-valued idea at
1 them? As I struggled with these doubts, I tried to continue working
2 with them in the session. Faced with a stony silence from Jorge, and
3 Montse’s apparent struggle to come up with something, I was
4 treated first as though I was criticizing her effort and then as though
511 I was intruding into his silence. It felt as if there was a powerful
6 attack on any more hopeful contact, or wish for a link. This pro-
7 duced a very difficult counter-transference. I felt myself to be in the
8 presence of a united couple, implacable and impenetrable, as if I
9 was the one left feeling small and humiliated. The couple had
311 united against the anxieties of the oedipal situation, which, appar-
1 ently, they projected very powerfully into me.
2 Afterwards, when the heated feelings of the session had begun
3 to cool, I felt that what had happened reflected a dynamic that rever-
4 berated in the different relationships that the couple had previously
5 described. In the session, they seemed to have united in a coupling
6 that depended upon all the badness being lodged outside—first in
7 the other people they described, then in the transference, in rela-
8 tion to me. This took shape when I took up a different position from
911 the one that I felt pressured to conform to. How much they also
111 unconsciously pushed me to do just that, to enact the underlying

2 dynamic of their uniting against the denigrated others is an interest-
3 ing question. As I have stated, Britton, Segal, Steiner, and others
4 have described one particular dynamic that can characterize the
5 oedipal situation. The infant’s idealized contact with mother is
6 preserved through experiencing what is outside the couple (the
711 third object) as correspondingly bad. This could be the father, or, in
8 this example, it was my linking with my own thoughts, based on
9 my wider professional experience. The intense couplings that Jorge
10 and Montse established conveyed a similar quality. Ambivalence
1 was intolerable within the relationship, and intense idealization
2 maintained through denigration of what lay outside the pairing.
3 This pattern appeared repeatedly in different combinations.
4 Jorge and Montse gave numerous examples of absorbing coup-
5 lings that they excluded one another from; their intense, exclusive
6 involvement with their careers, with friends from work, with their
7 child, and with myself. What they present is an unstable situation of
8 idealized, yet unsustainable couplings. As I have said, such
9 coupling only seemed to be possible in an idealized state, with bad-
211 ness split-off and projected. Segal (1988) and Steiner (1996) describe
1 how the “bad object” is perceived as a malignant and powerful one,
2 intruding into the idealized, blissful coupling of mother and infant,
3 and bringing the return of the projected “badness”. I think that this
4 couple demonstrated constant efforts to recreate this idealized
5 “blissful” union, with all badness projected into a third object,
6 which then threatens the ideal with intrusion; a precarious situation
7 to maintain. In my early experience of myself as a very good thera-
8 pist in a relationship with very good patients, one can glimpse how
9 the couple tried to enlarge the “blissful” union to include everyone
30 in the immediate circle—one another, their child, and myself. This
1 precarious situation repeatedly broke down, so that they started to
2 experience first me as the “bad one”, and then each other.
3 Underlying the idealized coupling that they each seemed to
4 have in their minds, there appeared to be a fear of allowing close
5 emotional contact, as if it might lead to a wiping out of their own
6 “reality” or identity. Britton (2000) describes this as the terror of
7 bringing two psychic realities together. To manage this fear they
8 kept themselves, as they put it, on two separate planets, and felt lost
911 and isolated from one another much of the time. They came
111 together for a while, but as I have said, could not sustain it for long.
2 “Ideal” periods of closeness were quickly followed by something
3 more explosive, and they would be apart again. The instability of
4 the situation was conveyed in the fast-shifting couplings—the
5 changing pattern of alliances that I heard about in their home life,
6 and reflected in my experience of them in the room, when I would
7 often feel involved with one partner to the exclusion of the other.
8 Instability and sudden changes seemed to reflect the difficulty of
9 any sustained emotional contact between two people, associated
10 with anxieties to do with “claustrophobia”, the swallowing up or
1 engulfing of one identity by another. In my encounters with the
2 couple I also experienced the difficulty of introducing another posi-
3 tion or perspective, the pressure to be alongside, or in tune with
4 them, and not to move to a third position of thinking about what
5 was going on. When I did hold on to a different perspective, it
6 provoked a massive attack. Initially, this brought the feeling of a
711 gulf in understanding opening between us, a feeling echoed in their
8 accounts of being miles apart, on opposite sides of the world from
9 one another. This experience was also associated with considerable
20 anxiety over being lost, and cut off from the other one—what we
1 might term “agoraphobic anxiety”.
2
3
4 Case example 3
511
6 Finally, I will describe another couple who, when they first sought
7 help, seemed to have settled on a very rigid split between them of
8 the two poles of claustro-agoraphobia. At first sight, she appeared
9 to hold all the anxiety about being submerged or wiped out by the
311 other (the claustrophobia), and he to hold all the anxiety of being
1 left alone and out of contact (the agoraphobia).
2 James and Mary sought help following the revelation of Mary’s
3 homosexual affair. They separated soon after this but had regular
4 contact, ostensibly around the care of their daughter. Although there
5 was a physical separation, they continued to be very involved with
6 one another, and continued in psychotherapy. Within the therapy
7 Mary presented her homosexuality as an untouchable fact. The
8 marriage was over and she could not give further explanation, for
911 that might draw back her into an emotional contact with her
111 husband. From the beginning, at a conscious level, she was coming
2 to therapy in order to be helped to separate from her husband. All of
3 the wish to carry on with the relationship and the sadness at its end
4 seemed to be lodged, by both partners, in James. She presented
5 herself as guilty of the “destruction” she had wrought, but with
6 nothing to add. The fact of her newly discovered homosexuality
711 acted as a full stop on any further enquiry, representing a barrier
8 between the partners that could not really be breached. Over time,
9 as Mary allowed a little more involvement, she described how she
10 had to leave the marriage in order to escape from her husband’s
1 “moulding” of her. She conveyed the impression that involvement
2 with James felt like a psychic annihilation, as if it wiped out her
3 identity. By contrast, James conveyed an utter desperation to have
4 his wife back at all costs, and appeared to have no conscious
5 ambivalence about this, no more mixed picture. The two horns of
6 the claustro-agoraphobic situation seemed to be rigidly divided
7 between them. The psychic annihilation that Mary’s withdrawal
8 represented for James was conveyed, I felt, by his description of
9 how the revelation of her affairs felt like a “bomb going off, a
211 complete demolition”. He linked this to his experience of driving to
1 the session, and witnessing the demolition of two adjacent tower
2 blocks.
3 Although their positions were polarized, with James as the
4 excluded partner, over time it became clear that this was a shared
5 difficulty. What became apparent was how, in fact, Mary could act
6 to provoke his sense of exclusion. At times, her own feelings of
7 exclusion were more directly evident. For example, on one such
8 occasion, when she had felt shut out of the family home, she
9 secretly had her own set of keys cut. At other times she would com-
30 plain in the session that he expected her to be available twenty-four
1 hours a day. She then revealed that she had decided to check if it
2 was the same the other way around, and had telephoned to check
3 up on James’ movements.
4 Mary’s account of the marriage before separation conveyed her
5 feeling that she had always been very good and dutiful, but had
6 compromised herself and her own needs entirely in order to fit in
7 with James. Her attitude tended to be superior, and there was a hint
8 of martyrdom in her sense of long-suffering forbearance. This
911 reflects what has been described by Britton (2000) as one defensive
111 solution to the fear of being taken over or annihilated by another

2 person’s mind—the individual’s exaggeration of their capacities for
3 tolerance, lowering their expectations of others, a greed for virtue,
4 and avoidance of any situation that might provoke internal jealousy
5 or envy. According to Britton, such individuals expect very little
6 from their partners: “An unconscious sense of moral superiority is
7 more important to them than what they might get from another
8 person” (2000, p. 12).
9 This is close to Morgan’s (2001) observation that one way for
10 couples to manage anxiety about sharing psychic space is to make
1 an unconscious agreement that only one partner’s psychic space
2 will exist. The point of conflict that emerged for this couple seemed
3 to be over whose it would be. James agreed that Mary had subor-
4 dinated herself to him before. Now, however, he felt that, having
5 gone along with him for so long, she was turning the tables, forc-
6 ing him to fit in. Now, he felt, she was getting what she wanted, her
711 freedom. Having previously felt like the winner, he now felt like the
8 loser, he said. One way of thinking about this is that it reflects their
9 experience that one person’s need, or psychic reality, must always
20 dominate the other’s. The account of their marriage suggested that
1 difference was denied through her suppression of herself, fitting
2 herself in, so to speak, to him and later, through his subordina-
3 tion of himself to her. They seemed to have been drawn to one
4 another on the basis that only one psychic reality would exist, so
511 avoiding both partners’ anxieties about bringing two different
6 minds together. They appeared to have settled on a “solution” to
7 their oedipal anxieties in which psychic differentiation was denied.
8 In this sense, psychically, their marriage was a “homosexual” one,
9 in that there was no differentiation of two separate minds in a situ-
311 ation of give and take between them, a more “heterosexual” pattern
1 of relating.
2 Over time, the reality of their differences resurfaced, under-
3 scored by their physical differences. One outcome of this was that
4 they conceived a child. It was at this point that their shared defen-
5 sive “solution” broke down, and they described the onset of their
6 overt marital difficulties from the birth of their child. It was after
7 having the child that Mary began having homosexual affairs, and,
8 from this point, when their differences re-emerged, she was driven
911 internally to form a physical relationship that more truly matched
111 her psychic defensive solution. These affairs were not hidden from
2 her husband, and they functioned to push him into struggling now
3 to please her and to keep her in the marriage, to put her into the
4 dominant position. Effectively, the same dynamic persisted in their
5 marriage, with the roles simply reversed. This time he was to be the
6 one who submitted himself to her domination. However, he con-
711 tested the situation and conflict emerged. It was at this point that
8 they presented for help. The catastrophic breakdown of their shared
9 defensive “solution” was conveyed in James’ description of the
10 demolition of the two tower blocks. However, rather than aiming to
1 establish a relating that included both of their different minds, what
2 he tried to do was to re-establish the former relationship in which
3 he was dominant, she submissive; there was not to be give and take,
4 but only one dominating mind. For example, when Mary allowed
5 a more flexible contact with her husband, by letting him in a bit
6 more on her feelings, he quietly turned it into something else in his
7 mind. It was confirmation, he said, that his agenda for their recon-
8 ciliation would win out, if he just bided his time. My understand-
9 ing of this was that he had experienced her as opening the door a
211 little and that he had then, in his mind, quietly colonized the space
1 that he felt had opened up. He revealed that he had immediately
2 started to build up in his mind a fantasy of a happy ending, a re-
3 uniting. For her part, Mary conveyed that she felt she had opened
4 the door to her husband a little and then immediately felt controlled
5 by him. She experienced him as intrusively wanting to pursue her.
6 At first sight, then, this couple looked as if they were caught in a
7 particularly rigid split. For Mary, leaving the marriage seemed to be
8 associated with psychic survival, whereas for James it appeared to
9 mean psychic death. What emerged over time, however, was that,
30 underlying this, each partner was trying to subjugate the other’s
1 “psychic reality” to their own, attempting to “resolve” their anxi-
2 eties about sharing psychic space by ensuring there was only one.
3 One way of understanding this couple’s situation might be that
4 it reflects the “solution” to oedipal anxieties that Birkstead-Breen
5 describes, of erecting and worshipping the omnipotent phallus. In
6 this case, initially James was to be the dominant one, the phallus, to
7 which Mary should submit. As time went on, it seemed that she
8 could not sustain this, and so she tried to make herself the phallus,
911 to which he must submit. The image of the demolition of the two
111 skyscrapers appears to represent the “demolition” of this shared

2 defensive arrangement, of the “homosexual” marriage, of psychic
3 non-differentiation. When the differences between them re-
4 emerged, there was possibility of a “heterosexual” conflict, through
5 which the couple could be differentiated. However, they were
6 unable to envisage the relationship which Birkstead-Breen
7 describes as “penis-as-link”, where they might relate to each other
8 as two different people who are linked, producing all kinds of
9 thirds, including their own child. Instead, the pressure was to
10 restore the familiar regime, each now competing for the dominant
1 position. This seems to reflect an internal situation that both part-
2 ners shared—a belief that coupling with another person will not
3 lead to a situation of give and take, based on a linked separateness.
4 Instead, it will lead only to a tyrannical relating, where one partner
5 dominates and the other is tyrannically colonized. Birkstead-
6 Breen’s account outlines how this reflects an attempted defensive
711 “solution” to the anxiety of the individual who has evaded the real-
8 ity of the oedipus situation, and failed to internalize the “penis-as-
9 link”. What emerges for this couple is that where both partners each
20 defensively seek to dominate the other, then these underlying fears
1 are given flesh, as each partner confirms the other’s fears.
2 As with the previous cases, this example conveys the difficulties
3 experienced by the couple for whom there is no sustained triangu-
4 lar space, but instead an unstable situation where there is the threat
511 of engulfment or abandonment. The associated sense of psychic
6 annihilation seems to be expressed each partner’s desperation, and
7 their attempt to split the roles so rigidly. The way in which both
8 partners’ hatred of exclusion can underpin the situation was
9 revealed, at moments, by each of them. The attempted defensive
311 “solution” in this case involves each individual trying to dominate
1 their partner, reflecting their shared phantasy that one “psychic
2 reality” must prevail. In this way, the couple enacts their shared,
3 underlying fear of psychic take-over.
4
5
6 Conclusion
7
8 Situations involving a third object often bring couples into treat-
911 ment. It could be that the birth of a child triggers difficulties, as with
111 two of the couples I described, or a new career, or an affair, or any

2 number of other issues. As such, we often see couples presenting
3 with ostensibly oedipal problems, and of course, the very situation
4 of couple psychotherapy, the presence of a couple and a therapist,
5 gives representation to the oedipal configuration. The oedipus situ-
6 ation might be said to be at the centre of our psychotherapeutic
711 work with couples. What I have tried to highlight is that contem-
8 porary psychoanalytic accounts show how the situation is more
9 complex than simply a difficulty in encompassing three-way rela-
10 tionships. These accounts describe how the psychotherapist’s strug-
1 gle is not just to understand the couple’s difficulty in managing the
2 threesome, but also to think about how these link with the difficul-
3 ties of the twosome. I have focused particularly on the legacy of
4 claustro-agoraphobic anxieties that can originate in the oedipal
5 situation.
6 In thinking about the second couple that I described, for exam-
7 ple, one might say that, on the face of it, they were pulled into
8 intense absorbing one-to-one contacts but could not manage any
9 relation to a third object. However, as I have tried to show, if one
211 looks more closely at the situation, it becomes apparent that they
1 are not simply happy being in twosomes, and only encounter diffi-
2 culties in relating to a third. What they present is an unstable situ-
3 ation, of intense idealized couplings, which cannot be sustained for
4 long. The difficulties they presented around the third object seemed
5 to concern the use of that object in their attempts to sustain intense,
6 idealized couplings, reflecting their shared difficulty in maintaining
7 emotional contact with one another.
8 By contrast, the first couple I described only presented problems
9 in relation to one another, without reference to a third object.
30 However, what they seemed to lack was a “third position” (Britton,
1 1998), due to unresolved oedipal difficulties leaving a legacy of
2 profound anxieties, described here as “claustro-agoraphobic”.
3 Consequently, their ability to form any stable, sustained emotional
4 link with one another was severely impaired.
5 The third case illustrates, I think, how the couple might present
6 a situation in which the partners appear to be bringing something
7 very different: his agoraphobia, her claustrophobia. However, I
8 have described that what emerged was how both partners were
911 defending against these claustro-agoraphobic anxieties in similar
111 ways. This reflects something of the complexity of the situation that
2 can face the psychotherapist who is working with the couple. Of
3 course, from a psychoanalytic perspective, the patient who is agora-
4 phobic is also, at some level, claustrophobic too, though this part of
5 them may not be consciously known. Couples are drawn together,
6 at an unconscious level, because of shared or complementary
7 unconscious phantasies. How they represent one another’s fears, or
8 project their anxieties into one another, is important in understand-
9 ing how they act on one another to sustain and perpetuate their
10 shared difficulties. The third couple I described demonstrates how
1 each partner’s defences can also form part of an enactment of a
2 shared underlying phantasy. In this case, their shared fear was of
3 “psychic take-over”, so that between them, they confirm each
4 other’s worst anxieties. This presents difficulty both for the psycho-
5 therapist and the couple involved, but, at best, offers an opportu-
6 nity for these anxieties and defences to be struggled with and
711 understood in a very alive way in the therapeutic setting.
8 My interpretation of the clinical material is that it supports the
9 link between claustrophobia and agoraphobia as two sides of the
20 same constellation, linked to difficulties in the oedipal situation
1 described in the theoretical accounts I have outlined. Overall, these
2 case examples highlight the instability that seems to be part of the
3 clinical picture associated with claustro-agoraphobic difficulties,
4 and the problems when couples have no resting place between the
511 anxieties associated with being too close, and those over being too
6 far apart. For individuals with particular difficulties in this area,
7 coupling, or linking with another can be felt to threaten catastrophe.
8 The theoretical accounts of the oedipus complex given here are of
9 profound relevance to working with couples. They describe the
311 nature of the feared catastrophe, and the unstable oscillation, which
1 we can witness in the consulting room, between fears of engulfment
2 and abandonment. I have tried to illustrate how the desperation
3 and threat of annihilation associated with a claustro-agoraphobic
4 situation can give it a deadly quality when it is enacted between the
5 partners in a marriage.
6 Bion (1961) describes man’s struggle to be linked to the wider
7 social group without losing his own individual identity as a funda-
8 mental human conflict. Man is, he says, “a group animal, at war
911 with his own groupishness”. The legacy of unresolved oedipal
111 difficulties can leave the adult couple in a similar dilemma: terrified
2 of being cut-off from one another, and yet terrified of being
3 engulfed. Often, the couples we see in the consulting room could be
4 said to be drawn together and yet repelled; each partner a “couple
5 animal” at war with their own “couple-ishness”.
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111 CHAPTER FOUR

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711 Coming into one’s own: the oedipus
8
9
complex and the couple in late
10 adolescence*
1
2
3 Margot Waddell
4
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8
9
I
211 t is now recognized that there is an indivisible link between the
1 oedipus complex and the depressive position as it figures in
2 Klein’s later work and in post-Kleinian writing. If one can suffi-
3 ciently know and bear the experience of the oedipal situation and
4 of the depressive position, centrally important developments can
5 take place. A creative couple can be internalized, and the capacity
6 strengthened for discrimination, in psychic reality, between the
7 generations and the sexes.
8 Thought of in these terms (Britton, 1989, 1992; O’Shaughnessy,
9 1989), the oedipus complex puts fundamental issues of sexual iden-
30 tity into context with more general issues concerning the “whole
1 process of engendering, disguising, attacking, and tolerating mean-
2 ing” (Rusbridger, 1999, p. 488). In this model we see the child presen-
3 ted with the painful necessity of separating, with the accompanying
4 feared, yet also alluring, possibility of actual separateness. This situ-
5 ation presents the child with the potential to be him or herself, based
6 on a growing feeling of integration, a sense of becoming one-self.
7
8 *This chapter has formerly been published in the Journal of Child
911 Psychotherapy, 29(1): 53–73, 2003.
73
111 At this point the child has psychically to accommodate the reality
2 of a “creative relationship of which he is the product and from which
3 he is excluded” (Rusbridger, 1999, p. 488). He or she has to tolerate
4 the impossibility of claiming and winning one parent at the expense
5 of the other, and to endure the position of being the observer of a
6 relationship in which he or she does not belong. This is a position of
7 being, in other words, at the lonely point of the triangle; of having to
8 acknowledge the existence of a different kind of relationship from
9 that available with either parent, unless perversely or abusively.
10 Much hangs on the negotiation of depressive position anxieties,
1 which are bound with paranoid–-schizoid states of mind. On pain
2 of limiting or foreclosing development, such negotiation must
3 stay reasonably independent of defensive procedures. Only in this
4 way can a person “progress fully towards developing a capacity for
5 symbol formation and rational thought” (Britton, 1992, p. 37). In the
6 case where such negotiation fails, paranoid–-schizoid anxieties and
711 defences in the form of excessive splitting and projection, denial,
8 concretization, mindlessness, and omnipotence, will flood in and
9 swamp the personality’s efforts to grow.
20 These struggles are not limited to the infantile years (the
1 Kleinian early oedipal situation), or to early childhood (in both
2 Klein and Freud). They are lifelong. Struggles of this kind have to
3 be “re-worked in each new life situation, at each stage of develop-
4 ment, and with each major addition to experience or knowledge”
511 (Britton, 1992, p. 38). Much will depend, in this process, on the rela-
6 tive strength or fragility of previous developmental struggles, ones
7 that leave a legacy either promotive or subversive of engagements
8 yet to come. Contemporary theories emphasize the extent to which
9 the ability to bear relinquishment fundamentally affects the course
311 taken by this oedipal working-through. How well did the young
1 child tolerate ceasing to be the sole possessor of the love-object?
2 How well did the older child or young person tolerate other
3 losses—those consequent upon infidelity, for example, or involving
4 personal or professional displacement, or those of having to give up
5 a cherished ideal?
6 When it comes to establishing a sustained, intimate partnership,
7 the implications of these questions are quite clear. Individual capa-
8 city for relationship depends on coming to terms with the discrep-
911 ancies between perception of the chosen, and usually briefly
COMING INTO ONE’S OWN 75
111 idealized, love-object (for such is “falling in love”), and the actual
2 characteristics of that same love-object that become apparent.
3 Whether the disappointment, disillusionment, rage, and frustration
4 are felt to be bearable will depend on the outcome of myriad
5 attempts to work through previous loves and losses. The first
6 among these, perhaps, is a baby’s discovery that the external world
711 (in the sense of extra-uterine) does not offer unlimited provision of
8 the “stuff of life”. The infant’s experience was that sometimes the
9 breast was absent when it was desperately needed; sometimes it
10 was intrusively present when hunger was not the source of discom-
1 fort; sometimes the milk itself was too thin, or too slow in coming,
2 or too rich and gushing. Confusingly, the breast was sometimes
3 offered without interest, or lacking the usual accompanying feel-
4 ings of passionate love and comfort, or else it brought disturbing
5 feelings of excitement and over-stimulation. Such manifold physi-
6 cal sensations can scarcely be separated, moment by moment, from
7 their psychic accompaniments. These become more complex as
8 experiences of the object, both externally and internally intensify,
9 are exaggerated or modified, whether in love or in hate, and the
211 psychological mechanisms of projection and introjection come into
1 play.
2 There is possibly no other stage of development, beyond infancy
3 and young childhood, where the demands of the oedipus complex
4 and the inextricable challenges of the depressive position are more
5 absolute, more disturbing, and more categorical than during
6 adolescence. Among the central tasks of the period are those of
7 separation, of tolerating frustration, of living with disillusionment,
8 of struggling between the pleasure principle and the reality princi-
9 ple. In short, as hard-won depressive capacity strains against the
30 pull towards paranoid–schizoid defences, the whole oedipal situa-
1 tion has to be constantly re-worked. At this time, the ever-oscillat-
2 ing shifts between the paranoid–schizoid and the depressive
3 positions are occurring with especial force and intensity. Under the
4 impact of powerful hormonal changes and newly discovered senses
5 of self, every aspect of life is renegotiated, both of inner and outer
6 life. Amid all this, the young person’s experience of his or her
7 changing identity becomes of paramount importance. Its contours
8 are shaped and re-shaped—as they have forever been—through
911 relationships with others, but now in different ways. The child’s
111 oedipally freighted relationship with the actual parental couple,

2 and with its many internal versions, is diffused, displaced, and
3 distorted. This happens first in the group-dominated existence of
4 early adolescence, and then is re-focused and intensified in the pair-
5 ing relationships of the later adolescent years.
6 These are the years that I am addressing—a time of life not
7 necessarily limited chronologically to being a teenager, but the time,
8 whenever that turns out to be, when adolescent states of mind are
9 being renegotiated. The “teens”, however, are the years that are
10 developmentally appropriate for such negotiations. These years are
1 inevitably laden with historical and cultural weightings that are
2 seldom fully consonant with the course of any single person’s
3 psychosexual development, as he or she struggles to find an inhab-
4 itable place in the adult world. These are years when there is a
5 simultaneous drive towards integration and also towards fragmen-
6 tation; years characterized by drastic defences against the psychic
711 turmoil involved; years when there is a strong pull towards pairing
8 relationships of a kind that can represent a vast range of diverse
9 internal states. For example, establishing an early “long-term” rela-
20 tionship may indicate an unusually mature capacity for intimacy.
1 It may just as possibly signify an avoidance of oedipal disturbance
2 by means of a projective, pseudo-adult identification with “being-
3 a-couple”. By contrast, an apparently promiscuous approach to
4 sexuality may represent just that—a reliance on multiple sexual
511 experiences as a defence against the felt impossibility of integrating
6 “the sensual and the tender” (Freud, 1905b)—again a failure of
7 oedipal working-through. However (to put the matter equally
8 schematically), such an approach may indicate an exploratory and
9 constructively experimental struggle to resolve the adolescent’s
311 oedipal dilemma (how can the feeding and nurturing mother also
1 be the sexual mother?). Thus, serial sexual partners could be a way
2 of seeking a relationship with that mother/partner, not so much
3 through mindless erotic adventures but through the capacity to risk
4 loving and losing in the name of fully engaging with life. There are,
5 of course, innumerable positions in between.
6 My exploration of these issues falls into two very distinct parts,
7 the first being rather general. I will refer to certain classic literary
8 texts, including aspects of the nineteenth-century novel and Shakes-
911 peare’s comedies. These provide a non-pathological illustration of
111 how the constellation of feelings and defences constituting the

2 depressive position can both enable and inhibit the constant, neces-
3 sary re-working of the oedipal situation—ultimately leading to the
4 possibility of establishing a profound commitment to a couple rela-
5 tionship.
6 Second, I shall focus on some detailed clinical material to show
711 the deeply pathological consequences of an incapacity to cope with
8 oedipal struggles, in turn based in the nature of the earliest
9 mother–baby relationship. The context is that of a late adolescent’s
10 unsuccessful struggle to engage with his depressive anxieties and
1 his inability to work through a very early-established oedipal
2 impasse. Each part of the paper focuses, therefore, in contrasting
3 ways, on the developmental significance of the capacity, or lack of
4 capacity, for introjective identification with a loving, thinking figure
5 or figures—whether embodied in a fictional character, or in ele-
6 ments of actual experience as explored in dreams and in the trans-
7 ference. This capacity is central to the original theorizing of the
8 oedipus complex. The task was always to relinquish the external
9 parents, in favour of their internal representations, and to find ways
211 of psychically accommodating these representations, which may
1 be so heavily imbued with projections that there remains little
2 similarity with the actual figures.
3 At best, adolescence is a process of becoming; literally, of becom-
4 ing an adult, and of doing so by becoming a “thinker”. This is
5 achieved by gaining and possessing a degree of self-knowledge,
6 through engaging with the process of “engendering, disguising,
7 attacking, and tolerating meaning”—an essential part of becoming
8 mature. It is a process of constant recasting and assimilation,
9 involving repeated reorganization through new identifications and
30 altered object relations. A good outcome to adolescence depends on
1 the capacity to allow for this continuous evolution of the personal-
2 ity, for the transitions from one state to another. This takes place by
3 way of depending on, and being able to take in, the functions and
4 qualities of a benign good-object, in contrast with attempting to
5 master experience projectively through imitation, impersonation or
6 pseudo-identification. The process is one of retrieving projections to
7 support a more integrative thrust towards being one-self, towards
8 “coming into one’s own”, however mixed a picture that turns out
911 to be.
111 This major transition from one state to another is traditionally

2 marked by the readiness to form a deep emotional attachment,
3 conventionally represented by the change from being unmarried to
4 being married. In this sense, “marriage” could be described as
5 emblematic of the symbolic realization of internal capacities that
6 have been developing over the years, whether as actually lived or
7 as traced in a work of drama or fiction. The central relationships, as
8 experienced or explored, promote these internal capacities so that,
9 eventually, a shift can be described as having taken place from an
10 initial idea of marriage, often culturally and contractually framed, to
1 a final capacity for marriage. The latter represents a profound
2 achievement. It is partly based on having established one’s own
3 place in life, rather than that assigned by social convention, and
4 partly on having worked through the two necessary oedipal under-
5 takings of rivalry and relinquishment (Britton, 1989, p. 95). The two
6 undertakings are inextricably interrelated.
711 The novels of, for example, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and
8 Charlotte Brontë share a developmental thrust towards an ability to
9 engage fully with a true partner. This ability is a consequence of
20 having slowly, and often painfully, developed the internal capacity
1 to be committed to a life-long and creative relationship, one impli-
2 citly encompassing the renewal of life itself.2 For, as in the great
3 Shakespearean comedies, whatever may be the underlying strains
4 of melancholy, the spirit, ultimately, is one of rebirth and of hope.
511 The mythic significance resides in the ultimate acceptance of an
6 internal couple that makes possible an external relationship of
7 passion and implied procreativity. The much-maligned “happy
8 ending” is a necessary expression of individual growth and of
9 generational potential. For with the final “marriage”, the narra-
311 tive moves up a generation. The continuity of the social fabric is
1 ensured by the regenerative power of love. The painful acquisition
2 of self-knowledge in the process of finding a partner in life confers
3 “heroic” status on these individuals and equips them to become the
4 parents of generations to be.
5 The myriad possibilities of social and familial interaction, of
6 public and intimate entanglement and resolution, of political
7 critique and cultural observation, interweave as warp and woof in
8 the canvas of the nineteenth-century novel. However, the adven-
911 turous engagement underlying the internal development towards
111 marriage constitutes a central thread, the one in relation to which

2 the action takes place. It is arguable that the actual external marri-
3 ages are not always adequate statements of the individuals’ respec-
4 tive capacities to establish an internal place, and a space, in which
5 the fantasy of fruitful intercourse can occur. But it must be clear that
6 the capacity for marriage and actual marriage are not necessarily
711 meant to be perceived as being consonant with one another. Indeed,
8 nineteenth-century novels are full of people who are married to
9 each other but do not have what I am describing as an internal
10 capacity for marriage. Nor do the partners in such relationships
1 have the capacity not to be married.
2 Contractual marriage clearly functions quite as much as a social
3 or financial convenience, as a defence against separation and inti-
4 macy, or as the perpetuation of an unresolved oedipal constellation,
5 as, by contrast, a mature expression of separateness and internal
6 resolution. Jane Austen’s novels, in particular, both wittily and
7 painfully depict any number of bad marriages. These relationships
8 are wholly distinct from the central thrust, in which internal devel-
9 opment proceeds as the protagonists engage ever more deeply with
211 their lives, loves, and losses.
1 In Middlemarch as, for example, in Jane Austen’s Emma, or Char-
2 lotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, there is a central developmental axis: the
3 heroine “grows up”. In this sense, each novel depicts the struggles
4 of young women, late adolescents, to reach maturity—a state of
5 being that is implicitly synonymous with acquiring a capacity for
6 intimacy. The compelling aspect of these three books, as of so many
7 of this period, is the nature of the internal odyssey that is embarked
8 upon. Each novel portrays a movement towards inner orientation
9 and integration. Over time, the main characters begin to be able to
30 learn from the experience of having had to confront the truth about
1 themselves. They suffer, endure, weather self-deception and, in
2 terms of the oedipal issues under review, most significantly and
3 importantly, face and survive the experience of rivalry, jealousy,
4 and supposed loss.
5 Middlemarch begins and ends with a marriage—the contrast
6 between the two measuring the development of young Dorothea
7 (a central protagonist) in the course of the book. The first marriage
8 is to the desiccated pedant, Casaubon. Dorothea is described as
911 wholly caught up in her own youthful ideas, as one whose nature
111 is “altogether ardent, theoretic and intellectually consequent”

2 (Eliot, 1872, p. 51). She is “imbued with a soul hunger to escape
3 from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance and the intoler-
4 able narrowness and purblind conscience of the society around
5 her” (ibid., p. 60). This is a wonderful evocation of the adolescent’s
6 omnipotent wish to by-pass the pains of ignorance and inade-
7 quacy, and of the defensive intolerance, superiority, and slightly
8 prudish judgementalism that often characterize an attitude to the
9 rest of the world—and to a society which is felt to be so woefully
10 wanting.
1 Dorothea’s response to Casaubon’s proposal is, we are told, that
2 of one whose soul is possessed by the fact that a fuller life was
3 opening before her. “She was a neophyte, about to enter on a higher
4 grade of initiation” (ibid., p. 67). Infused with adolescent, idealistic
5 fervour, Dorothea seeks to render her life complete by union to one
6 whose mind, as she subsequently discovers, reflects “in a vague
711 labyrinthine extension every quality she herself brought” (ibid.,
8 p. 46). She is impressed “by the scope of his great work, also of
9 attractively labyrinthine extension” (ibid., p. 46). She has, in other
20 words, fallen victim to her own projections, to the idealization of
1 a much older and, as she believes, a wiser man. She was “altogether
2 captivated” by one who, to her mind, “would reconcile complete
3 knowledge with devoted piety. Here was a modern Augustine who
4 united the glories of doctor and saint” (ibid., p. 47). (One cannot
511 but remember that Dorothea is an orphan, in the care of her well-
6 meaning, but gushing and bombastic uncle—not a figure who
7 could easily lend himself as an object of paternal admiration and
8 respect for one such as Dorothea.)
9 Early on, Dorothea, like Casaubon, suffers from the delusion that
311 to know about things, accumulating sufficient “learning” or infor-
1 mation, would provide “the Key to all Mythologies”—a key that
2 would bring about a solution to life (again expressing the adolescent
3 delusion that there could be such a thing). This is a flight, in other
4 words, into certainty at the expense of a sense of reality. As Bion put
5 it, she “could not see the wisdom for the knowledge” (unpublished).
6 Dorothea’s slow and painful disillusionment challenges to the
7 uttermost her capacity to learn from experience. It initiates a state
8 of mind in which, as admiration for erudition yields to apprecia-
911 tion of wisdom, she can begin to envisage a very different kind of
111 relationship, which also brings together “the sensual and the
2 tender”.
3 In the course of the novel, Dorothea loses her infantile dreams
4 and is stripped of her projective fantasies. In the ghastly loneliness
5 of her honeymoon in Rome she discovers the difference between a
6 narcissistic orientation to the world: “an udder to feed our supreme
711 selves”, and an attitude which can recognize “an equivalent centre
8 of self whence the lights and shadows must always fall with a
9 certain difference” (Eliot, 1872, p. 243). George Eliot’s descriptions
10 of such fundamentally diverse mental attitudes could be said to
1 define what Klein was later to theorize as the distinction between
2 the paranoid–schizoid and the depressive positions. These descrip-
3 tions also define the developmental process in adolescence as being
4 from a primarily self-regarding and self-interested state of mind in
5 the early pubertal and immediately post-pubertal years to a later
6 capacity, if things go well, to accommodate others and to have some
7 sensitivity and regard for their very otherness.
8 Working through oedipal anxiety is intrinsic to gaining an abil-
9 ity to tolerate the loss of a sense of one’s own centrality in the
211 world, and to being able to appreciate the gains that ensue from
1 simply taking one’s place among others. Dorothea suffers the lone-
2 liness of disillusionment and separation, and begins to recognize
3 the significance of separateness. With Casaubon’s sudden death,
4 she relinquishes, naïvely and perhaps too readily, her omnipotent
5 adolescent ideals for the more painful reality of frustration, disap-
6 pointment, and a circumscribed life, which is now blighted by the
7 dead hand of her late husband. His pathological jealousy has
8 forbidden his young widow further marriage, thus destroying any
9 possibility of a future family or personal sexual fulfilment. (Those
30 sympathetic to Casaubon might well point here to an oedipal clue
1 to his profound inability internally to develop, and to his massive
2 intellectual defences against emotional engagement.)
3 The real test of the quality and strength of Dorothea’s internal
4 object comes, as it does for Jane Austen’s Emma, with the agoniz-
5 ing “recognition” that the external person is different from the
6 person she has trusted him to be. With Emma, this conviction rests
7 on a certainty that the loved one is lost to someone else, that Mr
8 Knightly has not forever kept her at the centre of his being—for
911 Emma, the profoundest narcissistic wound. With Dorothea, the
111 threatened loss is of the one as she had felt him to be: ‘“Nothing
2 could have changed me” [she says to Ladislaw, the man she has
3 realized she really loves], but her heart was swelling, and it was
4 difficult to go on; she made a great effort over herself to say in a low
5 tremulous voice, “but thinking that you were different—not so
6 good as I had believed you to be”’ (ibid., p. 867).
7 The long night of agony that Dorothea spends on her bedroom
8 floor, wracked with inescapable anguish as “the limit of her exis-
9 tence was reached”, crystallizes a process that, over time, has been
10 working within her. She had, earlier in the day, come upon Will
1 Ladislaw in an apparently compromising situation. She had spent
2 the day resisting her real feelings, busying herself with good works
3 and social calls. Only now, in her own room, was she able to admit
4 to herself the depth of her love. Now, she recognized the intensity
5 of her shattered faith, and the loss of the belief that had sustained
6 her since the days in Rome. Now, “with a full consciousness which
711 had never awakened before, she stretched out her arms towards
8 him and cried with bitter tears that their nearness was but a part-
9 ing vision: [now] she discovered her passion to herself in the
20 unshrinking utterance of despair” (ibid., p. 844). Her experience
1 was of a formless object—a “changed belief exhausted of hope, a
2 detected illusion” (ibid., p. 845). The fire of her anger flamed out
3 from the midst of scorn and indignation, “of fitful returns of spurn-
4 ing reproach” (ibid., p. 845) and of jealous offended pride—and
511 finally, she sobbed herself to sleep.
6 In the narrative of Dorothea’s dark night of the soul we have a
7 compelling account of the capacity of the internal object to survive
8 the fallibility of the external, and of the process by which that
9 occurs. Dorothea does not, George Eliot tells us, sit “in the narrow
311 cell of her calamity, in the besotted misery of a consciousness that
1 only sees another’s lot as an accident of its own” (ibid., p. 845). She
2 does not, in other words, sink into self-regarding melancholia. She
3 forces herself to think, not only of her own misery, but also of the
4 meaning of others’ lives. She gives her attention to what is apart
5 from herself—”all this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her
6 now as a power: it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself
7 and will not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance” (ibid.,
8 p. 846, my italics). Dorothea draws on her own irremediable grief
911 as a source of strength to others. She draws on capabilities that she
111 has “acquired” over time, as she begins to learn from her own real
2 experience, relinquishing the scholarly “under-labourer”, or “too
3 good-to-be-true” versions of herself.
4 The inner reality and meaning of this momentous expression of
5 the thrust towards development is beautifully described in external
6 terms—a kind of “objective correlative” for internal processes:
711
8 She opened her curtains and looked out towards the bit of road that
9 lay in view, and fields beyond, outside the entrance-gates. On the
10 road there was a man with a bundle on his back and a woman
carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures moving,
1
perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending sky was
2
the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the
3 manifold wakings of men to labour and endurance. She was a part
4 of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on
5 it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes
6 in selfish complaining. [Eliot, 1872, p. 846]
7
8 This is not only a movingly understated description of the
9 generosity of a mature mind; it is also a marvellous evocation of
211 introjective identification having been taking place over time. In the
1 face of Dorothea’s conviction that the external object has been lost,
2 the internal object holds. It does not vanish or collapse because the
3 external representation, originally the mother (or the mother’s
4 breast) has left the field of present perception. It holds, moreover, in
5 such a way that Dorothea can bear, in her desolate state, to look out
6 and see precisely what she feels so excluded from—a man with a
7 bundle on his back and a woman carrying her baby. This is
8 supremely delicately expressed. We do not know, for sure, that this
9 is a young family being registered by Dorothea, but we cannot but
30 surmise.
1 Dorothea’s sources of nourishment are mysterious. Her strength
2 does seem to lie in some kind of deep-seated belief in a good object
3 (perhaps gleaned from the experience of the presence and early loss
4 of her mother), variously expressed in George Eliot’s language of
5 morality—a language that strains between the “right and wrong”
6 polarity of moralism, and the profoundly mixed achievement of
7 an ethical stance in relation to what a person can reasonably aspire
8 to. In this last crisis, Dorothea “yearned towards the perfect Right,
911 that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant will”
111 (ibid., p. 846). The response to her tormented cry of, “What should
2 I do—how should I act now?” (ibid., p. 846) comes from within—
3 she again finds herself looking outside the “entrance-gates” of her
4 own mind to the existence of others’ lives, “whence the lights and
5 shadows must always fall with a certain difference”.
6 It has often been observed that her marriage to Will Ladislaw
7 (the ardent young radical who evokes, both physically and morally,
8 the idealism of a latter-day Shelley) was a disappointing conclusion
9 to this extraordinary description of Dorothea’s capacity to grow
10 through experience, to re-encounter and work through the basic
1 oedipal issues that repeatedly assail the young person. Dorothea’s
2 struggle with that most central of adolescent tasks, finding and
3 establishing an intimate partner, the task of becoming one of a
4 couple, is not matched by an equivalent sense of such a process in
5 Ladislaw. It has been suggested, however (Irma Brenman-Pick,
6 personal communication), that Ladislaw contains the partially
711 unresolved part of Dorothea, and that an aspect of the emotional
8 bond in this and other marriages is with a part of oneself that
9 remains projected.
20 George Eliot does not, in fact, require us to think of this marriage
1 as a perfect statement of appropriate union. Referring to Dorothea’s
2 two marriages, she writes:
3
4 Certainly, those determining acts of her life were not ideally beau-
tiful. They were the mixed result of a young and noble impulse
511
struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in
6
which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great
7 faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward
8 being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies
9 outside it. [Eliot, 1872, p. 896]
311
1 The dimensions of the internal voyage towards maturity, and
2 towards some adult capacities, are, as so often in the nineteenth-
3 century novel, much more extensive and momentous than any
4 confidence suggested in the married states in which they eventu-
5 ate—though these, it is emphasized, are but a beginning, possibly a
6 “great beginning” (ibid., p. 890). This final restatement of one of the
7 book’s central themes—the relationship between character and
8 environment—does not have to reconcile us to the actual marriage.
911 Rather, it points to marriage as a symbolic statement that Dorothea
111 now has the internal capacity for love and for intimacy. It may also
2 point to an alternative possibility, that marriage is not so much an
3 idealized state as one made up of two people who are now on a
4 developmental journey together, constantly re-negotiating the ideal
5 and the real in relation to each other, and embarking on the shared
6 struggle to realize a “good enough” marriage of which the future is
711 unknown. None the less, it is one in which the reader has a certain
8 confidence that each partner will continue growing, both indepen-
9 dently, and together. Despite the narrative disparity between
10 Dorothea’s development and Ladislaw’s, the final pages make it
1 clear that if they are to be a couple, idealization and denigration
2 must not come into it. The reader’s desire for perfect resolution has
3 also to be challenged.
4 The finalé makes clear that
5
6 the developmental process lies not in “historic acts” but in the
7 coming-to-have-a-truer vision-of-the-world and of the self-in-the-
world, aided, indeed initiated, by a capacity to learn from experi-
8
ence instead of adapting to the structures of social conformity. It
9
involves seeing self and life as they are—stripped of grandiosity, of
211 emotionalism, of self-righteousness, and of the impulse, subjec-
1 tively, to defend against psychic pain by being someone one isn’t.
2 [Waddell, 1991, p. 159]
3
4 A further way of designating the psychic shifts that take place
5 during this adolescent process is in the description of how the force
6 of projective mechanisms slowly yields to greater introjective
7 capacities, of a more receptive and positive kind. An aspect of
8 George Eliot’s genius, as of Jane Austen’s, is her ability to draw
9 attention to the significance of the tiniest details of behaviour and
30 intent as they precisely chart these shifts in a character, over time.
1 With Dorothea, the tendency toward the introjective becomes
2 steadily stronger. George Eliot describes the process as being like
3 “the subtle muscular movements which are not taken account of in
4 consciousness, though they bring about the end that we fix our
5 mind on and desire”; “those invisible thoroughfares . . . that deli-
6 cate poise and transition which determine the growth of happy or
7 unhappy consciousness” (Eliot, 1872, p.194). So, in the course of
8 Middlemarch, Dorothea, battered and disillusioned as “the new real
911 future replaces the imaginary” (ibid., p. 226), changes through
111 learning that life must be undergone and that such undergoing, as
2 it presents itself at each significant epoch of her late adolescent
3 struggle, involves constant challenges to the sense of her known
4 self. Theses are repeatedly marked and tested by the central oedi-
5 pal challenges, those of “rivalry and relinquishment”, in relation to
6 other characters in the novel, and in relation to internal aspects of
7 herself. “That new real future which was replacing the imaginary
8 drew its material from the endless minutiae, by which her view of
9 Mr Casaubon and her wifely relation, now that she was married to
10 him, was gradually changing with the secret motion of a watch-
1 hand from what it had been in her maiden dream” (ibid., p. 226).
2 That “gradual change” is, we might infer, an aspect of the kind
3 of working through which is involved in the adolescent process—a
4 working through of infantile omnipotence, splitting and projection.
5 Dorothea develops a capacity that seems to be rooted in the inter-
6 nal object being able to sustain the failure, absence, or fallibility of
711 the external. It becomes clear that, in psychic reality, the internal
8 readiness for “marriage”—that is, for true emotional and sexual
9 commitment—is based on the capacity to survive loss and disillu-
20 sionment, to mourn what has had to be given up. For this can
1 engender belief in an internal, intimate couple that may then find
2 expression in an external partnership, one that can carry the impli-
3 cation of regeneration and renewal.
4 “Marriage”, as a symbol of the capacity for intimacy and of this
511 very notion of regeneration and renewal, is a hallmark of classic
6 literature. To be able, in the fullest and deepest sense, to be a couple
7 (only conventionally marked by marriage) constitutes a profoundly
8 optimistic statement of psychic continuity. Perhaps the clearest
9 expression of this psychic continuity is to be found in Shakespeare’s
311 comedies. Suzanne Langer (1953) describes the essence of comedy
1 as embodying in symbolic form our sense of happiness, in feeling
2 that we can meet and master the changes and chances of life as it
3 confronts us. In just such a way Shakespeare’s great Festive Come-
4 dies may be taken as descriptions of the happy outcome (despite
5 the tyrannical overtones of many of the beginnings, and melan-
6 cholic undertones that so often pervade) of the developmental
7 process and of adolescence in particular. For the comic plots, with
8 their improbabilities, coincidences, sudden reversals, disguisings
911 and unmaskings, cross-dressings and bisexual possibilities, present
111 us with what Rosalind, in As You Like It, calls the “full stream of the
2 world”. It is the full stream of a particular kind of world, where the
3 characters, to varying degrees, engage with different aspects of
4 themselves. They have to, if the final marriages, which are really to
5 do with renewal rather than mere convention, are to take place.
6 I can only touch on the world of the comedies here. They present
711 an altogether more ebullient, experimental, and mythic version of
8 things than the novels I have described. In the wholly symbolic
9 worlds of Illyria, the Forest of Arden, the Duke’s Oak in a wood
10 near Athens, or, indeed, of Prospero’s island, marriage carries with
1 it the resolution of the internal adolescent conflict between confor-
2 mity and individuality, between received identity and the capacity
3 to be oneself; and, quite explicitly, the sense of the characters partly
4 working through their respective oedipal crises. Many of the come-
5 dies begin in an atmosphere of patriarchal authority and denial.
6 These are situations that must be confronted and resolved by the
7 characters in the course of the plays, as they struggle to shed
8 versions of pseudo-maturity imposed from without, and to engage
9 with the creative, imaginative symbolic possibilities within. The
211 comedies are, in other words, profoundly to do with separation and
1 individuation, and with the onward march of the generations that
2 each have to find their own distinctive way of proceeding.
3 What characterizes the final marriages in many of the comedies
4 is the dramatic evidence that they are the outcome of significant
5 experiments with bisexual aspects of the self. One might even say
6 that the great comic heroines, Viola in Twelfth Night, for example, or
7 Rosalind in As You Like It, are constituted as heroines through their
8 very capacities also to be Cesario and Ganymede. They have the
9 ability to combine in themselves essential elements, both male and
30 female, that they engage with, or that finally come together in a
1 potentially creative union. Identity becomes a matter not of imita-
2 tion, or superficial identification with external conventional mores,
3 nor of projective identification with roles and characteristics, but
4 one of examination of inner meanings and of potential integration,
5 such that authentic, creative processes may occur. These processes
6 could be re-described, psychoanalytically, in terms of a renegotia-
7 tion of the oedipal situation in adolescence.
8 I will now turn to such a renegotiation in a particularly troubled
911 young man’s late adolescence, in an attempt further to explore the
111 issues under consideration in the context of a lengthy analysis. The

2 young man (I shall call him Tom) was the child of a young mother
3 and her lover—someone whom she regarded as the love of her life.
4 Tom spent his first few years alone with his mother. He idealized
5 her and clearly believed himself to be idealized too. My own sense,
6 over time in the transference, was that this relationship may have
7 been far less ideal than he felt it to be; that his mother may have
8 been quite depressed, and at times rather remote from her much
9 loved baby—the fruit of a passionate, failed relationship. At other
10 times, she may have been over-involved, intrusive, and perhaps
1 demanded idealization as a means of keeping her from the break-
2 downs that she suffered with the births of each of her subsequent
3 children.
4 This young woman, perhaps for reasons of economic depen-
5 dency, perhaps wanting to provide her son with a family, married
6 when Tom was four. It seemed clear that she did not love her
711 husband. Tom felt utterly betrayed. She became a weak and fickle
8 tormentor in his mind—a whore who had deceived and abandoned
9 him, despite secretly still loving him best of all but being “too
20 cowardly” to show it. He railed at her for her callow infidelity. A
1 profound split emerged in Tom’s adolescent years, between women
2 as the fountain of all beauty and truth on the one hand and, on the
3 other, of women as degraded and contemptible individuals. This
4 posed enormous obstacles to the possibility of ongoing relation-
511 ships with any young woman he felt drawn to. It seemed as though
6 the feeding and loving mother could not, in any sense, be allowed
7 also to be the sexual mother—in this case, his hated stepfather’s
8 partner.
9 It is a common defensive belief that all parental sexual activity
311 ceases with a child’s own conception (to be confounded by a sibling
1 presence, or confirmed by an absence). In his earliest years, Tom
2 ambivalently enjoyed only the very sporadic presence of his natural
3 father and had, until the age of four, basked in the delusory sense
4 that he was his mother’s sole possession, and she his. It seemed that
5 his primary sense of betrayal when his mother had married linked
6 to his later masturbatory fantasies, and, for periods, his transference
7 passions. These focused on me (his analyst), and on women gener-
8 ally as degenerate, sadistic creatures, exacting cruel and perverse
911 punishment on him, as the guilty and abject child/victim. Tom’s
111 predicament epitomized a much under-recognized problem for

2 stepchildren—the abhorrent necessity of having to confront contin-
3 uing parental sexuality. This can be especially difficult for the child
4 who, whatever the profound feelings of guilt and loss endured in
5 the course of the parents’ separation, has none the less briefly
6 relished a sense of triumph. The triumph, especially in the case of
711 the son of a separated or single mother, is cataclysmically shattered
8 when a new relationship begins. The normal processes of rivalry
9 and relinquishment are disrupted, even fractured, by new and
10 unwelcome psychosexual possibilities. These erect potential road-
1 blocks to the child’s development and require greater attention than
2 can usually be accorded in the new and exciting setting of fresh,
3 intimate and erotic parental adventures.
4 As the analysis unfolded it seemed fairly clear that in Tom’s
5 early years he had no sense of an external or internal parental union
6 that was secure enough to withstand the ordinary and necessary
7 struggles of the oedipal situation. The first dream Tom brought
8 to analysis constituted a powerful statement of his psychic experi-
9 ence of lacking containment in early infancy, whatever his cons-
211 ciously idealized version of events suggested to the contrary. It also
1 expressed his fear that he would repeat this experience in analysis.
2 He dreamt that:
3
4 He was trying to play tennis on an indoor court of which one of the
5 walls was missing. Each time he threw the ball up to serve, it bounced
6 back prematurely from an unnaturally low ceiling, making it impossi-
7 ble for him to set the ball in play.
8
9 Tom’s dream graphically described his psychic predicament.
30 Something fundamental was missing—both, we may infer, from his
1 own experience of being contained by a primary maternal object
2 and from the setting of his life without a father. The potentially
3 bounded space of his mother’s mind was felt to be lacking a crucial
4 dimension, the missing wall indicating a central component miss-
5 ing in her inner structure. She seemed to have oscillated between
6 depression and idealization, which was directed towards her lover
7 and baby, in comparison with her disappointing marriage. With
8 no solid, dyadic experience of being mentally and emotionally
911 held, Tom had been incapable of achieving the kind of equilibrium
111 essential to coping with the sudden eruption into his life of a new
2 rival. Then, and always, he experienced his rival as the “incarnation
3 of malignant misunderstanding” (Britton, 1992, p. 41).
4 This “malignant” union with what, in different states of mind,
5 Tom took to be both his unwilling and yet also his wantonly
6 too willing mother, seemed to have created a combined figure
7 that personified “contradiction, meaninglessness, and chaos” (ibid.,
8 p. 41). This figure had set him on the path of academic failure,
9 mental confusion, victimhood, and, ultimately, sexual perversity.
10 The potentially fateful consequences of lacking the wherewithal to
1 deal with this oedipal reverse were sealed by the further tragic loss
2 of his mother’s mind. With the births of his many younger siblings
3 his mother suffered successive psychotic breakdowns, from which
4 she never wholly recovered. Tom laid the full intolerable weight
5 and responsibility for the rage, pain, hurt, and desperation of these
6 terrible experiences of abandonment, birth, and breakdown at his
711 stepfather’s door. Tom had been stuck in an oedipal crisis, and
8 unable to move towards a genuine sense of himself; rather than a
9 collection of posturing, projective “cardboard cut-out figures”, “an
20 unconfident social wreck”, as he said much later when he felt he
1 was finally “no longer always trying to be in someone else’s head
2 in order to look at myself”.
3 This last insight came towards the end of his long analysis.
4 Previously, he had sometimes been able to touch on a more solid
511 experience of his own identity, and move slowly towards a loving
6 relationship, providing the basis for establishing the kind of family
7 he felt he had never had. This profound wish carried with it both
8 reparative components and some founded on a determination not
9 to repeat. His genuine desires had long been terribly hampered by
311 aspects of his own pathology, and by blocks to his capacity to inte-
1 grate his profoundly split, indeed “fractured” (O’Shaughnessy,
2 1989, p. 142) experiences of the parental couple, motherhood, and
3 womanhood.
4 Throughout his adolescence, for example, Tom was infatuated
5 with a young woman. As far as I could understand, he experienced
6 her as being very similar, both in looks and in character, to his beau-
7 tiful, depressed, and quixotic pre-psychotic mother. For years this
8 girl preoccupied Tom in fantasies, dreams, and daydreams. His
911 idealized union with her occupied a “reservation” type place in his
111 mind, preserved, in Freud’s terms, as “an island of activity . . .

2 separated from the mainstream of the individual’s life” (Britton,
3 1992, p. 34). Tom similarly experienced the breakdown of much less
4 significant relationships as death dealing in their psychic impact.
5 He felt the young woman’s eventual, and never fully explained,
6 abandonment of him as irreparable in its replication of his original
711 loss. Perversity, which is often the main incumbent of the “reser-
8 vation” was, in Tom’s case, not reliably held in this especially pro-
9 tected and defended setting. It was increasingly “on the loose”,
10 actively disrupting his life, first with genital exposure, then with sex
1 chat lines, and, finally, with sado-masochistic activities with prosti-
2 tutes. His perverse inclinations also continuously sabotaged the
3 possibility of an honest, intimate relationship with one who became
4 his regular girlfriend—a young woman of enormous devotion
5 and loyalty, despite all the difficulties (for the main, kept secret
6 from her).
7 A third mode of relating to women first made its appearance
8 in the consulting room, and was soon enacted in an infatuation
9 with a fellow student. The desire for physical contact with me
211 (presented as a child-like longing for me to touch or to hold his
1 head or hand) had become an insistent theme in the analytic rela-
2 tionship. It was expressed in the form of a pseudo-intimate liaison
3 with a young woman (by all accounts a disturbed and vulnerable
4 “waif”), again conjuring up an image of his “child” mother. The
5 relationship seemed to be entirely based on skin-to-skin contact—
6 mainly stroking—and obsessional surface-to-surface touch. The
7 two-dimensionality of this mode of relating evoked an infantile
8 quality of the sort Esther Bick (1968) describes as defensive, a prim-
9 itive kind that lacked any sense of mutual interiority. Projective
30 and introjective processes were absent. Something structurally
1 fundamental was missing, precisely as the “tennis court” dream
2 represented.
3 Tom’s traumatic early circumstances seemed to have induced
4 both a denial of, and a rivalry with, the parental relationship. This
5 rivalry later became a constant feature in the analysis, both in the
6 transference and in his frequent and vivid dreams. Such transfer-
7 ence and dream manifestations in some respects marked a signifi-
8 cant step forward, despite their being, at times, accompanied by an
911 intensification of perverse acting-out. Although I was initially
111 rendered wholly despondent by this evidence of continuing pathol-

2 ogy, I began to view it as being, at least in part, closely bound up
3 with a step forward in his ambivalent struggle towards progress—
4 of a reculer pour mieux sauter kind (Quinodoz, 2002)—and as a recog-
5 nition of the pain of oedipal feelings. The feelings, previously so
6 rigidly defended against, were now arousing renewed and intense
7 resistance—so intense that the pain found expression either in the
8 exacerbation of perverse fantasies, or in the symbolic content of the
9 dream itself.
10 Two of Tom’s dreams, a year apart from one another, draw
1 together the central threads of the foregoing discussion. The threads
2 link the oedipal situation with the depressive position, as this
3 particular troubled adolescent struggles against irremediable disap-
4 pointment, falters, and again struggles on towards an internal
5 capacity for a genuine relationship, which for the moment is only
6 glimpsed, very partial, and constantly wavering under the impact
711 of ever-revived crises of separation. These two dreams focus on the
8 fragility of the analytic gains, and the threatening imminence of
9 losses, as idealization vies with the insecurely introjected analytic
20 function of containment that had, for periods, enabled his slow
1 steps towards psychic change.
2 After some significant indications of a growing capacity for
3 introjective identification with a creative internal parental couple,
4 Tom’s development had again become stuck, and seemed to be
511 foundering on the rocks of grievance and perversity. His abiding,
6 suffocating rage about his birth parents never properly having
7 been “together” and his stepfather’s “intrusion” into his life had
8 only partially diminished in the course of analysis. In Tom’s mind,
9 his stepfather had wrought havoc, inflicting on him his many
311 unwanted siblings and causing his mother’s “madness”. He experi-
1 enced this stepfather as someone who forever set him apart from
2 the “Garden of Eden” of each of his natural parent’s idealized rela-
3 tionship with himself, “the fruit of their mutual love”. In his mind,
4 he, Tom, had been the “main event” of their brief relationship with
5 one another. The fact that he, as psychic “linch-pin”, could not
6 sustain them was a reality against which he had, thereafter, both
7 fought (omnipotently) and given in to (submissively). It was
8 certainly something that he had never managed psychically to
911 accommodate.
111 His mother originated from an island in southern Europe, across

2 the water from the mainland of another country, which was his
3 stepfather’s place of origin. For many years, Tom had idealized his
4 early time with his mother in their “island home” together, speak-
5 ing their “mother tongue”. He had utterly denigrated his stepfather
6 as a bully and a tyrant, coming from a hostile and persecuting
711 “foreign” culture. In important ways Tom had always been his
8 mother’s “island” boy. His lyrical reminiscences of these early years
9 reminded me of Yeats’s Lake Isle of Innisfree. Judith Edwards (2003)
10 beautifully describes the psychically unworked-through experience
1 of this “lake-isle”, in terms of early escapist fantasies. These are
2 dramatically, though not definitively, expressed in a dream, which
3 took place a year or so before the termination of Tom’s analysis.
4 During the analysis, much work had been done, with many
5 false dawns, on relinquishing the fantasy of establishing a relation-
6 ship that might realize Tom’s idealized exclusivity of a one-to-one
7 baby–mother duo. Tom could not bear to allow the object, whether
8 in the analytic relationship or in life, its own separateness and free-
9 dom. The dream offered evidence that some such sustained capa-
211 city might be possible, that a shift could take place from the
1 idealized, defensive adherence to an exclusive, external love object,
2 and towards some recognition of a more inclusive, creative inner
3 world. Occasionally, in the transference, I had glimpsed a burgeon-
4 ing capacity to escape the thrall of the persecutory stepfather and
5 embrace, instead, the more ambivalent and, in significant ways,
6 painful possibility of a link to a father figure of a very different
7 kind. There were also signs of Tom being able to retrieve some of
8 his more extreme projections and to live in a less fractured state.
9 The dream represented such changes. However, the dream imagery
30 itself, and the nature of its articulation, offered powerful evidence
1 of the continuing centrality of an oedipal impasse in which the
2 baby’s experience is one of exaggerated awe, wonder, and idealiza-
3 tion, instead of a more measured, respectful stance in the face an
4 older generation’s learning that needs to be absorbed and moved
on from if true oedipal differentiation is to occur.
5
Haltingly, yet with unusual articulation, Tom recounted his
6
dream:
7
8 I was a member of crew on a ship in the Mediterranean. The sun was
911 shining and the wind fresh. Unexpectedly, for it was not charted on
111 any map, an island appeared midway between my mother’s island

2 home and my stepfather’s place of origin on the mainland opposite. It
3 was a stunning island, unimaginably beautiful, awe-inspiring in fact.
4 There were sheer cliffs and the light was rare and lovely. The land was
blue, green, grey. I suddenly found myself on the island, in the
5
company of a middle-aged couple who lived there. The man was
6
honourable and his wife, too, seemed imbued with the wisdom of the
7
ages. The couple seemed to encompass between them some kind of real
8 experience of life. They lived a very simple existence. They explained
9 to me something of their way of being. It was very basic and mainly to
10 do with the natural elements. What struck me, initially, was the extra-
1 ordinary nature of the different views of both the mainland and the
2 island that I could experience from this unfamiliar perspective. In each
3 case the view of the land that the new island afforded was much more
4 particular and detailed than anything I had been able to see before.
5 Despite the enormous distance, I could still clearly discern, on each
6 shore, streets, hills, and even houses and people. This enabled me to
think about the respective cultures of these two different countries and
711
to bring them into some kind of reconciliation in my mind. The man
8
and his wife showed me books of pictures of the island, ancient
9
books—the topography in different states of weather and season. In
20 some pictures there were snow and dangerous polar bears. There were
1 also beautiful plates showing the natural history of the island. It was as
2 if the wise couple’s memories of the island brought together some kind
3 of pre-history of the place that combined aspects of both cultures. After
4 showing me these amazing books of some kind of integrated past,
511 the couple moved outside the house and we began exploring the
6 actual terrain. They pointed out to me the lovely hills, cliffs, wild
7 expanses, mountain ranges, gullies, whirlpools—all the wonderful,
8 natural beauties of the surroundings.
9
311 Having described the dream in such unwontedly and exagger-
1 atedly lyrical terms, Tom’s tone and interest suddenly switched
2 away from the poetry of the wondrous isle and its inhabitants, to a
3 totally different feeling; a compelling attraction to a fantasy encoun-
4 ter with a man who was about to hurt him sexually. The island-
5 world suddenly slipped away and he found himself fighting with,
6 and giving in to, the desire for a painful and abusive sexual enact-
7 ment. Within a few moments, the dream/island site of creative
8 possibility was obscured by a cloud of perversion, as if to recreate
911 the sensual simplification of pseudo-integration—vulgar, concrete,
111 and devoid of any trace of the sympathetic imagination and oedi-
2 pal resolution that the dream revealed his inner self was capable of,
3 if only fleetingly.
4 It was as if the creative, and as yet unrealized, possibility of
5 getting to know a more integrated self which could cope with being
6 the young outsider of a “grown-up”, established relationship, had
711 been briefly glimpsed in this experience of a benign “combined
8 object”. However, the degree of idealization of the whole situation
9 perhaps inevitably invited some kind of catastrophic counter-force.
10 In the session itself, this new perspective on things was instantly hi-
1 jacked by an unwelcome bit of self-knowledge—the recognition of
2 a “somebody else” in himself, experienced as invasive and abusive.
3 In a trice, the possibility of integration had become so frightening
4 and challenging that Tom had reverted to the perverse, masochistic
5 pleasures in which he had long sought refuge from the split world
6 of his childhood experience. The fear of recognizing and granting
7 that there could be some relationship in his life that might reduce
8 the vast distance between his “island-mother”-self and his “main-
9 land stepfather”-self, relentlessly drew Tom towards a persecutory
211 figure. The figure threatens any attempt on Tom’s part to reconcile
1 the painfully polarized aspects of his inner world, militates against
2 any properly loving relationship in his external world, and against
3 any concrete creativity of a kind to which Tom had so often aspired.
4 This dream has a mythic quality that brings into relation the
5 oedipal experience both of separation and of potential integration.
6 The aesthetic dimension is particularly significant. It impacts on the
7 patient’s sensibility of this idealized island-world, and on his use of
8 perversity as a refuge from the overwhelming nature of the percep-
9 tion of new possibilities within, as well as from the inherent insta-
30 bility of such an island “psychic retreat” as a basis for any genuine
1 development.
2 The island as a “psychic retreat”, of the kind described by Judith
3 Edwards (drawing on Steiner, 1993), makes its first appearance in
4 this dream. Even more striking was one that occurred almost a year
5 later when Tom, with considerable trepidation and ambivalence,
6 was contemplating the end of his analysis. He described the follow-
ing dream, interpolating associations as he went along:
7
8 I was driving across an elevated structure—a bit like a motorway only
911 somehow the structure was much more arched and less substantial. I
111 was with an older woman [probably a bit like you] and I knew that I
2 was entering a foreign country. It was Canada [which I immediately
3 associate with my mother]. As we descended from the arc of the struc-
4 ture the landscape opened out before us. At the centre was a vast lake,
in the middle of which was an island that seemed like some kind of
5
quintessence of Canada itself. It was extraordinarily beautiful. I was
6
enthralled and over-awed with the wonder of it. Somehow it repre-
7
sented a sort of condensation of the features of the rest of the country. [It
8 epitomized my memories of being in my first, and in a sense, only
9 home.] Next we seemed to be on the island and my woman companion
10 was saying goodbye as she went off in another direction. This seemed
1 acceptable at first but then I became terrified of being alone. Soon after-
2 wards I encountered an older man who seemed to be pointing the way
3 out to me. It felt like it was the right direction but I didn’t know whether
4 I could go that way and I felt completely panicked and just stood still.
5
6 Tom said that there seemed to be much more to that part of the
711 dream—that is, more about the exquisite loveliness and idyllic
8 charms of the island/world in the middle of the lake. However, as in
9 the post-dream fantasy of the previous year, he suddenly found him-
20 self in a quite different emotional space—this time in the dream itself:
1
2 Suddenly, I was inside a building—a vast interior of which the exter-
3 nal features of the architecture, that is, the street-facing façade, now
presented themselves as somehow inside, so that I was viewing the
4
outside as if from within. I felt frightened, even desperate. I now
511
seemed to be being pursued by some kind of malign force or forces that
6
were out to get me. I found myself frantically flapping my arms and
7 hands in an effort to rise above the ground and to fly out of reach of
8 my persecutors. I was aware that I was facing two doors. One seemed
9 to be the right door and the other the wrong one. I was utterly
311 perplexed. Which door was the safe one to go through? I felt that if I
1 was mistaken, forces of destruction and persecution would be awaiting
2 me on the far side.
3
4 This dream seemed to speak directly to Tom’s predicament as he
5 approached the end of a long analytic relationship, and to how he
6 conducted his life outside. With his (analyst) female companion, he
7 was coming down to earth. And yet the approach was across a
8 structure which felt insubstantial and somewhat artificially ele-
911 vated (the insecure support as he nears the end of treatment). The
111 dream seems to describe some kind of experience of being “on the
2 way down” towards an ordinary landscape in which men and
3 women, and generations, take their place in the onward flow of
4 things. The difficult “journey” is arrested by the sudden sighting of
5 the island in the middle of the lake, another island of extraordinary
6 magnificence and compelling attraction—the “Lake Isle of Innis-
711 free”. The island is again described in lyrical terms, as if to repre-
8 sent, in its location and geography, the gem (nipple) in the middle
9 of the lake (breast)—the exclusively erotic and idealized focus of the
10 whole landscape—that of life or of the analytic experience. It was
1 the epitome of everything most desirable and gratifying. Yet, in so
2 being, it occluded the real with the ideal. The next events in the
3 dream suggest the impossibility for Tom of allowing his travelling
4 (analytic) companion to depart. In his anxiety, he suffers paralysing
5 indecision about an unknown male figure that points out the way
6 to him. Faced with a benign paternal object, he freezes.
7 In the light of the dream material that follows, we might sur-
8 mise that, fearful about the impending loss of his analyst, Tom
9 became unable to relinquish what now represented itself as an
211 enthralling island–breast, which he felt was only available to him
1 when he was physically with his actual analytic companion.
2 Overwhelmed in the face of imminent separation, he loses contact
3 with the kind of combined, albeit idealized, object that had featured
4 so prominently in his dream a year previously. He cannot allow
5 these “older” figures to be together. One takes the place of the other
6 and he cannot accept help or move on. His predicament is repre-
7 sented by what happens next in the dream. Suddenly, everything
8 turns inside out. The external features of the building’s architec-
9 ture are to be found inside instead. In this inside-out world, Tom
30 frantically resorts to “flying”, flapping, and fiddling (masturbatory
1 practices well-known from previous dreams), in a desperate effort
2 to “rise above” the anxieties associated with the ordinary landscape
3 experiences of finding his own way in life—to him, still “a foreign
4 country”. The dream-lake, drawn on to defend against the pain
5 of relinquishment, offered no substantial protection in his plight
6 and his (moral) universe is turned inside-out in his panic and
7 isolation.
8 In this second part of the dream, persecutory forces are actively
911 assailing him and his masturbatory fantasies are failing him.
111 Caught up, now, in a world of extreme splitting and projection, Tom
2 becomes confused and cannot tell right from wrong. The choice of
3 the two doors would seem to represent some kind of extreme polar-
4 ity between good and bad with a complete confusion, in the dream-
5 terms, as to which would release more persecutory forces and
6 which would offer him succour and relief. The anxiety which
7 propelled him from the “good” back to the “idealized” object (as we
8 can see in each of the two island-dreams, a year apart) was now
9 further propelling him into the topsy-turvy world of his defensive,
10 amoral universe of fear and indecision.
1 The inability to know which door to choose seemed to describe
2 the predicament that the baby finds himself in, when he cannot
3 replace the lost, idealized, wondrous breast/nipple/island with
4 any kind of ordinary experience that feels supportable and liveable.
5 It suggests, moreover, the oedipal dilemma in which one choice has
6 to be made over another—a choice fraught with longing, guilt,
711 persecution, and loss—a choice forever to be made, unmade, and
8 again remade. Under the pressure of the fear of separation, now felt
9 as abandonment, the island of the previous year dramatically
20 changes in character within the dream itself, not as a conscious
1 after-flight, as before. That earlier island had been one where,
2 despite the excessive lyricism and idealization, the qualities of an
3 experienced, thoughtful and wise combined object could neverthe-
4 less be recognized, engaged with and learned from. In fear,
511 however, that he would not be able to “bear” the “polar” opposites
6 in himself that were now being brought into relation with one
7 another, Tom had previously escaped into his familiar, lurid, and
8 exciting world of sexual fantasy. Yet the dream language and
9 content did, none the less, betoken the fact that something was
311 coming together within him, and that that “something” was becom-
1 ing available in the realization of burgeoning creative possibilities
2 in Tom’s personality. In the course of the year he had begun his own
3 writing—some poetry and a television drama.
4 The second dream describes how fragile these therapeutic gains
5 were. The good breast can again be swiftly traduced and turned
6 into an idealized version of itself, leaving Tom with little sense of
7 inner resources of his own, and unable to make use of the directions
8 he could be given by a helpful, “grown-up”, paternal aspect of
911 himself. He wants to be inside and outside at the same time and is
111 left confused as to which is which. He is defenceless and persecuted

2 as a consequence—in the grip of frantic masturbatory excitement.
3 With a more securely internalized capacity for containment, he
4 might have been able to hold on to those links of relatedness,
5 which had begun to feature so clearly the previous year. He might
6 also have been able to resist the more paranoid–schizoid forces
711 expressed in the later dream, forces which drove him to seek union
8 with an idealized/perfect breast and in so doing undermined his
9 capacity for relinquishment, for ambivalence, and for the courage
10 to find his own way. Tom was communicating the intensity of
1 his destructive and negative feelings, and engaging fully in their
2 exploration—a sine qua non of oedipal resolution. And so his strug-
3 gles continued. Now, however, in the shadow of his final analytic
4 separation, the resurfacing of some of the more extreme aspects of
5 his pathology did not feel as negative and destructive as they might
6 at first appear. They seemed to indicate less a paranoid–schizoid
7 regression to the familiar territorial retreats of earlier days than
8 evidence of the process Quinodoz (2002) describes as representing
9 a more depressive capacity to acknowledge the ongoing necessity
211 to work and re-work the damaging consequences of so severe an
1 oedipal impasse.
2 The profoundly contrasting experiences of these two late adoles-
3 cents, Dorothea and Tom, throw into sharp relief the starkly differ-
4 ent processes and outcomes of their respective oedipal struggles
5 in terms of establishing internal capacities for “marriage”. In each
6 case, external circumstances have a defining impact. Tracing of the
7 interplay of inner and outer forces of the particular “web” of life in
8 the “Middlemarch” we each inhabit is an explicit and central
9 concern for George Eliot, as for the analyst. Despite the early loss of
30 her parents and the social limitations of her existence, Dorothea’s
1 “noble nature” is able, ultimately, to look beyond the mental “park
2 palings” of her restricted world, to tolerate being at the lonely point
3 of the triangle and, as a consequence, to establish a lasting, loving
4 relationship. Internally these constitute “historic acts”—though not
5 ones that the “world” would particularly recognize or celebrate.
6 They are “historic” in that they determine a person’s capacity to
7 grow. They are rooted in that person’s past and determine his or her
8 legacy to future generations. Their strength and calibre are repeat-
911 edly tried and tested in the crucible of the oedipal situation.
111 Dorothea’s story has the breadth and universality of great liter-
2 ature. Tom’s profound difficulties bound him within a very differ-
3 ent narrative—one which throws into question how far someone
4 with a so fatally idealized and denigrated internal mother can
5 get towards anything resembling what is being called an oedi-
6 pal resolution. With such a seductive relationship with his early
7 mother—which he endlessly recreated in the idealized, eroticized
8 transference—what hope did he have of genuine relinquishment?
9 What chance did he have of getting off this island retreat if every-
10 thing away from it was experienced as so persecuting, unsafe, and
1 terrible? When his mother lost her mind Tom lost the opportunity
2 to struggle with disillusionment and ambivalence. He clung,
3 instead, to a past ideal in his fantasies, while in his actions he
4 punished and besmirched his object and himself. Consequently, his
5 capacity to find and sustain a relationship of genuine love and inti-
6 macy was seriously impaired.
711 Late adolescence is the time when the re-engagement with the
8 oedipal situation during the preceding few years can begin to bear
9 fruit. In many cases this adolescent process takes much longer—it
20 may extend into the twenties, or even to the thirties and beyond.
1 But the links between adolescent development, oedipal resolution,
2 and the internal capacity to be a couple are at their closest and most
3 developmentally significant at this time. As already stated, the
4 traditional emblem for the finding of a life-long partner is marriage,
511 which, as George Eliot says in the finale to Middlemarch, “has been
6 the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning” (Eliot,
7 1872, p. 890).
8
9
311 Acknowledgements
1 With thanks to James Fisher and to Kate Barrows for conversation
2 and reflection on the text.
3
4
5
Note
6
7 1. I have explored these issues at greater length in Waddell, M. (1998).
8 Late adolescence: fictional lives. In: Inside Lives: Psychoanalysis and the
911 Growth of the Personality. London: Karnac (2002).
111 CHAPTER FIVE

2
3
4
5
6
711 Shadows of the parental couple:
8
9
oedipal themes in Bergman’s
10 Fanny and Alexander
1
2
3 Viveka Nyberg
4
5
6
7
8
9
211 Introduction
1
I
2 ngmar Bergman’s creativity spans dozens of films and half a
3 century. Fanny and Alexander, filmed in 1982, is widely regarded
4 as a crowning masterwork of world cinema. Few film-makers
5 have drawn so unashamedly on their personal experience to feed
6 their creative work and Fanny and Alexander is among Bergman’s
7 most autobiographical films. The film is generally seen as depicting
8 a more benign, less angst-ridden projection of Bergman’s psy-
9 chic world than some of his earlier work (Horrox, 1988; Törnqvist,
30 1995).
1 Fanny and Alexander is an immensely rich and complex film,
2 multi-layered and allusive, profound in its exploration of character,
3 an enduring work of art. This chapter limits its study to one aspect
4 of the film—the oedipal themes that Bergman explores in the course
5 of the narrative. The film charts the psychic development of
6 Alexander, its central character, in his struggle with his oedipal
7 demons. The spectator follows Alexander through a mythic journey
8 of hate and love where he fears that he has, in turn, killed off both
911 father and stepfather as rivals for his mother’s affection. In the
101
111 course of the story Alexander is forced to confront their ghosts and
2 to arrive at some kind of resolution.
3 The chapter also explores three important couples in the film, to
4 see how Bergman’s screen characters enact the process of passing
5 unresolved oedipal phantasies and anxieties down the generational
6 line. I will suggest that Bergman’s portrayal of Alexander is of a boy
7 re-enacting his parents’ unresolved oedipal feelings in his struggle
8 to find a “third position”, from which he may find greater freedom
9 to witness rather than repeat the pattern (Britton, 1989, 1998). In the
10 course of the film the audience may gain, through Alexander’s
1 experience, a deeper understanding of the state of the couple rela-
2 tionship when the containment of the couple is failing.
3 Finally, this chapter refers to some of Bergman’s published auto-
4 biographical material and considers what Alexander’s character
5 may tell us about Bergman’s personal history. Throughout the film
6 Alexander’s journey is conducted alongside his younger sister,
711 Fanny, whose presence is neither accidental nor superfluous. This
8 chapter, none the less, reflects primarily on the character of Alex-
9 ander, who can be seen, in a sense, to represent Bergman himself.
20
1
2 Fanny and Alexander
3
4 At the start of Fanny and Alexander Bergman introduces us to nine-
511 year-old Alexander, wandering through his grandmother’s apart-
6 ment, which is set in a wealthy university town in turn-of-the-
7 century Sweden. The Ekdahl household is preparing its sumptuous
8 Christmas celebrations, a situation that introduces us to each of the
9 offspring of Alexander’s grandmother, Helena. She is the matriar-
311 chal dowager who acts as a firm but accepting pillar in the lives of
1 her extended family. Bergman portrays her as a well-known actress,
2 who retains her poise and grace and enjoys a comfortable, bour-
3 geois lifestyle. The intensity of the celebrations suggests to us that
4 this grandiose, idealized display is concealing darker tensions and
5 emotions below the surface. Helena has three sons—Oscar, Carl,
6 and Gustav. Each is married, and the first act of the film introduces
7 us to their partners.
8 Oscar is married to Emilie; these are Fanny and Alexander’s
911 parents. They are actors, and patrons of an amateur theatre
SHADOWS OF THE PARENTAL COUPLE 103
111 company sponsored financially by Helena. Oscar is portrayed as a

2 weak, sentimental character, a second-rate actor who has a poor
3 grasp of the boundaries between performance and reality. This is
4 underlined by the way in which he appears in the film, declaiming
5 speeches and rehearsing his theatrical role rather than confronting
6 the real world. Oscar takes refuge in the “little world” of the imag-
711 ination, which he counter-poses to the “big world” beyond the
8 theatre. The audience is left in no doubt as to which of these worlds
9 he prefers. Oscar’s character resembles Britton’s (1989) description
10 of the hysteric, who does not have the internal space to imagine, but
1 instead mounts the stage and plays the part that he is unable to
2 conceive in his imagination. In this sense, Oscar is the constant
3 performer in the play, but is unable to step out of this role in order
4 to adopt the role of the observer.
5 The audience is left unsure whether his wife Emilie is emotion-
6 ally more available, or whether she simply performs her allotted
7 role with greater skill and conviction. Emilie is portrayed as beau-
8 tiful and aloof in equal measure. Her relationship with the children
9 seems functional but distant, as if her mind is ruled by other preoc-
211 cupations. She seems to have more awareness of her aching empti-
1 ness than her husband does. The audience learns from Helena that
2 Oscar is impotent, and that he has been unable to satisfy his wife
3 sexually since Fanny’s birth. Helena expresses admiration for the
4 discretion with which her daughter-in-law conducts her extra-
5 marital affairs, implicitly condoning this behaviour while under-
6 lining her son’s impotence. The marriage can perhaps be described
7 as dominated by narcissistic object relating (Ruszczynski, 1995).
8 Ruszczynski describes how such a couple can be characterized by a
9 distancing coldness on the one hand, or a confused togetherness on
30 the other, and that many couples oscillate unpredictably between
1 the two positions. Oscar and Emilie maintain a respectable façade.
2 Perhaps the “confused togetherness” is expressed in the intensity
3 with which they play out their marital roles with public empathy
4 and respect, while concealing the emotional vacuum at the heart of
5 the relationship. As viewers, we may speculate that Oscar’s and
6 Emilie’s sexual relationship ended at Fanny’s birth, when the
7 arrival of their daughter heightened Oscar’s unresolved oedipal
8 anxieties. The combination of a sexually impotent father and a
911 mother who is open to extra-marital affairs perhaps makes Emilie
111 appear all the more exciting and available as an object for
2 Alexander’s oedipal longings.
3 Oscar’s mother Helena is characterized as a powerful woman.
4 Although her three sons have reached midlife, they are dependent
5 on her social and financial support. She is the strong, pivotal force
6 that seems to hold the family together. The audience is led to
7 believe that she has survived and prospered because of her acute
8 observation of other people. At one point she notes, “we play our
9 roles, some with negligence, others with duty”. Later she says, “one
10 role follows the other, the thing is not to shrink away”. Clearly,
1 Helena takes pains to measure up to her own criteria. She exudes
2 an air of sardonic distance and good-humoured indulgence toward
3 her sons, who remain, in a sense, infantalized. It is perhaps signifi-
4 cant that Bergman has drawn Helena’s character in the film as a
5 widow. The absence of a potent husband and father puts the rela-
6 tionship between mother and sons into sharper relief. This seems to
711 enhance the audience’s observation of the family dynamic, and aid
8 its understanding of how unresolved oedipal phantasies and anxi-
9 eties are unconsciously passed down and re-enacted over the gener-
20 ations. For example, we learn that Helena herself has taken lovers
1 and that her husband was distant and unresponsive.
2 We are introduced to Jacobi, a Jewish family friend who is
3 also Helena’s lover. We sense an erotic attraction between them,
4 although Jacobi is evidently not required to fulfil the role of pater
511 familias. It is Helena who sets the terms and Jacobi who carries out
6 her commands, an arrangement that appears mutually satisfactory.
7 They seem to relate to each other through a shared ironic, sceptical
8 distance towards the world, rather than through any passionate
9 bond. Their secret embraces seem to underline the fact that Helena
311 does not have a “real” husband, but a lover who sneaks in under
1 cover of dark.
2 It seems that Helena’s grown sons display, in different ways,
3 unresolved oedipal feelings. They find it hard to separate from
4 mother and to move forward in a purposeful way. Oscar has
5 married a woman not unlike his mother. His impotence, at one
6 level, may represent a self-inflicted punishment for his unresolved
7 guilty oedipal feelings towards his glamorous and exciting mother.
8 Oscar’s mother was open to extra-marital relationships because his
911 father was so remote. The absence, through death, of the father has
111 metaphorically handed the staff of authority to the mother. This

2 pattern is replicated in the relationship of Alexander’s parents. On
3 the surface, Alexander seems to value and admire his father. This is
4 evident in the way he watches the father’s rehearsals, identifying
5 with Oscar’s devotion to the art of imagining. However, the father
6 is also his rival for mother’s affection, and the nursery stands adja-
711 cent to the parents’ bedroom. Through the interconnecting doors,
8 Alexander can overhear their conversations, and sense the frozen
9 absence of parental intercourse. The audience learns that Alexander
10 is fearful at night and sometimes sneaks into the same bed as Maj,
1 the pretty, young nursemaid. Maj plays the role of a willing “ersatz”
2 mother who provides a sexually arousing relationship. Alexander
3 can enact with Maj what he might rather do with his mother.
4 Alexander is pictured as someone consumed by his own oedi-
5 pal longings, and surrounded by others’ eroticized fantasies and
6 frustrations.
7 Oscar’s younger brother, Carl, is married to Lydia. Bergman
8 presents their relationship as an archetypal, anti-libidinal union.
9 Carl is an infantile drunkard, a third-rate academic gradually losing
211 his tenuous grip on life. He rages with self-hatred, drowning in his
1 own bile, and yet he is humiliatingly dependent on his wife, who
2 paradoxically abases herself to him. As if to underscore Carl’s self-
3 loathing, he delights in farting contests with his brother’s children.
4 Together Lydia and Carl seem trapped in a repetitive pattern of
5 Carl’s abusive cruelty, countered by Lydia’s pitying forgiveness,
6 which, in turn, transforms Carl’s fury into impotent bombast. Their
7 couple relationship is imprinted by the kind of “projective grid-
8 lock” identified by Morgan (1995). She describes “a particular kind
9 of couple relationship in which the couple have a problem feeling
30 psychically separate and different from each other, and hence create
1 between them a relationship in which they feel locked together in a
2 defensive collusion within which there is only very limited growth”
3 (Morgan, 1995, p. 33). Carl is always threatening to leave the “medi-
4 ocrity” of his “barren” wife, but we know these are empty words.
5 Without his wife Carl would have to own his projections and
6 confront the reality of his own barrenness and mediocrity. The more
7 Carl’s abuse escalates, the more Lydia pleads in servility. As he
8 goads her, her abasement seems to confirm his lack of worth and
911 potency. This paradoxically gives Lydia the upper hand, as her pity
111 nullifies Carl’s spiteful rage. Theirs is a symbiotic relationship

2 where the couple is chained together by their mutual fears about
3 their capacity to survive independently. The more benign aspect of
4 their dependence is manifested in moments of sentimental remorse
5 and reconciliation. When Lydia, at Carl’s request, sings a German
6 Lieder on Christmas Eve, Carl wipes a tear from his eye and, for a
7 moment, the audience glimpses the desperate pact that binds them.
8 The youngest brother is Gustav. Bergman portrays him as a
9 rakish but loveable “billy-goat”, driven primarily by his insatiable
10 sexual appetite. On Christmas Eve, he joyfully makes love to Maj,
1 the new maid, only to follow up the next morning by mounting his
2 long-suffering but complicit wife. Like a small child, he considers
3 erotic pleasure as his birthright, whatever the consequences. His
4 wife Alma tolerates and even encourages his escapades, perhaps
5 because she is bored with her husband’s voracious demands. Alma
6 gives Maj, her husband’s latest conquest, a suggestive dress as a
711 Christmas present. This threesome could be seen as a harmless
8 menage à trois, were it not for the tragedy of their daughter Petra.
9 Petra is alone in the extended household in recognizing the pain
20 caused by her father’s adulterous affairs. She refuses to join her
1 mother in condoning Gustav’s dalliances. Petra’s response is to
2 withdraw into a state of mute accusation. She silently presents her
3 father with the breakfast tray after he has spent the night with the
4 maid, who is of similar age to Petra. There seems to be no space in
511 father’s mind to notice his daughter’s longing for his affection.
6 While the women around her appear glamorous and attractive,
7 Petra seems drab and unfeminine, devoid of her father’s confirm-
8 ation of her womanliness. Although Petra features only briefly in
9 the film, this does not reflect her relative importance to the narra-
311 tive. The fact that her father has seduced a string of women of her
1 own age, but seems blind to Petra’s existence, appears brutal and
2 heartless, undermining Gustav’s notion of himself as a loveable
3 rogue.
4 In one scene, Gustav promises Maj to set her up in a coffee-shop
5 in return for her favours. Maj gently teases him, assuming that his
6 promises are simply part of the seduction process. Gustav’s narcis-
7 sism is deeply offended and he withdraws in a short-lived tantrum.
8 In his unthinking grandiosity, Gustav is convinced that he is doing
911 right by everyone, and his response to Maj’s challenge is infantile
111 rage. Similarly, when Helena questions his relationship with the
2 pregnant Maj, Gustav reacts with petulant fury.
3 In his paper “Love, Oedipus and the couple”, Kernberg (1995)
4 suggests that the Don Juan syndrome does not have a single aetiol-
5 ogy, but exists along a continuum. “The promiscuous, narcissis-
6 tic personality is a much more severe type of Don Juan than the
711 infantile, dependent, rebellious, but effeminate type . . .” (Kernberg,
8 1995, p. 51). It would seem that Bergman’s Gustav resembles the
9 infantile and rebellious Don Juan described by Kernberg, governed
10 by a mild masochistic or hysteric pathology. Gustav seems unable
1 to tolerate feelings of oedipal exclusion, and perhaps his re-enact-
2 ment of threesome relationships is an attempt to re-instate early
3 phantasies that deny the reality of his exclusion from the parental
4 couple’s sexual relationship. The loss of the illusion of possessive
5 exclusivity may be one of the most difficult developmental hurdles
6 to be negotiated throughout life (Johns, 1996).
7 Perhaps this is best illustrated elsewhere by his brother Carl
8 when, in a drunken moment, he tells his wife: “First I am a prince,
9 the heir to the kingdom. Suddenly, before I know it, I am deposed”.
211 This seems to convey the sentiment of someone who has lost his
1 position as mother’s “little prince” prematurely, as if Carl has never
2 recovered from being usurped from mother’s affection. Perhaps
3 this illustrates the dilemma of someone who is unable to make a
4 demand for the whole kingdom, and is unable to identify with the
5 potent father and husband. Boswell writes in her paper “The
6 Oedipus complex”: “Together with the awareness of exclusion goes
7 the experience of finding out, of learning. This process of change
8 and growth always involves pain, but it also opens up the potential
9 for warmer and more generous relationships” (Boswell, 2001, p. 79).
30 Bergman allows us, through his portrayal of the three brothers, to
1 witness their respective strategies for avoiding the pain of exclusion
2 and, as a consequence, the interruption in the process of psychic
3 growth and development.
4 As the Christmas Eve celebrations draw to a close Helena and
5 her lover Jacobi sit quietly for a moment in the drawing-room.
6 Elsewhere, in the nursery, the children are too excited to sleep.
7 Alexander plays with his Christmas gift, a “magic lantern”, a paraf-
8 fin-fuelled slide-projector. The story he projects on the wall for the
911 other children is about a girl whose mother is dead. While the
111 father is carousing with loose companions, the ghost of the dead
2 mother re-appears. This story is in effect a mirror reversal of the
3 film’s narrative and suggests that the hateful feelings can also be
4 directed towards the mother.
5 The second act of the film begins with a scene in which
6 Alexander’s father, Oscar, rehearses the role of The Ghost in Shake-
7 speare’s Hamlet. Alexander sits in the auditorium, watching his
8 father, enraptured by the drama. The murdered Ghost pleads with
9 Hamlet to avenge the crime and save the royal family from inces-
10 tuous ruin. During this rehearsal Oscar is suddenly struck down by
1 fatal illness. Later, as Oscar lies on his deathbed, Alexander seems
2 terrified, trying to hide beneath the bed. Oscar reassures Alexander
3 that he must not be afraid, that death is nothing to fear. It seems
4 characteristic of Oscar’s priorities that his final words are instruc-
5 tions to his wife to take over the directorship of the theatre to ensure
6 that “all must continue as usual”.
711 In his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, Bergman frequently
8 returns to a notion that fear itself creates what is most feared, an
9 idea powerfully illustrated in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. In the myth
20 the Oracle has predicted that Oedipus will kill his father and
1 marry his mother. Oedipus then tries to escape from the curse, and
2 he leaves his country and the couple he knows as his parents. By so
3 doing, he eventually ends up re-enacting his worst fear, by
4 unknowingly killing his father and marrying his mother. Bergman’s
511 use of The Ghost’s speech in Hamlet as Oscar’s finale is, of course,
6 significant. Perhaps Alexander identifies with Hamlet’s agony at
7 being torn between wanting to avenge his father’s murderer while
8 also wanting his father, the rival, to be dead so he can have sole
9 access to the mother. The fact of Oscar’s death may, in Alexander’s
311 psychic world, translate into a phantasy where the thing he both
1 most feared and desired has in fact occurred as a result of his oedi-
2 pal longings for his mother. Perhaps, like Hamlet, Alexander
3 unconsciously fears that he has been cruelly punished for his
4 desires.
5 In the third act Bergman transports us to the theatre one
6 year later. Emilie has apparently tired of the world of theatre. In a
7 speech to the actors, she conveys her sense of her life as full of self-
8 deception: “I only bother about myself, not reality”. The reason for
911 her change of heart is explained by the arrival of Mr Edvard
111 Vergérus, the local Bishop, at her side. We learn that the Bishop has
2 been her spiritual support during the past year, and that their
3 friendship has grown into an attachment.
4 Bergman offers us a glimpse of how the Bishop will influence
5 Alexander’s life. Emilie has received a letter from Alexander’s
6 headmaster saying that her son has spread a story that she has sold
711 him to a travelling circus. She is devastated by what she regards as
8 Alexander’s deception and turns to the Bishop for help. The Bishop
9 humiliates Alexander by enforcing a reluctant confession. Those
10 who are familiar with Bergman’s autobiography will know that he
1 is drawing our attention to a parallel experience of his own. As a
2 small boy Bergman told a similar story at school, and was similarly
3 punished and humiliated by his own father. In the film, the real
4 father of Bergman’s memory appears as the evil stepfather, a sadis-
5 tic imposter stripped of the status of the real father. Moreover,
6 Alexander’s mother has transferred her affections to the rival. The
7 rival is not, like Oscar, just an impotent cipher, but is a potent threat,
8 and plans to possess the mother more effectively than his pre-
9 decessor. Through the phantasy of being sold to a travelling theatre
211 Bergman points to Alexander’s sense of abandonment by his
1 rejecting mother.
2 When Emilie and the Bishop announce to the children their plan
3 to marry, the ghost of Alexander’s father re-appears, smiling ironi-
4 cally, while Alexander mutters curses to himself. The Bishop takes
5 the family to see the residence where his own mother and relatives
6 live. He describes his home as imbued by an atmosphere of purity
7 and austerity. The audience can perhaps recognize elements of
8 Bergman’s own father, also a priest, in the portrayal of Vergérus.
9 The Bishop demands that all three should come to his house with-
30 out any possessions, clothes, jewels, or toys. They are to leave their
1 old habits and thoughts behind. He says, “You are to come to your
2 new life as though newly born”. Emilie seems attracted to the
3 absolute austerity of the Bishop’s life, stating; “my life has been
4 empty and superficial, thoughtless, and comfortable. I have always
5 longed for the life you live”. Despite his severe demands, the
6 Bishop offers Emilie enhanced social standing and appears as an
7 imposing, potent figure. In some ways, he represents a narcissistic
8 mirror image of Emilie’s own self-idealization and vanity. He lays
911 a claim to maleness that no one else in the film is permitted to do.
111 It seems that Emilie is searching for someone who will challenge
2 her morality and perhaps also punish her. The audience may spec-
3 ulate whether Emilie feels guilt towards her dead husband because
4 of her past infidelities. We may also wonder whether Emilie
5 harbours her own unresolved oedipal feelings towards Alexander,
6 whether her aloofness towards him may be a defence against her
7 own eroticized desires—a sentiment touched on in Bergman’s auto-
8 biography.
9 We witness the wedding of Emilie and the Bishop. After the
10 ceremony, Helena stands pensively at the window watching the
1 children follow their parents to their new home, stripped of all their
2 possessions. Helena notes, with sadness, that she suspects they will
3 have Emilie back quite soon. At this point in the film Bergman turns
4 the children’s lives into a nightmare drawn from a fairy tale. The
5 Bishop’s residence is cold and damp and the food is uneatable. The
6 children are clothed in coarse tunics and the windows in the nur-
711 sery are locked. Alexander detests his stepfather and senses that the
8 feeling is mutual.
9 On the very first evening Emilie seems to grasp that her marri-
20 age is a horrific mistake, but she pleads with the children not to lose
1 heart. When she kisses Alexander goodnight he turns away, as if
2 anticipating his mother’s treachery in sleeping with the Bishop. She
3 chides him by saying: “Don’t act Hamlet, my son. I’m not Queen
4 Gertrude, your kind stepfather is no king of Denmark, and this
511 is not Elsinore Castle, even if it does look gloomy”. With this com-
6 ment, Bergman explicitly reminds us of the oedipal themes of
7 Shakespeare’s play. The film hints at Emilie’s growing awareness
8 that, for Alexander, the struggle to possess her represents part of
9 his psychic reality. Unlike the young Hamlet, Alexander is still a
311 child who cannot compete head to head with the Bishop.
1 The film returns briefly to the idyllic world of the Ekdahl house-
2 hold. Save for Emilie and the children, the extended family is
3 together again, this time in Helena’s beautiful summerhouse. Maj,
4 the maid, is visibly pregnant, expecting Gustav’s child. There is,
5 however, a mood of melancholy and sadness. Helena and Maj are
6 preoccupied about the welfare of Emilie and the children. Emilie,
7 who is now expecting the Bishop’s child, surprises Helena with a
8 secret visit. She blames her loneliness and poor judgement in
911 marrying Edvard Vergérus. She explains to Helena how she had
111 thirsted for a more truthful life, one of demands, purity, and joy in
2 the performance of duty. Instead she lives in fear of her husband’s
3 tyrannical rages. She has asked for a divorce but he refuses to
4 consent. Emilie is consumed with anxiety. In particular, she worries
5 about Alexander, whom she describes as being mad with jealousy.
6 She adds that he doesn’t realize the jealousy is mutual and that the
711 Bishop merely awaits the right opportunity to crush Alexander. We
8 are struck by the change in Emilie, who seems, for the first time,
9 ready to recognize the depth of her children’s suffering. As Emilie
10 realizes that she cannot attain truth via her husband’s miserable
1 piety, she paradoxically discovers in her own suffering the strength
2 to face her real situation.
3 Meanwhile, at the Bishop’s residence, Fanny and Alexander are
4 locked in the nursery, praying that their stepfather will die. They
5 repeat, like a mantra, “Die, you Devil”. Before Emilie’s return, the
6 Bishop viciously beats Alexander, again for imagining a story. This
7 time, Alexander accuses his stepfather of murdering his first wife
8 and their two children, refusing to believe that they had drowned
9 accidentally. Again, Bergman’s relationship with his father seems to
211 converge with Alexander’s experience of his stepfather, as Bergman
1 describes a similar scene in his autobiography. When Alexander
2 finally confesses that he lied, his stepfather praises him for having
3 won a great victory over himself. The Bishop claims that his love
4 for Alexander compels him to chasten the boy, even if it hurts
5 himself. After the beating, Alexander is forced to beg forgiveness
6 and to kiss the Bishop’s hand. None the less, there is, in Alexander’s
7 resistance, a glimpse of his utter determination to survive and
8 prevail. Each battle with the Bishop seems to reinforce his sense
9 of defiance and his refusal to be crushed. Perhaps Alexander’s
30 refusal to differentiate between lies and truth becomes his saviour.
1 Through his imagination he can distance himself and use his phan-
2 tasy as a way of playing with his hatred and fear. Perhaps Bergman
3 is intimating that the powers of the imagination became his own
4 escape from similar conflicts. The spectator of the film watches a
5 creation that derives from Bergman’s own phantasies and internal
6 child’s reality. In his autobiography Bergman describes himself as
7 adept at creating an outer persona to protect his true self. Lying
8 offered him a kind of protection and, like Alexander, Bergman at
911 times found it hard to distinguish between fantasy and reality.
111 When Emilie returns she finds Alexander huddled on the attic
2 floor, with weals on his buttocks from the Bishop’s beating. Later in
3 the evening, as Emilie confronts her husband, she seems to recog-
4 nize that their life together is unsustainable and that she must leave
5 him. He threatens to take away her children if she decides to aban-
6 don him. From now on the children are locked in their rooms,
7 attended by the Bishop’s mother and sister. His jealous oedipal rage
8 is now directed towards both Emilie and Alexander. Since he recog-
9 nizes that he has lost Emilie’s affection, he punishes both mother
10 and son for his expulsion from the marital bed.
1 The final act depicts Alexander’s journey from a state of impo-
2 tent rage to a more integrated state, where he begins to own his
3 sexuality and masculinity. Helena, ever a controlling force in the
4 film, enlists Jacobi to rescue the children from the Bishop’s resi-
5 dence. Bergman achieves this by confronting, or perhaps remind-
6 ing, the audience with the fact that the film is, after all, a story
711 where anything can happen. The escape is performed as if by
8 magic. Fanny and Alexander appear to be in two different rooms at
9 the same time. Whether this fortuitous magic emanates from the
20 author, from Jacobi, or from some other source, is left to our imag-
1 ination. This device enables Jacobi to smuggle the children out of
2 the house in a giant chest. As in a fairy tale, the Bishop is tricked
3 into signing over the contents of the chest, which Jacobi contracts to
4 purchase.
511 Jacobi takes the children not to Helena, but to his own house. He
6 lives in a labyrinthine cavern crammed with antiques, a mythical
7 maze of strange objects and monstrous puppet figures. The children
8 are introduced to Jacobi’s nephews, Aron and Ismael. This haunt-
9 ing “Jewish” environment represents a world of otherness, set apart
311 from the “Swedish” world encountered elsewhere in the film. It is
1 in this other space that Alexander’s emotional journey can reach its
2 climax. Jacobi, as a kind of ringmaster/magician, is central to
3 Bergman’s tale. Not only does he redeem the children from the
4 Bishop’s lair, but he also offers some kind of framework for the
5 comprehension of their, up till now, senseless and terrifying experi-
6 ences. Jacobi tells Alexander an ancient Hebrew story about a
7 young boy on a pilgrimage to an unknown land. In this story, the
8 boy’s emotional pain and tears become the rain that feeds the
911 world. Jacobi implies that Alexander’s torment may not have been
111 in vain, and that it might ultimately be transformed into a creative

2 force.
3 When Alexander awakes in the night and goes to relieve him-
4 self, his father’s ghost appears to him once again. This time,
5 Alexander speaks to the dead father, berating him for being useless,
6 in life as in death. “Since you can’t help us, you might as well think
711 of yourself and clear off to Heaven, or wherever you’re going.” He
8 adds that his father should “Tell God to kill the Bishop”. His father
9 replies, helplessly: “You must be gentle with people”. Alexander
10 has recognized that the father cannot protect him and that he must
1 find his own efficacy. Oscar was, in effect, a “ghost” father during
2 life, and ironically became a more persistent presence after death.
3 The audience is, perhaps, left with the feeling that Oscar’s worst
4 crime was failing to save his son from the mother, by acting as a
5 potent husband. By his acceptance of a pretend marriage, he left the
6 field open for Alexander’s overwhelming oedipal imagery. Alex-
7 ander now seems able to let go of the useless, idealized father.
8 Through his rage, Alexander seems to differentiate himself from the
9 dead father and in so doing, like the boy in Jacobi’s story, he begins
211 to tap the resources of his own internal well.
1 His next meeting in the course of this magical night is with
2 Ismael. Bergman portrays Ismael as androgynous, a symbolic union
3 of male and female sexuality. Ismael is locked in his room because
4 he is seen to possess monstrous, unspoken, “awkward talents”,
5 which perhaps include pederasty or cannibalism. Ismael requests
6 that Alexander spends half an hour with him in his locked cell.
7 Alexander willingly consents to enter Ismael’s embrace. Ismael
8 perhaps represents a universal darkness in all of us, secrets that
9 must be locked away in the pre-conscious, in a constant tension
30 between expression and suppression. Ismael’s awkward talent is, in
1 part, an ability to go in and out of the other, rather like a ghost.
2 Through merging with Alexander he is able to know Alexander’s
3 pain. This is illustrated in the moment when Alexander writes his
4 name on a piece of paper and finds that he has written Ismael’s
5 name instead. Ismael becomes the medium by which Alexander can
6 confront the destructiveness of his phantasies. Through Ismael he
7 experiences a vision of his stepfather engulfed in flames. Ismael
8 seems to open Alexander’s eyes and force him to face the conse-
911 quences of his own hatred. In so doing, it is as if an internal boil has
111 been lanced. Alexander now seems able to own the nascent, curs-
2 ing, homicidal monster lodged in his own soul. Conversely, he can
3 also own his love and passion. In this scene Bergman seems to
4 invert the narrative. Alexander and his sister, having escaped from
5 the horrors of the Bishop’s home, have stepped into a different
6 space, where perversity appears as normality. Now that he has
7 allowed himself to cast off the ghost of the dead father, it appears
8 that Alexander’s oedipal rage holds diminished sway.
9 At the Bishop’s residence, Emilie doubles the dose of bromide
10 in her husband’s broth, so that she can escape her confinement. She
1 successfully slips out of the house but, as if by magic, that very
2 night the Bishop’s aunt accidentally upsets a candle, so that the
3 Bishop is burnt to death, exactly as Alexander had imagined.
4 Like the beginning of the film, its epilogue reveals an elaborate
5 party for the Ekdahl clan. The family gathers to celebrate a double
6 christening. Emilie has given birth to a baby daughter, as has Maj,
711 the maid. Gustav is in expansive mood, extolling the apparent reso-
8 lution to the children’s ordeal and the birth of the two babies:
9
20 We might just as well ignore the big things. We must live in the
1 little, the little world. We should be content with that and cultivate
2 it and make the best of it. Suddenly death strikes, suddenly the
3 abyss opens, the storm howls and disaster is upon us—all that we
4 know. But let’s not think of all that unpleasantness . . . it is neces-
511 sary, and not the least shameful, to take pleasure in the little world,
6 good food, gentle smiles, fruit-trees in bloom, waltzes.
7
8 It is as if Bergman allows the audience to relax for a moment, to
9 catch its breath, before the threat of death and the “abyss” descends
311 again. Yet, Gustav’s attempt to banish these demons paradoxically
1 reminds us of their continued threat. The family shares the happy
2 occasion—with the exception of Alexander, who seems detached.
3 He eats his cake in a sloppy, ungainly manner, more an awkward
4 adolescent than the obedient child we met at the start of the film.
5 Emilie projects a sweet, idealized picture of motherhood, but the
6 audience is deprived of any reconciliation between Emilie and her
7 son. It seems that Alexander’s sense of oedipal betrayal remains
8 very much alive. Despite Gustav’s attempt to restore family
911 harmony, it is evident that Alexander stubbornly resists inclusion in
111 this order. We sense that his journey has taken him beyond the
2 reach of Gustav’s platitudes.
3 At the very end of the film the rug is pulled, almost literally,
4 from under our feet, as another ghost trips up Alexander. This time
5 it is the dead stepfather. The Bishop reminds him that “You can’t
6 escape me”. Although the audience is caught off-guard by the
711 Bishop’s re-appearance, Alexander seems unperturbed by the
8 threat. Rather than seeking solace from his mother, in the final scene
9 Alexander calmly rests his head in his grandmother’s lap.
10 As with the oedipus complex, there is neither a happy, nor an
1 unhappy ending to the film. Alexander has, in the course of the
2 narrative, confronted his rivalry with both his father and stepfather
3 and he has, in some sense, seen off both their ghosts. It is arguable
4 that, in the course of the film, Alexander has been struggling with
5 the generational impact of unresolved oedipal feelings. The matri-
6 archal grandmother has been unable to allow her sons, including
7 Alexander’s father, to separate and individuate from her. Conse-
8 quently, Alexander’s parents have not succeeded in sufficiently
9 containing their sexual and relational difficulties that have, in turn,
211 inflamed Alexander’s imagination. In the scene where, like Hamlet,
1 he finally addresses his father’s ghost, Alexander appears to have
2 made an internal move from subject to object. It is as if Jacobi’s
3 story has enabled Alexander to make sense of his own pain and
4 suffering. He is able to confront his father as a real, rather than an
5 idealized object. Once the observer position exists in Alexander’s
6 mind he is able to move towards a position where he can also be
7 observed. The creation of the space to be an individual is a process
8 that involves some recognition of the primary couple (Britton,
9 1989). The audience witnesses this in the encounter with Ismael,
30 where Alexander can tolerate Ismael having access to his darkest
1 phantasies. By confronting the impotence of his father and the
2 aggression of his stepfather, Alexander, to some extent, can recog-
3 nize aspects of the reality of the parental relationship. Britton
4 suggests that recognition of the parental relationship creates a
5 boundary for the internal world, making possible what he calls
6 “triangular space”:
7
8 If the link between the parents perceived in love and hate can be
911 tolerated in the child’s mind, it provides him with a prototype for
111 an object relationship of a third kind in which he is a witness and

2 not a participant. A third position then comes into existence from
3 which object relationships can be observed. Given this, we can also
4 envisage being observed. This provides us with a capacity for
seeing ourselves in interaction with others and for entertaining
5
another point of view whilst retaining our own, for reflecting on
6
ourselves whilst being ourselves. [Britton, 1989, p. 86]
7
8
9 The process of moving towards a third position seems to change
10 Alexander’s relationship with his mother. Near the end of the film
1 Alexander is clearly part of the family again, sitting close to the
2 dinner table while at the same time observing his mother out of
3 the corner of his eye. This reflective distance is underlined in the
4 final scene, where Alexander takes refuge in his grandmother’s
5 lap, rather than his mother’s. Perhaps Alexander is now better
6 equipped to handle his own sexual excitement. He instinctively
711 seems to know that his grandmother’s lap acts as a safeguard
8 against his longings for his mother. Perhaps Bergman suggests that
9 any resolution of Alexander’s oedipal struggles will be temporary
20 and incomplete and that demons will always remain.
1 Bergman published his autobiography, The Magic Lantern, in
2 1988—five years after the release of Fanny and Alexander. In the
3 book, Bergman recalls an event that took place in his late forties. He
4 was working in Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre when his
511 mother telephoned with news that his father had been taken to
6 hospital for emergency surgery. She asked Bergman to pay him a
7 visit. Bergman replied that they had nothing to say to each other,
8 and he felt nothing but indifference towards his father. His mother
9 became tearful, pleading with Bergman to do this for her sake.
311 Bergman asked his mother to excuse him from this persistent
1 emotional blackmail, and claimed that her tears had never made an
2 impression on him. He then slammed the receiver down. Later that
3 evening Bergman received a phone call from reception saying
4 that a “Mrs Bergman” had arrived to speak to him. By this stage
5 Bergman had been married several times, so there were a number
6 of candidates for the role of “Mrs Bergman”. He asked which
7 “damned Mrs Bergman” was demanding his attention (Bergman,
8 1988, p. 5). The receptionist explained that “Mrs Bergman” was in
911 fact his mother and that she asked to see him immediately. When
111 they met, his mother was furious with rage and struck him force-
2 fully as he reached to embrace her. They eventually reconciled and
3 Bergman promised to visit his father. This was his last meeting with
4 his mother, because she died unexpectedly a few days later. As if
5 we were observing a family scene through a keyhole, this episode
6 dramatizes the fraught triangular relationship between Bergman
711 and his elderly parents.
8 Bergman was born in 1918. He was an ailing second son, who
9 was predicted not to survive childhood. His maternal grandmother,
10 as on other occasions thereafter, came to his rescue by taking him
1 to her country house where she found him a wet nurse. Bergman
2 discovered that illness was something his mother, as a qualified
3 nurse, found interesting, and that it commanded her attention and
4 tenderness. Bergman portrays the relationship with his mother as
5 both highly charged and lacking in constancy. He describes how he
6 passionately adored her, but the intensity of his devotion and his
7 sudden rages irritated her. She would dismiss him in cold, ironic
8 tones and Bergman would cry tears of rage and disappointment.
9 Bergman discovered an additional way to command his
211 mother’s attention. Since his mother’s chosen weapon was indif-
1 ference, Bergman mirrored her response. “I also learnt to subdue
2 my passions, and started on a peculiar game, the primary ingredi-
3 ents of which were arrogance and a cool friendliness” (Bergman,
4 1988, p. 4). Bergman identifies his greatest problem as never
5 being given an opportunity to reveal his game-playing, never being
6 allowed to be enveloped in a love that, after all, was reciproca-
7 ted. When he discussed this dynamic with his mother in her old
8 age, she told him that a famous pediatrician had warned her to
9 reject what she described as her son’s “sickly approaches” because
30 “indulgence” would damage him for life.
1 Bergman’s father was a priest and based the children’s upbring-
2 ing on turn-of-the-century Christian conceptions of sin, confession,
3 punishment, forgiveness, and grace. In his autobiography Bergman
4 remembers his common early experiences of humiliation by his
5 father. For example, when he wet himself he would be dressed in a
6 red skirt for everyone’s amusement. Punishment was seen as some-
7 thing self-evident and it could be either swift and brutal or complex
8 and sophisticated. Bergman describes how the immediate conse-
911 quence of confession was to be frozen out. Later, the parties were
111 summoned to his father’s room, where interrogation was renewed.

2 After that, the carpet- beater was brought out and Bergman himself
3 had to declare how many blows he deserved. After the punishment,
4 he was expected to kiss his father’s hand and ask for forgiveness.
5 Like Alexander’s mother, Bergman’s mother also enjoyed discreet
6 extra-marital affairs, but religious piety and custom prevented any
7 separation from his father.
8 Bergman’s autobiography appears savagely truthful. He shame-
9 lessly reveals unflattering aspects of his private life to the reader,
10 with no attempt to justify or excuse himself. He resists offering the
1 reader redeeming traits, as if this might constitute an artistic short-
2 cut to bypass the truth. He reveals an obsessive, almost indiscrimi-
3 nate sexuality, which rendered him relentlessly faithless. For a large
4 part of his life he was unable to trust others. He also describes his
5 voracious emotional neediness, his anxious fears and, above all, his
6 bad conscience. He exposes his psychosomatic symptoms and his
711 diarrhoea. He professes his tempestuous and compulsive need to
8 remain creative.
9 Perhaps it is this unblinking self-knowledge, this inability to
20 deny his own experience, however painful, that allows Bergman to
1 unveil the subjective world of his creations, his characters. While
2 they are not identical, the film narrative reveals aspects of Bergman
3 in a similar way as dream material reveals aspects of the patient’s
4 inner world. In some sense, the three Ekdahl brothers represent
511 different aspects of Bergman himself. Oscar apparently uses “the
6 arts” to cope with the insufferable reality of the “bigger world”.
7 Gustav’s compulsive erotic adventures echo Bergman’s own temp-
8 estuous love affairs, described in his autobiography. Carl’s bitter
9 despair and self-loathing were constant companions throughout
311 Bergman’s life and work (Törnqvist, 1995). Jacobi, as the children’s
1 ultimate saviour, perhaps represents the magician in Bergman, who
2 mediates and transforms experiences, who translates chaotic, prim-
3 itive nightmares into some kind of resolution, through complex,
4 metaphorical and artistic expression.
5 Freud first referred to the myth of Oedipus in a letter to Fliess
6 in October 1897. He described how, in the course of self-analysis,
7 he discovered that falling in love with the mother and jealousy of
8 the father seemed to represent a “universal event of childhood”
911 (Freud, 1897, p. 265). Freud pointed to the character of Hamlet, and
111 pondered his apparent reluctance to avenge the murder of his

2 father by killing his uncle. Freud suggested that Hamlet’s hesitation
3 derives from his unconscious sense of guilt, arising from his illicit
4 passion for his mother. Freud notes that Hamlet brings down a
5 punishment on himself, suffering the same fate as his father—
6 poisoning by the same rival. Freud had already, at this point, made
711 a link between the oedipus complex and unconscious guilt, and this
8 idea was to become a cornerstone in his future thinking (Freud,
9 1923, 1924, 1930).
10 In his autobiography Bergman emphasizes his attempts to
1 evade and deny guilty feelings, which have haunted him through-
2 out his life in the form of a constant bad conscience. The centrality
3 of unconscious guilt is ever-present in Bergman’s films. Through
4 the actions and reflections of his complex characters Bergman illus-
5 trates how this experience moulds and determines interpersonal
6 relationships.
7 Britton, in his paper “Subjectivity, objectivity and triangular
8 space” (1998b) suggests that, for some patients, the oedipal situa-
9 tion is dreaded, not just because it brings with it unwanted and
211 painful feelings, but because it is felt to be a catastrophe. These are
1 patients who have encountered, in phantasy or in fact, the primal
2 scene without having established a secure base with a maternal
3 object. The consequence of this is that the belief in the good mater-
4 nal object has been retained by splitting off the experience of misun-
5 derstanding and attributing it to a third person. This third person
6 is the father of the primitive oedipal situation who becomes the
7 embodiment of “malignant understanding” (Britton’s italics). Then
8 the phantasized union of the parents is experienced as a monstrous
9 event, which personifies meaninglessness and chaos. From Berg-
30 man’s autobiographical account of his early upbringing we recog-
1 nize the history of a little boy who did not experience the union of
2 his parents as benign and containing. It is fair to speculate, noting
3 Bergman’s early illnesses, that there may have been an early failure
4 of containment in his relationship with his mother. His own subjec-
5 tive experience certainly seems to have been that he pined for his
6 mother’s affection, but was met by her coolness and calculated
7 distance. Perhaps his hateful feelings towards his father, who
8 executed premeditated beatings, heightened his oedipal envy and
911 rage and intensified his feelings of guilt. Like his fictional character,
111 Alexander, perhaps Bergman was left with the psychic inheritance
2 of the apparent lack of oedipal resolution.
3
4
5 Summary
6
7 This chapter has attempted to explore some of the oedipal themes
8 in Fanny and Alexander. It has done so by following Alexander’s
9 mythical journey through his own fictional drama, where he
10 confronts within himself heightened oedipal anxieties and long-
1 ings. The central couples in the film indicate the power of unre-
2 solved oedipal feelings, which may be passed on, and re-enacted,
3 across generations. Alexander’s difficulties can be understood, at
4 least in part, as a response to a breakdown of containment in the
5 parental relationship. Britton’s notion of a “third position” helps us
6 better to understand Alexander’s attempts to find a standpoint
711 from which he can make sense of his experiences. Finally, the chap-
8 ter has explored some of the oedipal issues in the film, in relation
9 to Bergman’s personal history.
20 Fanny and Alexander is a magnificent, multi-faceted work of art,
1 which cannot be reduced to any one theme within its complex
2 narrative. What makes the film so remarkable is Bergman’s
3 consummate artistry in exploring these, and other powerful issues,
4 with immense richness, subtlety, and ambiguity, while at the same
511 time engaging his audience. Bergman resists any attempt to
6 sweeten the burden of the human condition by suggesting that
7 Alexander can somehow achieve a final resolution of his pain. We
8 know that the Bishop’s Ghost is correct in warning: “You can’t
9 escape me”. Like the rest of us, Bergman’s Alexander is left at the
311 end of the film to continue his struggle with the intractable diffi-
1 culty of his personal history.
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
911
111 CHAPTER SIX

2
3
4
5
6
711 “It seemed to have to do with
8
9
something else . . .”
10
1 Henry James’ What Maisie Knew and
2 Bion’s theory of thinking*
3
4
5 Sasha Brookes
6
7
8
9
211 “Earth Water Fire and Air
1 Met together in a garden fair,
2 Put in a basket bound with skin,
3 If you answer this riddle you’ll never begin”
4 Robin Williamson
5
6
D
7 uring Henry James’ development as a novelist, his atten-
8 tion increasingly focused on the minds of his characters,
9 and with the nature of their thinking and the “knowledge”
30 upon which it was based. He became more and more interested in
1 how his people variously know and do not know themselves, each
2 other, and the experiences with which their creator presented them.
3 What Maisie Knew was published in 1897, at the beginning of the
4 “third period” of his work, during which he was the most preoccu-
5 pied with the life or death of minds either nourished by, or starved
6 of, knowledge of themselves, and of the world outside them.
7
8 *This chapter has formerly been published in the International Journal of
911 Psycho-Analysis, 83(2): 2002
121
111 In 1896, he wrote in his journal: “It is now indeed that I may do
2 the work of my life. . . . I have only to face my problems . . .”. These
3 problems were not to be named. “But all that is of the ineffable”, he
4 wrote next. The “problems” which, when faced, would yield “the
5 work of his life” are only to be known, either by author or reader,
6 by a process of imaginative acquaintance with “the work” itself.
7 The title What Maisie Knew places knowing as a process squarely
8 before the mind’s eye of the reader. It conjures up “the ineffable” by
9 means of the empty, unspecified “what” that challenges the reader’s
10 attention and directs it towards something which cannot be named
1 in advance or in the abstract. The story of what Maisie knew is the
2 story of Maisie’s problems and how she faced them—of the grow-
3 ing relationship between herself and her external realities; and the
4 closely related growth of her internal world of thoughts and feel-
5 ings: her knowledge.
6 What Maisie Knew was being conceived at the same historical
711 moment—at the approach of the twentieth century—as The Inter-
8 pretation of Dreams. Here Freud, in making his understanding of the
9 strange tragedy of Oedipus central to psychoanalysis, did name the
20 problem that must be faced on the road to knowledge. His reading
1 of Sophocles’ drama depended upon his most radical postulate: the
2
existence of a dynamic unconscious aspect of the mind. He argued
3
that the tragedy draws everyone deeply into its far-fetched plot
4
because
511
6 there must be a voice within us ready to recognise the compelling
7 force of destiny in the Oedipus . . . his destiny moves us only
8 because it might have been ours—because the oracle laid the same
9 curse upon us before our birth as upon him. [Freud, 1900a, p. 262]
311
1 With the new advantage of psychoanalytic knowledge, Freud
2 showed that we can become conscious of, and stand outside, our
3 identification with Oedipus. We can seek an answer to the principle
4 riddle of our lives, finding our guesses confirmed by stray facts and
5 memories of our histories that now make sense to us. This kind of
6 understanding deeply impressed Little Hans (Freud, 1909b), and
7 proves its usefulness every day in psychotherapy or in self-analy-
8 sis, the source from which Freud derived it. Dora, however, would
911 have none of it (Freud, 1905e).
“IT SEEMED TO HAVE TO DO WITH SOMETHING ELSE . . .” 123
111 Freud used the oedipal tragedy’s emotional effect on its audi-
2 ence to support his hypotheses; first, that we have deep feelings of
3 which we are unconscious, and second, that these feelings give us
4 a sense of recognition of the truth of psychoanalytic insight. This
5 kind of knowledge, which we draw from our unconscious
6 processes of mind, presents itself in feeling and not in words. Freud
711 evidently thought it carries its own conviction, and is to be trusted.
8 He was presumably referring to it when he later said that a man
9 who doubts his own love may, or indeed must, doubt every lesser
10 thing (Freud, 1909d).
1 With hindsight, it now seems that Freud was speaking of two
2 different kinds of knowing, and did not pause in his argument to
3 make an explicit distinction between them. Winter (1999) quotes the
4 historian of education Fritz Ringer, who noted that the German
5 academic tradition of Freud’s time distinguished between interpre-
6 tative understanding, verstehen, and another kind of understanding,
7 erleben, which is not under conscious control, and involves a reader
8 in reproducing within herself “the inner states which gave rise to
9 the text” (Winter, 1999, p. 45). Both are necessary, as is continual
211 interaction between them in order to understand experience,
1 whether of art or life. “If you (only) answer this riddle, you’ll never
2 begin.”
3 At the beginning of the next millennium, and after many years
4 of learning about phenomena that we know we will never predict
5 or measure, we now recognize, without alarm, that Freud’s view of
6 knowledge, both hermeneutic and deductive, is self-enclosed. It
7 addresses the problem of human thought, and does not reach
8 outside its own subject matter; our minds and their way of discov-
9 ering their unconscious knowledge through the telling of a story—
30 from erleben to verstehen.
1 In this chapter I will refer to a work of art that is contemporary
2 with the birth of psychoanalysis and created without access to
3 psychoanalytic thought, in order to support Freud’s contention that
4 the oedipal situation is the problem that must be faced on the road
5 to knowledge. This is the ineffable problem that James did not try
6 to articulate, but that he set himself to express and explore in his
7 novel. I also wish to suggest that present-day psychoanalytic theory
8 allows us to add significantly to the understanding of humanity
911 Freud gained from his particular guess at the Sphinx’s riddle. Since
111 he wrote, with the help of his discoveries, other thinkers have been
2 concentrating on what we take with us, inside ourselves, when we
3 go to meet the Sphinx. Henry James’ story of Maisie’s journey
4 towards knowing foreshadows, in my view, the post-Kleinian
5 model of the mind developed by Bion and his successors. Like
6 Sophocles’ play, James’ novel holds more meaning within it than its
7 creator was aware of, or could have been aware of at the time of its
8 writing.
9 In particular, James continually presents his characters with the
10 choice Wilfred Bion tells us people are constantly facing: the choice
1 between suffering and evading, knowing and not knowing about
2 our experience of life (Bion, 1967). Both Freud and Klein recognized
3 that human children confronted with the riddle of life have a
4 powerful wish to know the facts and find an answer (Freud, 1905d;
5 Klein, 1928). Both also described some of the ingenious ways we
6 find to ignore the facts and falsify the answer. Bion (1967) recog-
711 nized our lifelong struggle between the wish to know, and the wish
8 not to.
9 In this connection Freud noted some odd deductions made by
20 children from their observations aimed at finding out where babies
1 come from, but did not recognize the extent of defensive refusal to
2 know in early sexual theories. Chasseguet-Smirgel (1985), referring
3 to McDougall (1986) points out that Little Hans’ theory of his
4 mother’s widdler protected him from knowledge of the oedipal
511 situation as Klein defined it. He “defend(ed) himself against reality
6 by repudiating it . . .” as Klein observes in another context. She con-
7 tinues, speaking of development in general, “the criterion of all
8 later capacity for adaptation to reality, is the degree in which (chil-
9 dren) are able to tolerate the deprivations that result from the
311 Oedipus situation” (Klein, 1927a, p. 128).
1 Had Hans acknowledged his mother’s female genital, he would
2 have been confronted with the knowledge that his parents’ genitals
3 were complementary, and, hence, with the primal scene (Britton,
4 1998a). He suppressed the facts which would have brought the
5 painful truth home to him and, as a consequence, found himself
6 imprisoned in the house by a phobia, in an inner unknown state of
7 fear and guilt about his oedipal wishes. Knowing the truth about
8 his parents’ relationship and his exclusion from it was painful, and
911 involved giving up the phantasy of overcoming his father and
111 taking his place. But it allowed Hans to know himself as a child
2 conceived by a mother and father together, and from this stand-
3 point of reality to continue his exploration of both his inner and his
4 outer worlds.
5 Ronald Britton (1998a) has stated unequivocally what the end of
6 Hans’ story implies. It is only from the “third position” in the oedi-
711 pal triangle, which Hans was able to occupy at the end of his analy-
8 sis, that we are able to begin knowing. Gathering both kinds of
9 knowledge—objective knowledge of reality, which differs from
10 cherished phantasies, and also empathic knowledge of experience,
1 which requires a capacity to recognize the separateness of loved
2 and desired others—depends on the capacity to take the third posi-
3 tion. The process of development confronts everyone with the
4 difference between phantasy and reality, and with the separateness
5 of others. But there are tremendous differences between, for exam-
6 ple, the characters in What Maisie Knew in the degree to which they
7 can embrace this knowledge, make it part of themselves and build
8 on it. Many of them find it unbearable and unthinkable, and turn
9 away from it. The differences between James’ characters can be
211 better understood, in my view, by considering which of them is able
1 to take the third position.
2 Maisie is the one who has the capacity and makes the choice to
3 know “most” as James says. What does she learn and where does
4 it leave her? And where did she get her capacity to know, which
5 her parents seem to lack completely? I shall draw together Bion’s
6 empathic and empirical understanding with James’ intuitive and
7 expressive creation of sixty years earlier, to show how they “give a
8 sense of truth” by “combining different . . . views of the same
9 object” (Britton, 1998, p. 34). In this case, these are different views
30 of the process of knowing or not knowing one’s experience.
1 The reader of What Maisie Knew shares with Maisie her emer-
2 gence into consciousness. As far as I am aware, this is unique in
3 James’ fiction. He wrote about other children, and occasionally
4 looked back at the childhood of characters we read about as adults,
5 but only in Maisie’s case did he evoke the first awakening shock
6 when something longed for is missing. For Maisie, it is fat. Her
7 calves were too thin, as her father’s friends told her; they pinched
8 her legs “until she shrieked—her shriek was much admired—and
911 reproached them with being toothpicks” (James, 1966, p. 22).
111 We find Maisie with her nurse in Kensington Gardens, trying to

2 get to grips with this. James never specifies her age nor tells his
3 readers how much time is passing in the course of the story, but
4 here she sounds as if she is four or five. We have been told, in a dry
5 preamble, that her very tall, good-looking, fashionable parents have
6 just divorced with as much publicity as possible, each accusing the
7 other of being the worst, and battling over their child in a passion
8 of hatred that was actually the only passion of their lives. At first
9 the court inclined to her father, not so much because he was any
10 better than her mother, but because the disgrace of a woman was
1 more appalling. Then it became clear that Beale Farange, Maisie’s
2 father, had spent a considerable sum given to him earlier by his
3 wife for Maisie’s maintenance, on the understanding that he would
4 not take divorce proceedings. He could neither raise this money nor
5 “render the least account” of it, and his lawyers proposed a com-
6 promise that gave custody of the child to each parent in turn.
711 Maisie is at her father’s when we meet her, looked after by Moddle,
8 whose only demand was that Maisie not play too far, and who was
9 always on the bench when Maisie returned to it. Maisie has just left
20 behind the time when she had only that desire to meet. James gives
1 a minute account of her first collision with ineluctable reality which
2 corresponds exactly to the paradigm proposed by Bion in his paper
3 “A theory of thinking” (1962a).
4 Bion’s hypothesis is that the process of thinking comes into
511 being, given good enough conditions, in order to deal with
6 thoughts. Thoughts arise only from an absence of what is desired:
7 when the breast is present there need be no thought. A hungry baby
8 is filled with the thought that she is dying, and cries to rid herself
9 of unthinkable fear and horror.
311 Sometimes, in good conditions, a mother has an unconscious
1 capacity to register and recognize her hungry child’s experience,
2 and can think about it and name it. Consciously, the mother thinks
3 that the baby is hungry and prepares to feed it, while unconsciously
4 she accepts the ejected thoughts that her infant could not bear, and
5 uses her own thinking capacity (called alpha function by Bion) to
6 give them meaning. When this happens the baby is able to take
7 back into herself a meaningful experience (“the baby sounds really
8 upset”). When it fails to happen, because a parent either cannot
911 recognize or cannot tolerate the baby’s experience, instead of
111 missing an absent breast the baby feels assaulted by overwhelming

2 emptiness and meaninglessness: an abyss, a void, chaos.
3 In Bion’s view, when a meaningful emotional interchange
4 between the inner worlds of mother and infant accompanies physi-
5 cal feeding, it provides for the growth of a mind, just as milk
6 provides for the growth of a body. Following Klein’s (1952b) model,
711 Bion specified clearly the intrapsychic processes involved in the
8 interchange. A baby must project its passionate feelings, having as
9 yet no capacity to tolerate them, and when things are going well
10 the projections can be unconsciously known and accepted by the
1 parent. In the best case, the parent has sympathy with what the
2 infant is experiencing, and is also able to think that it isn’t the end
3 of the world, though the baby may feel it is. After a sojourn, as Bion
4 says, in the maternal unconscious, the infant can receive her feel-
5 ings back, with the sense that they have been thinkable to the
6 parent, though they were not so to herself. From many such uncon-
7 scious experiences by an infant of unconscious “maternal reverie”
8 grows an experience of mind, as a place where feelings become
9 meaningful through the mental capacity Bion called alpha function.
211 Precisely this happens between Moddle and Maisie. Maisie
1 looks anxiously at other children’s legs and asks Moddle if they,
2 too, are toothpicks? “Moddle was terribly truthful; she always said:
3 ‘Oh my dear, you’ll not find such another pair as your own.’ It
4 seemed to have to do with something else that Moddle often said:
5 ‘You feel the strain—that’s where it is; and you’ll feel it still worse,
6 you know’“ (James, 1966, p. 22).
7 Maisie delivers her painful bewilderment to her nurse’s mind,
8 and Moddle does not deny or palliate Maisie’s experience. She
9 accepts the truth of it, and goes on to give it meaning by linking it
30 with the events of Maisie’s life. Maisie feels the strain of her broken
1 home and warring parents and it shows in her legs, and as she
2 grows older and knows more of her difficulties, she will feel them
3 more acutely. Maisie takes in from Moddle a dim but real sense that
4 her toothpick legs can be accepted; and more, that their meaning
5 can be thought about. At this stage of her life, no one else connected
6 with her is able to know or think about her feelings at all. Henry
7 James provides Maisie, in her relationship with Moddle, with the
8 experience of maternal reverie, within which she can start to grow
911 her own mind.
111 He tells us that, during her time at the Kensington Gardens,

2 Maisie was unable to think about many of the experiences she had:
3
4 It was only after some time that she was able to attach . . . the mean-
5 ing for which these things had waited . . . she found in her mind a
6 collection of images and echoes to which meanings were attach-
7 able—images and echoes kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim
8 closet, the high drawers, like games she wasn’t yet big enough to
play. The great strain meanwhile was that of carrying by the right
9
end the things her father said about her mother—things mostly
10
indeed that Moddle, on a glimpse of them, as if they had been
1
complicated toys or difficult books, took out of her hands and put
2
away in the closet. [James, 1966, p. 23]
3
4
Moddle seems to have shown Maisie that there were things that a
5
child of her age could not and should not think about yet, and
6
Maisie, who experienced them, kept them in her mental closet.
711
When the time came for Maisie to go to her mother’s house,
8
9 The ingenious Moddle had . . . written on a paper in very big easy
20 words ever so many pleasures she would enjoy at the other house.
1 These promises ranged from “a mother’s fond love” to “a nice
2 poached egg for your tea” . . . so that it was a real support to Maisie,
3 at the supreme hour, to feel how . . . the paper was thrust away in
4 her pocket and there clenched in her fist. [James, 1966, p. 23]
511
6 The relationship between Moddle and Maisie has a profounder
7 meaning and even more resonance and beauty when it is seen in
8 the light of the “container–contained” relationship, one of Bion’s
9 most important contributions to psychoanalytic theory (Bion, 1967).
311 The container–contained relationship happens when one puts
1 unthinkable experience in the closet of a thinking mind, which
2 gives back the sense that somewhere the experience is thinkable: the
3 mind’s alpha-function has “attached” meaning to it. James also
4 used the metaphor of a container in his description of the mental
5 cupboard in which Moddle put the experiences that Maisie was
6 unable to make sense of. When the time came for them to separate,
7 Moddle created a symbolic container in the unknown “other
8 house” for Maisie to keep in her mind. She undertook that it would
911 offer holding and nourishment to the lonely and frightened child,
111 and, in the piece of paper, provided a physical token of her own
2 function of containment for Maisie to take with her. Maisie’s father,
3 however, gave her a message to take to her mother that must have
4 been a very great strain to carry by the right end: that her mother
5 was “a nasty horrid pig”.
6 It is quite difficult even for an adult reader, distant by more than
711 a century from this message, to think about it, but consideration
8 suggests that its form is more appalling than its content. Its langu-
9 age makes clear that instead of parents, Maisie had two infuriated
10 children of her own age who evidently had no closets to put their
1 fury in, and no one to help them create any. The two opposite expe-
2 riences, of containment and the absence of it, seem at this point in
3 the story to come to Maisie with equal intensity. Moddle happened
4 to be there when Maisie’s father gave Maisie his message, and was
5 shocked out of her accustomed position of social inferiority and
6 silence into saying directly: “You ought to be perfectly ashamed of
7 yourself!” Maisie remembered her “sudden disrespect and crimson
8 face” more vividly at the time than the words of Beale’s message,
9 although when her mother later asked her for them she was able
211 faithfully to repeat them. However, Maisie kept Moddle’s out-
1 rage on her behalf in her closet, and must have contributed to her
2 later revelation that “everything was bad because she had been
3 employed to make it so”.
4 By the time she went to the other house, Maisie had evidently
5 taken in and made part of herself Moddle’s belief in a container; a
6 place where thoughts (originally arising from the absence or loss
7 of something) could be kept, in the hope that thinking and linking
8 (“it seemed to have to do with something else . . .”) would give
9 experience a meaning. She had also participated many times in the
30 opposite process; the destruction of meaning through links being
1 broken. James presents a clear instance of this opposite process in
2 relation to Maisie’s legs, which had also given rise to her first expe-
3 rience of thinking. It is no accident that her father’s friends attacked
4 her in the place where she felt the strain—where her suffering was
5 manifest. Unable to bear her vulnerability, they pinched her calves
6 until she shrieked and admired her vocalizations as a diverting
7 performance.
8 James presents the creation and destruction of emotional
911 meaning close together in relation to the same legs, and again the
111 profundity of his vision is made more evident in relation to Bion’s

2 concepts of K and K (Bion, 1967). K signifies the desire for know-
3 ledge; knowledge which, Bion believed, must continually be created
4 in every mind, by linking feeling with thinking and the inner world
5 with the outer. In reading Maisie’s story, we discover some of
6 the rewards of this process of creating knowledge but, as Moddle
7 knew, it involves meeting painful truth and recalcitrant reality.
8 When this feels intolerable, the alternative is to destroy meaning
9 by destroying the links between inner emotional reality and outer
10 reality, as do the “gentlemen” who divert themselves by making
1 Maisie shriek. The consequences of much destruction of meaning
2 by K also become clear in the progress of James’ narrative.
3 Maisie’s revelation—”that everything was bad because she had
4 been employed to make it so”—came to her through her first
5 encounter with romance. Her new governess, Miss Overmore, “by
6 a mere roll of those fine eyes which Maisie already admired”
711 conveyed to Maisie that there was an alternative to an endless tit-
8 for-tat. This somehow caused a tremendous reverberation in the
9 container, the closet of memory instituted by Moddle;
20
1 It was literally a moral revolution and accomplished in the depths
of her nature. The stiff dolls on the dusky shelves began to move
2
their arms and legs; old forms and phases began to have a sense
3
that frightened her. She had a new feeling, a feeling of danger; on
4 which a new remedy rose to meet it, the idea of an inner self or, in
511 other words, of concealment. [James, 1966, p. 25]
6
7 Maisie’s admiration for Miss Overmore’s fine eyes seems to
8 have brought her to an encounter with the oedipal situation, and
9 this encounter breathed life into Maisie’s potential for thinking and
311 learning from experience. Her mother had told Maisie to tell her
1 father that he “lies and knows he lies”. Maisie, in the established
2 mode of family communication, had vivaciously asked Miss Over-
3 more, “Does he know he lies?” The governess conveyed to Maisie
4 an unspoken message; “how can I say Yes after your papa has been
5 so kind to me?” (James, 1966, p. 27). Just as Miss Overmore—
6 though employed by Maisie’s mother Ida Farange—declined to
7 insult Beale, Maisie saw she could stop taking her parents’
8 messages. “Her parted lips locked themselves with the determina-
911 tion to be employed no longer. She would . . . repeat nothing”.
111 Maisie’s revelation was of a couple with a relationship of kindness,

2 which she saw shining in contrast to the parental couple whose
3 retaliatory messages of hate she had been carrying. This vision led
4 to “a moral revolution . . . accomplished in the depths of her
5 nature”. How can it have done so?
6 Maisie was able to commit experience too difficult for her
711 to Moddle’s maternal reverie, whence it returned as thinkable.
8 Together, they created mental space for the storage of experience
9 too hard for the child to think about, and found ways to build “a
10 guard within” Maisie, to help her at times of crisis (Rilke, 1987).
1 They shared the belief that experience can be faced and considered;
2 in Bion’s terms, they had a container–contained relationship. The
3 “moral revolution” accomplished in the depths of Maisie’s nature
4 can be seen as the container–contained relationship coming to life
5 inside her inner world, where she conceives of herself as storing or
6 concealing harmful messages in her closet, so that they do no
7 further harm. By her silence, she determines to protect her vision of
8 a couple with a relationship of kindness. The vision even sustains
9 her through Ida dashing her from the top of the stairs almost to the
211 bottom because she will no longer be a go-between. It is illuminat-
1 ing to consider further the sources and implications of the revolu-
2 tion in Maisie’s internal world, in the light of psychoanalytic theory
3 in general, and in particular Bion’s theory of the development of
4 thinking.
5 There is a striking difference in Maisie’s position in relation to
6 the two couples in her life at this moment. She is now perhaps eight
7 or nine. She has been employed by the retaliatory couple as a
8 medium to link them together with insults and outrages, and up
9 until now there has been no reason to feel herself separate from
30 them and their relationship. They do not conceive of her as a sepa-
1 rate person, although they conceived her. She sees the “kind”
2 couple, however, in a relationship that excludes her; at this point,
3 they do not seem to need her to link them together. Maisie thus
4 finds herself in the third position.
5 There must be a crucial distinction, which James’ language here
6 helps to clarify, between the third position and the ignominious and
7 agonizing position of oedipal defeat. Evidently this defeat cannot
8 be bypassed by anyone, and perhaps experiencing it was what
911 made four-year-old Maisie’s feelings about her legs so poignant.
111 However, she does not remain confined in the oedipal triangle
2 where the only possibilities are defeat and triumph, which must
3 alternate, and where blindness, rather than seeing and knowing, is
4 chosen. In her moral revolution “she had a new feeling: a feeling of
5 danger” born of the realization that she was being used by her
6 parents to hurt each other. Then, “a new remedy rose to meet it, the
7 idea of an inner self”. It seems that Maisie was able to bear the
8 moment of frightening vision because in extremity she found her
9 “inner self” rose to meet her; she was not simply cast into the outer
10 darkness of the excluded (or exploited) third. Readers may be
1 reminded of Moddle’s paper of consolations, which Maisie had
2 thrust into her pocket and there clenched in her fist, giving her
3 something unseen, inside, to help her; a symbol of the “guard
4 within”.
5 Maisie’s mind-changing vision appeared in her inner world to
6 herself alone. Only after making clear with what a “prodigious
711 spirit” she interpreted and understood it does James show her
8 trying to fit it to the real relations of her visionary “kind” couple in
9 the outer world. There, things were more complicated, and an adult
20 reader can have an advantage over Maisie, who wonderingly
1 remembered Beale’s words to the “almost too pretty” young
2 governess; “I’ve only to look at you to see that you’re a person I can
3 appeal to for help to save my daughter”. Adult readers see Beale’s
4 predatory pounce out of the groves of Kensington Gardens, and
511 hear his words as wolfishly unctuous and false. His character for
6 his daughter, however, was still too difficult a book for her age, and
7 she kept it to read later. Reading James’ novel “later” in the light of
8 Bion’s theory of functions (Bion, 1962b), it is possible to compare
9 Maisie’s relations to her parental couple and to the new couple
311 formed by her father and her governess to see that her function was
1 essentially the same for both.
2 Bion’s model of the mind (1962, 1967) gives the need for meaning
3 equal weight as a dynamic mental force with the forces of love and
4 hate. He tried to avoid coining omniscient-sounding abstract nouns
5 to denote mental processes that are unconscious and fundamentally
6 mysterious to us, and instead used letters of the alphabet as signi-
7 fiers. One effect of this choice is to present with striking clarity his
8 view that each mental force can at any given time be working either
911 creatively (signified as +) or destructively (). Everyone, for
111 instance, is always engaged either in creating or in destroying mean-

2 ing, and the distastefully moralistic and hypocritical flavour of
3 Beale’s opening line convinces us immediately of his bad faith (K).
4 Beale’s statement also illustrates Bion’s theory that the dynamics
5 L, H, and K are always performing a relating function (Bion, 1967).
6 In one sentence, Beale stages a paranoid–schizoid alliance with
711 Miss Overmore, in which they appear idealized as “goodie” res-
8 cuers opposed to the wicked Ida. No thinking or understanding
9 will take place in this black and white drama. They need something
10 to bring them together, however, in the absence of L, H, or K, and
1 Beale instantaneously recruits Maisie to serve as a pretext. Readers
2 are already well aware of her function for Beale and Ida, of linking
3 them together in an addictive and destructive relationship that, I
4 think, gives us a suggestive glimpse of L (Bion, 1967). Now Maisie
5 is to be employed as a link again, and at first sight, it seems her
6 function for the new couple might be different and perhaps better.
7 Henry James dearly loved to contemplate the overdetermined
8 entanglements of human affairs, presumably valuing awareness of
9 the complexity of experience as Keats did in writing about “nega-
211 tive capability”, and as Bion did in writing about learning from
1 experience. Maisie’s linking function for the second couple emerges
2 from the detail of the narrative as both better, and no better (from
3 the point of view of her own welfare), than her function for the first.
4 As far as she can, Miss Overmore loves Maisie and appreciates
5 what she later called her “plain, dull charm of character”, her perse-
6 vering struggle to know her experience and to learn from it. As
7 Miss Overmore’s relationship with Maisie develops, it raises for the
8 reader the question of what it is for the adults in the story to be
9 parental, of what it is to know the child who does so much know-
30 ing. Maisie’s natural parents are quite incapable of knowing about
1 anyone else, trapped as they are in their narcissistic echo chambers.
2 But that by no means makes them insignificant for Maisie. James
3 makes knowing them and accepting them Maisie’s deepest and
4 hardest developmental task. Miss Overmore can occasionally know
5 and love Maisie, but she is not able to think about anything from
6 Maisie’s point of view, or give up any pursuit of her own for
7 Maisie’s benefit.
8 James makes clear that, when Miss Overmore appeared at
911 Beale’s house, though delighted to see her, she had not come
111 because of Maisie. A poor girl with beauty and high spirits, she had
2 come to take her chance with Beale, as an alternative to the social
3 extinction of being a governess. By the time that Beale unceremoni-
4 ously married her and she became “Mrs Beale”, the plot had also
5 thickened at the other house, and Ida had found Mrs Wix as a cheap
6 governess for Maisie. Mrs Wix had had little education, and with
7 her one dress, her thick glasses and her greasy button of hair,
8 seemed grotesquely unattractive. Beauty is both important and
9 skin-deep in Maisie’s story. Her parents, Mrs Beale, and Sir Claude
10 (who becomes Maisie’s stepfather) are all lovely to look at. Mrs Wix,
1 however, “touched the little girl in a spot that had never even yet
2 been reached. . . . What Maisie felt was that she had been, with
3 passion and anguish, a mother . . . this was something Miss
4 Overmore was not, something (strangely, confusingly) that mamma
5 was even less” (James, 1966, p. 30).
6 Mrs Wix’s passion and anguish partly relate to the death of her
711 own child but, as she will show, she is richly capable of feeling for
8 Maisie. Being a mother, for James, is evidently not simply a matter
9 of biological parenthood, but has to do with Bion’s K; with know-
20 ing empathically and containing the feelings of a child. Mrs Beale
1 later remarked that Mrs Wix was “as ignorant as a fish” of conven-
2 tional learning. However, Mrs Wix had not only “moral sense” but
3 could also think realistically about basic truths, like generational
4 difference, which were denied by Maisie’s other “parents”.
511 Ida next married Sir Claude, “ever so much younger” than
6 herself and with whom, as Maisie learned from Mrs Wix, she was
7 deeply in love. Soon Mrs Wix and Maisie were also in love with
8 the charming Sir Claude, “a family man” who loved Maisie and
9 presently arrived at Beale’s to see her and, inevitably, to be charmed
311 by Mrs Beale. Maisie, as she says, had now “brought together” a
1 third couple. Sir Claude is yet a brighter figure of romance for her
2 than Mrs Beale, and he is also able, in a big-brotherly style, to be a
3 parent to Maisie. Maisie knows this third couple are her dearest and
4 best hope, though she also knows that Mrs Wix is always there
5 intensely waiting.
6 In the course of the narrative, every encounter between Maisie
7 and her natural parents consists of the opposite of their knowing
8 her—of their trying either to drag something out of her or to push
911 something into her. When there is no psychic container, feelings
111 must be ejected; and other people are dragged in to fill up the
2 empty spaces. James makes it plain that Beale and Ida connected
3 themselves to others by means of projective identification (Klein,
4 1946), and he vividly shows us the consequences, as both come to
5 feel progressively more empty and impoverished. They experience
6 this concretely as material poverty. Beale is last seen as the paid
711 companion of a rich Countess, whose whiskery hideousness fright-
8 ens Maisie. Ida, in finally resigning as Maisie’s mother, struggles to
9 pay Maisie off with a ten-pound note and cannot quite bring herself
10 to do it.
1 Maisie accepts some of their projections. “Better to reign in Hell
2 than serve in Heaven” might have been their joint motto, and when
3 they cannot make others be what they want, they angrily spoil
4 every relationship, becoming more despairing and destructive as
5 the story goes on. This deterioration shows itself to Maisie in vari-
6 ous ways; for instance Ida’s make-up becomes ever thicker and
7 more dramatic as, presumably, she feels emotionally more unreal;
8 “her huge painted eyes . . . were like Japanese lanterns swung
9 under festal arches”. Both parents severally break their ties with
211 Maisie, putting it to her that they are being rejected and deserted by
1 their child. Maisie accepts this from them both, partly because she
2 knows them and what they would be bound to say, and partly
3 because there is an element of truth in it. She knows that Beale and
4 Ida cannot be parents to her, and she must cling to the third couple
5 she has linked together, the couple she loves best and with whom
6 she has most chance of relationship. This couple are betraying her
7 natural parents, but this cannot be any concern of Maisie’s. The
8 betrayal seems inevitable, however, in the context of a post-Kleinian
9 reading of James. As Beale and Ida are unable to occupy the third
30 position, they must recurrently move from oedipal triumph, via
1 betrayal, to oedipal defeat.
2 Unlike Beale and Ida, Sir Claude and Mrs Beale do not only use
3 Maisie to embody aspects of their inner worlds. However, Mrs
4 Beale is unable to keep Maisie in mind, and James poignantly
5 demonstrates this through Maisie’s shocking lack of routine educa-
6 tion. Miss Overmore began as her governess, but as soon as she
7 took up with Maisie’s papa, had no more time to teach her. Mrs Wix
8 tried, though handicapped by her own little learning, and with
911 constant lapses into romancing about Sir Claude and Henrietta
111 Matilda, her lost daughter, who had been run over by a hansom-
2 cab. For long stretches of time at her father’s, however, Maisie was
3 completely lonely and neglected, although she had somehow
4 managed to learn the piano and a little French. As part of a
5 projected regime for Maisie to attend lectures (that had the advan-
6 tage of being free) in “Glower Street”, Mrs Beale once came rushing
7 in late for a lecture that was, in any case, unintelligible.
8 Sir Claude had more capacity to think about and remember his
9 stepdaughter, though his tender name for her, “Maisie-boy”, shows
10 he did not think of her as a daughter, or, evidently, of himself as a
1 father. He erratically and impractically provided for Maisie and
2 Mrs Wix, whose meals at Ida’s had become scanty and unpre-
3 dictable “jam-suppers”, so that they were glad of his gift of an enor-
4 mous iced cake. Maisie’s families were now falling apart. Her step-
5 parents had an adulterous relationship, and her natural parents
6 were growing increasingly absent and scandalous. Finally there
711 was a crisis, and Maisie found herself fleeing to France with Sir
8 Claude and the Mrs Wix, who had been her only resource in Mrs
9 Beale’s absence.
20 In Boulogne, entrancing in its foreignness—its seascapes and
1 golden Virgin, coffee, and buttered rolls—Maisie came to make
2 another link in her mind equal in importance to her earlier moral
3 revolution. James articulates it simply. “What helped the child was
4 that she knew what she wanted. All her learning and learning had
511 made her at last learn that” (James, 1966, p. 244). The flight to
6 France had been the project of a fourth couple, Sir Claude and Mrs
7 Wix, also linked together by Maisie. Mrs Wix had inspired Sir
8 Claude to take Maisie (and herself as female attendant and gover-
9 ness) away from Beale and Ida, who had now effectively aban-
311 doned her, and to try to make a decent life for them all. Although
1 this would fulfil part of Mrs Wix’s fond dream, there is also a sacri-
2 fice for her to make, for she cannot have Sir Claude as partner, and
3 instead will be a motherly servant to him and Maisie. In the scene
4 at Boulogne, however, the cast of four, including Sir Claude and
5 Mrs Beale (who soon appears), Maisie and Mrs Wix, reveal and
6 discover vital aspects of their inner selves.
7 Mrs Beale has always known what she wants, and now it is a
8 “family” in the south of France, where living is cheap and she,
911 Maisie, and Sir Claude can be together in a way that will nominally
111 save appearances. If Mrs Wix will come too, so much the better; and
2 Mrs Beale potently “makes love” to her and tries to seduce her out
3 of her “moral sense”. A psychoanalytic reading gives a deeper
4 meaning than the conventional to this attribute of Mrs Wix’s. She
5 insists that an unmarried couple cannot be Maisie’s parents, but her
6 honesty and conviction seem to reach beyond this legal impedi-
711 ment, which the couple are sure they can remove in time.
8 Readers of the intense dénouement of the narrative share
9 Maisie’s feelings in a way that, so far, they have not. We have previ-
10 ously felt for her, as she was pinched and neglected, grabbed to
1 Ida’s bosom and squashed against her jewellery, or sent flying out
2 of it again with such force that she had to be caught by bystanders.
3 Now we feel with her, as she feels “at the bottom of a hole”. We feel
4 her “faintest purest coldest conviction” that her beloved Sir Claude,
5 the parent who loved her best, is lying to her, feel that “little by little
6 it gave her a settled terror”. Maisie knew all her fear and grief and
7 held it within herself, and as a result “she knew what she wanted”.
8 This form of words is important, as it indicates again the inter-
9 nal container–contained relationship. There are two “shes” in the
211 sentence, and though they are both Maisie, they are different
1 aspects of her. The one who knows is the guard within, aware of
2 what Maisie wanted as an emotional being and human child, and
3 prepared to stand up for her right to it. This assertion on Maisie’s
4 part is not entirely new in the narrative. Before their flight, Maisie
5 and Sir Claude had accidentally encountered Ida and her current
6 lover (in the park again). Ida had sent Maisie to walk with the
7 Captain (her new lover), while she and her husband confronted
8 each other. The Captain had completely espoused Ida’s cause, and
9 told Maisie emotionally, “your mother’s an angel. . . . Look here,
30 she’s true!”. Maisie was deeply touched by this invocation of ideal-
1 ized womanhood, and sobbing “oh mother, mother”, urged the
2 Captain to say he loved Ida, and asked him not to stop loving her.
3 By the time Ida came to take her leave of her daughter, the
4 Captain had become to her “the biggest cad in London”. Maisie had
5 accepted Ida’s story that she was a noble, shattered victim of cir-
6 cumstances, who now must “try South Africa” or expire. However,
7 she protested against and resisted Ida’s attack on the ideal couple,
8 in which she had momentarily been enshrined. Knowing the differ-
911 ence between good and bad begins in splitting and idealization
111 and draws from unconscious origins the inspiration to find truth
2 and beauty in “real life”—as Maisie does, with grief and pain, at the
3 end of her story.
4 What Maisie found she wanted was that she and Sir Claude
5 should fly together. If he would sacrifice Mrs Beale, she would
6 sacrifice Mrs Wix. Sir Claude almost shared her exhilarating,
7 momentary hope that they could escape together to Paris, but he
8 hesitated and they missed the train. With her back to him to protect
9 him from her feelings, Maisie swallowed her tears of disappoint-
10 ment, clasping the volumes of the bibliothèque rose he had bought
1 her. When she turned back to him, her terror had gone with her
2 tears. She was beginning to know that they could not be a
3 father–daughter couple, as Sir Claude would not leave Mrs Beale.
4 Maisie was faced with a grown-up rival who had risked her repu-
5 tation for Sir Claude; a partner of his own generation who offered
6 a sexual relationship.
711 There certainly was a way for Maisie to join this couple, and
8 both Sir Claude and Mrs Beale told her directly that she was essen-
9 tial to it. “You’ve done us the most tremendous good, and you’ll do
20 it still and always, don’t you see? We can’t let you go—you’re
1 everything” (James, 1966, p. 229). Maisie could have her old job
2 back and continue her linking function for her parental couple, and
3 with it, the split experience of powerlessness and omnipotence
4 which had characterized her strange childhood.
511 Maisie’s moment in the third position, however—knowing that
6 she wants the man she loves and is too young to have him—seems
7 to have done for her what it had done for Little Hans at an earlier
8 age. She knows she is still a child. Mrs Wix’s “moral sense” that she
9 should not have parents living in sin seems superficial compared to
311 the sense they perhaps shared, that she should not always and
1 forever be “doing the most tremendous good” to her parental
2 couple. She should be having lessons and reading the “Malheurs de
3 Sophie”, and Mrs Wix, in her own more obvious way, refuses to be
4 a party to the sacrifice of Maisie’s childhood.
5 It seems that at this dénouement Sir Claude began to under-
6 stand what Maisie knew. “I haven’t known what to call it . . . but
7 . . . it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever met—it’s . . . sacred”
8 (James, 1966, p. 242). Maisie, in order to be the child she was, must
911 tear herself away from the beloved but delusive adults that she had
111 hoped would be her family. As Sir Claude sees, Maisie can be
2 herself—a child—but they are unable to be their age: parental
3 adults. Maisie’s revelation could, prosaically, be called being in
4 touch with reality, or learning from experience, but Sir Claude’s
5 allusion to the beautiful and the sacred reminds us that the creative
6 life of the mind starts with acknowledging reality. Moddle had
711 tenderly acknowledged Maisie’s legs; “Oh my dear, you’ll not find
8 such another pair as your own”. Sir Claude now lovingly acknow-
9 ledged that he lacked Maisie’s power to know what was good for
10 her. He could only do what Mrs Beale wanted.
1 Bion’s K is not quantifiable. “Memory should not be called
2 knowledge”, as Keats wrote (Gittings, 1987, p. 66). K is the linking
3 function whereby the mind ingests experience and is nourished by
4 it. K starves or poisons the mind by denying or distorting reality,
5 such as the truth of generational difference. Maisie knew that she
6 must not poison her precious, “sacred” faculty of knowing by
7 returning to a pseudo-family, where she took responsibility for the
8 adults instead of their taking it for her.
9 The novel ends at this moral and emotional height, but it is
211 characteristic of James that he does not lose touch with the vital
1 question of what Maisie and Mrs Wix were going to live on.
2 Readers have long known that “the child was provided for, thanks
3 to a crafty godmother . . . who had left her something in such a
4 manner that the parents could appropriate only the income”
5 (James, 1966, p. 20). Maisie’s thanks are also due to her stepfather,
6 the one parent who has at last come to know her, and to a variety
7 of unidealized mothers—Ida, without whom she would not have
8 been born; Moddle, without whom she would have known noth-
9 ing; her crafty godmother; Miss Overmore with her fine eyes; and
30 Mrs Wix, who is able to be true to her principles. At the last, Maisie
1 is neither omnipotent nor helpless, but realistically dependent.
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111 CHAPTER SEVEN

2
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711 The painful truth
8
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10 Monica Lanman
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M
211 y theme in this chapter is the developmental challenge
1 we all face in relinquishing a primary phantasy of
2 omnipotent and exclusive possession of the other, in
3 favour of tolerating diverse and sometimes, conflicting relation-
4 ships “beyond the pair”. I have sought to illustrate the inevitable
5 pain involved in this process, and some of the ways we try to avoid
6 it. The paper approaches this subject from several different angles,
7 which I hope will prove convergent. I start from Freud’s “Parricide”
8 paper (1928b) and briefly touch on his literary examples. I refer to
9 a contemporary children’s story and then, using more recent
30 psychoanalytic thinking about Oedipus, I discuss some examples of
1 how this challenge can affect adult couple relationships.
2 The metaphor that psychoanalysis derives from Sophocles’
3 Oedipus Rex is used to describe a set of dilemmas that are key to the
4 construction of our internal world. It refers to our earliest experi-
5 ence of a threesome, with a primary carer and the rivals for her
6 attention. Themes of rivalry and jealousy, and of the longing for
7 exclusivity, in tension with the longing for individual freedom from
8 the constraints imposed by others, are the drivers for very many of
911 our stories, plays, contemporary films, and television dramas about
141
111 relationships. Threesomes are pervasive and cause trouble. As

2 Freud puts it in his paper on Dostoevsky (1928b), “It can scarcely
3 be owing to chance that three of the masterpieces of the literature
4 of all time—the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and
5 Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov should all deal with the same
6 subject, parricide. In all three, moreover, the motive for the deed,
7 sexual rivalry for a woman, is laid bare” (ibid., p. 188).
8 Each of these tales derives its disturbing power partly from the
9 fact that the father is actually murdered, but also from the
10 anguished sense of complicity on the part of those who either did
1 the deed in less than full awareness of what they were doing (Oedi-
2 pus), or were not directly responsible for the murder in question
3 (Hamlet, and three of the four Karamazov brothers). This latter was
4 also the case for Dostoevsky himself, whose own violent father was
5 murdered by a stranger. Freud discusses evidence for Dostoevsky’s
6 unconscious sense of guilt for the crime he didn’t actually commit:
711 his epilepsy (which Freud suggests was hysterical), his novels
8 about criminals, and his acceptance of what was, in reality, unjust
9 banishment to Siberia by the Tsar, among other aspects. Freud also
20 touches on some of the manifestations of pain and guilt related to
1 oedipal phantasies, whether conscious or unconscious, enacted or
2 not, in the three works of literature that he refers to.
3 In recent years, Steiner has significantly extended our awareness
4 of the evasion of truth in the Oedipus story. He discusses Sophocles’
511 Oedipus plays in terms of a movement from denial to omnipotence
6 in the face of unbearable truth:
7 When he is forced to face reality and can maintain the cover-up no
8 longer, Oedipus does so with great courage. It is not easy for him,
9 and we see him vacillating and struggling with his ambivalence,
311 but this only makes his final achievement the more impressive.
1 I will argue that this movement towards truth is tragically reversed
2 in Oedipus at Colon . . . I believe that this reversal actually begins in
3 the first play at the point when Oedipus blinds himself . . . (at) the
4 climax of Oedipus the King . . . it seems to me that Sophocles recog-
nizes that the truth, when it is fully revealed, is too terrible to be
5
endured and that through his self-mutilation Oedipus is already in
6
retreat from it. [Steiner, 1993, p. 122]
7
8 Let us consider the effect of guilt about their father’s murder on
911 the three Karamazov brothers and the illegitimate fourth. The
THE PAINFUL TRUTH 143
111 actual murderer—the illegitimate, epileptic Smerdyakov—kills

2 himself. Ivan develops “delirium tremens”. Mitya manages to make
3 a tenuous relationship with a woman, despite his imprisonment for
4 the murder. Finally Alyosha, who seems the least caught up in
5 hatred of the father, remains single but manages to be the kindest
6 to others, including to a band of boys in need of guidance.
711 Interestingly, he bears the name of Dostoevsky’s own son, who died
8 of epilepsy in his third year. It is as if he is to represent the possi-
9 bility of innocence or redemption. In fact, I think Alyosha reaches
10 something of a depressive resolution of the oedipal issue, which he
1 works through in his relationship with his substitute father, the
2 Elder Zossima. He idealizes this substitute father, and then goes
3 through a crisis of anxiety when he dies. A much greater crisis for
4 Alyosha follows over the discovery that, after death, Zossima is not
5 immune from putrefaction as a true saint should be. This is a huge
6 test of Alyosha’s capacity to cope with a degree of disillusionment
7 in relation to this “father”, and he is nearly overwhelmed with rage
8 and self-loathing at this point. He throws himself at a prostitute, the
9 same one who is already involved with his father and his brother,
211 and who is eager to prove that she can seduce even him into
1 the rivalrous entanglement. But somehow he and she discover a
2 redeeming, loving recognition of each other in the midst of this
3 storm of destructiveness, and Alyosha goes on to provide some sort
4 of calm, moral centre, in the midst of the subsequent horror.
5 For Hamlet, the two fathers he does eventually kill are his poten-
6 tial father-in-law and his stepfather, not his own natural father.
7 However, long before these deaths occur, his moroseness at his
8 mother’s hasty re-marriage after his father’s death, and his anguish
9 at the news of his father’s murder, are extreme, and suffused with
30 guilt. He contemplates suicide and, significantly for our purpose
1 here, he destroys Ophelia for offering him a loving partnership of
2 his own; “Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of
3 sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of
4 such things that it were better my mother had not borne me”. Some
5 of the best-known lines in English literature derive from this oedipal
6 melancholy of his “To be or not to be . . .” or:
7
8 It goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
911 earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy,
111 the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical
2 roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me
3 but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of
4 work is man . . .
5
6 In the end, of course, Hamlet dies in the process of killing the
7 man who murdered his father and married his mother, the man in
8 whom he surely unconsciously recognizes his own guilt. The audi-
9 ence is offered no relief from this finale of destruction, apart from
10 Horatio’s loving valediction,
1
Now, cracks a noble heart. Goodnight, sweet prince,
2
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
3
[Hamlet, 5.ii.]
4
5
In his Dostoevsky paper, Freud was concerned with the possi-
6
bility of the “dissolution” of the oedipus complex in boys through
711
relinquishment of rivalry. He saw the creation of the superego as
8
9 driven by guilt about parricidal phantasies, derived from the wish
20 to become like, and indeed to replace, the father. He also discusses
1 the alternative “feminine position” for boys of masochistic sub-
2 mission to the father, both positions entailing fear of castration.
3 Since then, psychoanalytic thinking has widened and deepened our
4 understanding of oedipal issues to include more complex and shift-
511 ing identifications and longings shared by both sexes, and more
6 primitive anxieties about intrusion, abandonment, and annihil-
7 ation, in what has become known as the “early oedipal situation”
8 (Klein, 1945). In The Oedipus Complex Today (Steiner, 1989), the
9 different contributors each emphasize the connection between
311 working through the oedipus complex, the toleration of ambiv-
1 alence in working through the depressive position, and the capa-
2 city for tolerating connections between different mental elements
3 (thinking). Britton and Feldman (1989) both point out that the casu-
4 alty, if this development goes wrong, may not only be the relation-
5 ship between persons, but the psychic capacity to make emotional
6 connections and allow ideas to interact with each other in the
7 process of thinking.
8 Oedipal issues in this sense suffuse and underpin all our relat-
911 ing, both in phantasy and in external reality. I was struck recently
111 by a contemporary children’s story, fast acquiring an adult follow-

2 ing, which incorporates some of this from a child’s perspective. In
3 Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights, one of his strikingly creative ideas
4 is the “alethiometer” or “truth measure”. This device requires its
5 reader to make its hands point to three symbols, and then “hold in
6 their mind” the many different levels of meaning each symbol has
711 “without fretting at it or pushing for an answer”. A free pointer
8 then travels round the dial until it settles somewhere and its
9 “reader” senses the answer. Not everyone can do it, but the child
10 heroine of the story finds that she usually can. She describes the
1 search for meaning involved in “reading” the instrument:
2
3 “And how do you know where these meanings are?”
4 “I kind of see ’em. Or feel ’em rather, like climbing down a ladder
5 at night, you put your foot down and there’s another rung. Well, I
6 put my mind down and there’s another meaning, and I kind of
7 sense what it is. Then I put ’em all together. There’s a trick in it, like
8 focusing your eyes.”
9
211 There is one terrible occasion, however, when what the instrument
1 is trying to tell her is unbearable, and she backs away in incompre-
2 hension.
3
“Yes, I see what it says. . . . [that both her parents want something
4
she’s got] . . . for this experiment, whatever it is.” She stopped there,
5 to take a deep breath. Something was troubling her, and she didn’t
6 know what it was. She was sure that this something that was so impor-
7 tant was the alethiometer itself, because after all, [her mother] had
8 wanted it, and what else could it be? And yet it wasn’t, because the
9 alethiometer had a different way of referring to itself, and this was-
30 n’t it. “I suppose it’s the alethiometer,” she said unhappily. “It’s what
1 I thought all along. I’ve got to take it to [her father] before she gets it.
2 If she gets it, we’ll all die” . . . she felt so tired, so bone-deep weary
3 and sad that to die would have been a relief. [Pullman, 1995, p. 360].
4
(And later, as the crisis unfolded):
5
6 Now Lyra’s head was full of a roar, as if she were trying to stifle
7 some knowledge from her own consciousness. . . . and then she
8 suddenly collapsed, and a fierce cry of despair enveloped her. . . .
911 She had just realized what she had done. [ibid., p. 380]
111 She had allowed herself to be a pawn in the perverse destruc-

2 tive purpose of her father by bringing her childhood love, Roger, to
3 her father for him to sacrifice. Here it is as if the Oedipus myth is
4 reversed, and it is the father demanding possession of the daugh-
5 ter. We might imagine that this represents both a child’s way of
6 construing the inter-generational transgression, partly as a result of
7 projection, but it also draws on the all-too-frequent reality of
8 parental misuse and exploitation of their power for the perverse
9 enactment of their own unresolved oedipal conflicts.
10 Northern Lights can be read at many levels; children’s adventure
1 story, science fiction, allegory about the evils of organized religion
2 and other institutions of power—but arguably one of the sources of
3 its strength is the feeling that it is earthed in a psychologically truth-
4 ful account of a child growing up. In the story, the child Lyra is by
5 herself, with some supporters here and there, but essentially alone
6 in taking on her remote, neglectful father (originally going to rescue
711 him), and her seductive witch of a mother. The separated parents
8 turn out to be involved sexually with each other, and also in paral-
9 lel ways in activities that lead to the evil destruction of children’s
20 spirits. Gradually things get more complicated, and we are led far
1 beyond the simple world of child heroes and monstrous parents of
2 some children’s stories (for example Roald Dahl’s Matilda) into
3 Lyra’s struggle with betrayal, disillusion, denial, and ambivalence,
4 in herself as well as in others. Although the obvious configuration
511 in the book is one of parents’ attack on children, which might be
6 seen at least in part as the child’s own projected attack on the
7 parents, nevertheless we also see Lyra’s growing awareness of her
8 complicity, and some of the complex reasons for it.
9 In an essay on the book, Margaret and Michael Rustin (2003) com-
311 ment in detail on many of its themes from the point of view of child
1 development. They compare the reading of the alethiometer to “the
2 discipline necessary in psychoanalytic dream interpretation”, and to
3 “reading itself”. I think it bears comparison beyond this to the pro-
4 cess of thinking itself, dependent as that is on a capacity for triangu-
5 lation, developed through the painful negotiation of oedipal issues.
6 As Britton so succinctly puts it:
7
8 The closure of the oedipal triangle by the recognition of the link
911 joining the parents provides a limiting boundary for the internal
111 world. It creates what I call a “triangular space”—i.e. a space

2 bounded by the three persons of the oedipal situation and all their
3 potential relationships. It includes, therefore, the possibility of
4 being a participant in a relationship and observed by a third person
as well as being an observer of a relationship between two people.
5
[Britton, 1989, p. 86]
6
711
Or, as Feldman (1989, p. 127) states; “I have also tried to show the
8
link between the way in which the oedipal situation is construed
9
internally and the patient’s capacity to think, as any real under-
10
standing is dependent on the identification with a couple capable
1
of a creative intercourse”. Feldman, too, is referring to the situation
2
in which the subject is able to tolerate the idea of a parental inter-
3
course from which s/he is excluded; a world in which shifting iden-
4
tifications are possible, because the individual is able to step outside
5
the boundary of the original all-encompassing pair to acknowledge
6
a wider reality. This is only possible if the loss of the exclusivity of
7 the original mother–infant pair is tolerable, rather than being expe-
8 rienced as catastrophic (Bion, 1959; Klein, 1928).
9 Pullman’s alethiometer is a metaphor for bringing together the
211 different things one knows and allowing them to lead to a new
1 thought, a synthesis, and a better grasp of the truth. Often, of
2 course, one is inhibited in this process because it requires relin-
3 quishment of familiar (safer) constructions in favour of pictures that
4 disturb, and may be threatening or painful. The psychic work
5 required to deal with the oedipal situation provides a prototype for
6 this movement. Indeed, its status in psychoanalysis is as more than
7 a prototype, more than a metaphor, but actually as the key devel-
8 opmental experience, suffused with unavoidable pain and grief.
9 Lyra’s anguish when she has to face an aspect of the truth about her
30 relationship to her father, as above, has a universal resonance.
1 Fisher (1993) discusses the influence of contemporary thinking
2 about the oedipus complex on couple psychotherapy. He examines
3 the development of Freud’s ideas, from the primacy of the castra-
4 tion complex to the centrality of ambivalence in the resolution of
5 the oedipus complex for both sexes, and the:
6
7 painfully tragic erotic attachment that reaches across a chasm, a
8 chasm created by the inexorable difference between the generations,
911 by the reality of the difference between the experience of being the
111 parent and the experience of being the child. In this sense, questions
2 about the universality of the oedipal conflict are misconstrued.
3 Nothing could be more universal than the difference between the
4 generations. Mother’s own sexual feelings are aroused in what she
must finally acknowledge as an impossible link. Of course, it is not
5
literally impossible, as Oedipus and Jocasta knew. But to cross that
6
line is to pervert, not to erase, the reality of the difference between
7
the generations. The core of the oedipal, and we should hasten to
8 add, of the Jocastan tragedy is that feelings do cross that divide. In
9 addition, they lead to a dilemma from which there is no painless
10 escape, except by self-crippling illusions or an attack on the psychic
1 apparatus itself and its capabilities. [Fisher, 1993, p. 150]
2
3 Fisher asks “how does one come to tolerate the intolerable?”
4 (ibid., p. 151). His answer, echoing Britton’s, is through the early
5 experience of adequate maternal containment of infantile anxie-
6 ties. He discusses this in relation to Bion’s ideas, and to those of
711 Winnicott, who contrasts the “good-enough” mother with the
8 mother who engenders a false-self relationship with her baby.
9 “Good enough” includes the capacity to tolerate hate between
20 herself and her baby. In other words, what is needed, if develop-
1 ment is to be facilitated, if we are to become able to face the truth,
2 is some combination of innate capacity and adequately containing
3 early experience. The latter requires a “parent” who can themselves
4 bear to know painful truths about differentiation and separateness,
511 and who can mediate them for the infant by providing what
6 Winnicott called manageable “doses”. Subsequent relationships,
7 psychotherapy or analysis may eventually compensate in some
8 degree for the lack of a sufficiency of these early experiences.
9 The idea around which I have built this chapter is that an
311 inevitably painful transition from an illusion of duality to negotiat-
1 ing the reality of a world beyond the pair is fundamental to human
2 development re-encountered repeatedly. Defences against our
3 knowledge of this, with its implications of rivalry, potential exclu-
4 sion, and pain, and its echoes of our early oedipal experience,
5 pervade our lives and colour our attempts to participate in a new
6 pairing as adults. As I indicated earlier, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, trau-
7 matized by the enactment of his phantasies by those around him,
8 could not manage this transition to a same-generational relation-
911 ship but was driven to destroy it, and Ophelia with it.
111 So what happens when we focus our attention on adult couples,

2 and their relationship as the embodiment of their individual oedipal
3 experiences? There are several dimensions to consider. First, it is a
4 central tenet of psychoanalytic work with couples that two individ-
5 uals who make up a semi-permanent coupling tend to have done so
6 at least partly because they share an unconscious internal configura-
711 tion. Arguably, this is based on similar or complementary oedipal
8 derivatives. In consultations with couples we discover repeatedly
9 that the partners’ significant emotional histories contain striking
10 parallels or “matching” experiences, as for John and Sally in the
1 example below. A recent study (Lanman, Grier, & Evans, 2003)
2 showed that psychoanalytic couple therapists independently agree
3 on key modes of unconscious functioning shared between the part-
4 ners in a couple, using a measure based on the Kleinian spectrum of
5 paranoid–schizoid to depressive psychological constellations.
6 Two partners tend to re-enact unresolved aspects of these inter-
7 nal object relations in their relationship with each other and (when
8 in therapy), in their separate or joint relationship with their thera-
9 pist/s. They also tend to enact them in relation to any children they
211 have. Where this is problematic, we may find the partners using the
1 children as weapons against each other, or being over-involved, or
2 hating and neglecting them.
3 It is curious mathematics, but in psychological terms, the capa-
4 city to be part of a developmental and creative couple relationship
5 in adulthood involves tolerance of threesomes. It involves a capa-
6 city to tolerate difference, otherness, and three-dimensionality in
7 the sense that each partner has an independent relationship to other
8 things; whether people, work, interests, ideas, or history. Each part-
9 ner may have an individual therapist, previous partners or spouses,
30 and, with them, children. The present partnership offers the chance
1 of reworking and rebalancing the original tensions between the
2 bliss (and terror) of the all-encompassing dyad, and the stimulus
3 (and fear) of exploring what lies outside it. For many couples, this
4 balance continues to be very hard to find, even before the arrival of
5 their own children. Attempted exclusion may be directed at poten-
6 tial or actual children, or at other relationships that either partner
7 has with work or friends. Alternative cosy dualities may be set up
8 with a child, or through having an affair, in an attempt to exclude
911 the partner from a new pairing.
111 Adult coupling can all too easily become a collusive “us against
2 the world”, or, on the other hand, a perpetual polarization, or even
3 fight, in the face of these pressures. A more developmental partner-
4 ship needs to be built on the ability sufficiently to separate from
5 our dyadic origin (psychologically speaking), to tolerate being
6 excluded, and to discover the rewards of diversifying. Only then
7 will there be room in the relationship for two people to genuinely
8 co-exist, and consequently for children to be appropriately valued
9 and cared for, with a flexibility that tolerates shifting patterns of
10 inclusion and exclusion.
1 In psychoanalytic couple psychotherapy, it is both the patient–
2 therapist relationship and the actualization of the internal couple
3 relationship between a real-life adult couple that are studied. The
4 structure of the therapy brings both therapist and patients up
5 against an actual three-cornered reality in the consulting room,
6 or even a four-cornered one, since we sometimes work in pairs.
711 While this generates a challenging amount of data, it does pro-
8 vide an opportunity to study the movement in the “drama” from
9 several different perspectives. Something like Lyra’s alethiometer
20 is needed, where the different protagonists, the different levels of
1 meaning, and the different locations (internal or external) can be
2 held in mind until some pattern is perceived. The pattern will be
3 rooted in some version of the developmental challenge, the conflict
4 between safety and increasing exposure to difference and change.
511 Often the unconscious resistance to change is huge, and the process
6 of change, if it is possible at all, may involve negotiating a degree
7 of breakdown on the way.
8 These issues tend to spill out beyond the consulting room, and
9 are reflected in different aspects of our engagement with adult
311 couples. The contemporary oedipal lens is helpful in understanding
1 the core dilemma as it is expressed both within psychotherapy
2 sessions and in the wider context of the work. I will draw my
3 clinical illustrations1 from three points on this spectrum; one the
4 inter-agency negotiations over a “case”, one arising within super-
5 vision of a couple psychotherapy, and one directly from therapeu-
6 tic encounters with couples. All of these situations involve the
7 movement between pairing and relating beyond the pair that is so
8 fundamental to a lively and creative engagement with the world. So
911 often this movement feels like a wrenching of oneself away from
111 something safer, and putting that at risk in pursuit of something

2 more truthful but much harder to bear.
3 The inter-agency example involved a couple who referred them-
4 selves for couple therapy at the suggestion of their daughter’s
5 psychiatrist. The grown-up daughter was struggling to deal with
6 memories of “inappropriate touching” by her father in her child-
711 hood, and was refusing contact with her parents. It appeared that
8 the parents were being asked to jump through certain hoops in
9 order to qualify to meet her. Although there was no actual contract
10 between the daughter’s doctor and the parents’ therapist, after the
1 parents’ therapy had finished the daughter’s psychiatrist wanted
2 information about “reform” in their attitudes to the daughter.
3 She first tried to do this by suggesting to the parents that they
4 ask their therapist for a report. I was brought in by their therapist
5 at this stage, as clinical manager, to provide an independent, “insti-
6 tutional” view, because he felt like refusing to respond at all to this
7 intrusive request, coming as it did through his patients but on
8 behalf of someone else. However, he was concerned that there
9 might be repercussions for our Institute if he simply refused.
211 Initially, I too felt incensed, feeling tempted to support an out-
1 right refusal. However, I also felt torn between the conflicting
2 needs. How could I support my colleague in protecting the couple’s
3 privacy without jeopardizing their chances of getting to meet their
4 daughter? There were three sets of pairs, perhaps four, for whom
5 relating beyond the pair seemed to be required, but was being expe-
6 rienced as a threat. There was the daughter and her psychiatrist,
7 who were in a sense demanding reassurance about the threat felt to
8 be posed to the daughter’s development by the parents. This one
9 did not pull at me so much, perhaps because they were in another
30 agency and the daughter was, after all, an adult now. In addition, it
1 was not her treatment that was threatened with intrusion. It seemed
2 that the nature of the pairing between the daughter and her psychi-
3 atrist involved an enactment of a wish to reverse the original child’s
4 vulnerability by intruding on the parents’ space: getting into their
5 bedroom, as it were. It was as if the “child’s” vulnerability was
6 being prolonged in a frozen way, within a dyadic retreat, while
7 the parents were to be intruded on instead. At the same time the
8 idea of questioning the parents’ therapist suggested a phantasy that
911 the original missing protection for the child could be provided by
111 therapists interacting on behalf of the family, sparing the daughter

2 the need to ask the questions through direct interaction with her
3 own parents.
4 Undeniably, I felt more identified with the patients of my own
5 institution, wishing to protect and stand up for their “pairing” with
6 their therapist. At the same time I feared that their parent–child
7 relating with their daughter might be sabotaged if we were
8 provocative (or, from another point of view, too protective) in our
9 response. Finally (the fourth pairing), there was my relationship
10 with my colleague, my respect for his work, and my reluctance to
1 take issue with him.
2 This I felt I had to do, however. I was the one supposed to
3 balance all these conflicting needs, uncomfortable though it felt to
4 put the link with a different agency above my link with my
5 colleague. I thought that the way through must lie in a kind of sort-
6 ing out of the “generations”. Although some might find this an
711 alien metaphor, I felt that in these circumstances the next step
8 would be for the therapists to deal with each other, just as parents
9 need at times to talk to each other to resolve their differences, rather
20 than using their children (or in this case any of the patients) as go-
1 betweens. Rather than prolong a process of messages being passed
2 by the couple, therefore, I invited the daughter’s psychiatrist to
3 contact us direct so that we could discuss her request and explain
4 our position. She responded by sending us a detailed list of ques-
511 tions. This provided the opportunity for the professionals to sort
6 something out between them, although it still felt to us like a
7 request for inappropriate and intrusive interference with the
8 parents’ therapy. But at least the parents were less likely to be
9 blamed for whatever we did. I knew I might be leading the daugh-
311 ter’s psychiatrist on to expect answers to her questions, and so, if I
1 didn’t deliver what she wanted, I might still be failing to make
2 anything better. This was what my colleague predicted. In fact,
3 when I wrote explaining our position as best I could, I received a
4 reply that acknowledged our different approaches, and seemed to
5 accept the limits we felt we had to put on our communication.
6 I suggest that what we see here is a particularly vivid example
7 of something about which many of us in the “helping professions”
8 can feel in conflict and become confused. Political correctness, free-
911 dom of information, and confidentiality can all seem to collide in
111 apparently arbitrary ways. Counsellors in some settings feel they

2 should never discuss their clients with referring GPs; patients
3 sometimes argue that professionals involved with them can only
4 communicate with each other provided the patient sees all corre-
5 spondence; legal rights of access to records mean that professionals
6 restrict what they put into “official” records. Among all of this, I
711 believe that unresolved oedipal anxieties can have a powerful influ-
8 ence. Hard thinking is necessary to work out which communica-
9 tions belong “between the parents” (or professionals), when it is
10 appropriate and important to protect a dyadic communication
1 between parent and child (or therapist and patient), and when it
2 may be necessary to break into this for some overriding reason. This
3 thinking should not be simply a matter of rules and procedures, but
4 must take into account the underlying anxieties and phantasies.
5 None of us can avoid being pushed and pulled by the temptations
6 to intrude, to exclude, or to retain privileged access for ourselves.
7 But we need to recognize these things, and do what we can to
8 process them, rather than imagining that imposed rules can substi-
9 tute for awareness, or can prevent us from succumbing unawares
211 and acting out. As Feldman writes, in relation to fathers:
1
2 There is thus no way the father can behave that will not stimulate
3 the child’s aggressive and/or sexual phantasies. What the child
4 needs of him is some awareness of these impulses, with a suffi-
5 ciently firm base within himself (part of which involves experienc-
6 ing himself as a member of a mature couple), so that the child’s
7 impulses and phantasies (and his own) have neither to be denied
8 nor acted out. [Feldman, 1989, pp. 105–106]
9
30 In the case I have sketched here, my role pushed me to act as
1 “outsider”; as a kind of “grand-parent”, managing a boundary
2 between the two professionals, one of whom wished for inappro-
3 priate access to the other, while the other, in reaction, wished to
4 refuse any contact. Having written this last phrase, it strikes me
5 again how precisely the interaction between the professionals
6 reflected the relationship between the parents and the child in the
7 patient family, as these played out over time (the father was said to
8 have gained inappropriate access to the daughter and the daughter
911 was now refusing contact with her parents). However, the point I
111 want to emphasize is that the process of resolving such situations is

2 never easy or free of conflicting pressures.
3 My second illustration is located in the process of supervision of
4 couple psychotherapy. Again, this is one specific location from which
5 the issues can, I think, be generalized to a wide variety of super-
6 visory situations, including supervison of individual therapy and
7 even self-supervision. The “supervisor” represents the view from
8 outside, the third point in the triangle. So, when supervising couple
9 psychotherapy I often find myself drawing attention to the role of the
10 partner who is not being focused on, or to the avoided topic or affect;
1 in other words to that which is being experienced as lying outside
2 the current pairing. From the perspective of psychoanalytic couple
3 therapy, it is important to consider this “excluded” aspect, which
4 may be located in one partner more than the other, as part of the
5 interlinked couple functioning, carrying meaning for both partners.
6 The example I have in mind involved the presentation in super-
711 vision of a couple where one partner’s difficulties were more visi-
8 ble than the other’s, a not unusual situation. The therapist often
9 found himself caught up in work focused on the wife, whose
20 extreme touchiness over her husband’s provocations led to frequent
1 rows. The wife demanded that the husband should avoid challeng-
2 ing her in particular areas where he knew she reacted badly, and the
3 husband resented the expectation that he should take such care to
4 look after her. She did indeed seem particularly vulnerable, and this
511 was linked to particularly difficult childhood experiences to do
6 with rowing parents and a somewhat “suffocating” mother. In fact,
7 the husband had proposed in a previous session that it would be
8 better if his wife did some work with the therapist without him
9 present at all, and perhaps he should withdraw for a while. The
311 therapist realized that this suggestion fitted in rather too comfort-
1 ably with, and highlighted his own concentration on, the wife. For
2 me as the supervisor it was tempting to join my supervisee in his
3 view, and I felt quite uncomfortable to have to offer an alternative
4 that made him feel he had missed taking a “couple view”.
5 However, as an outsider I was able to notice that, in the session we
6 were considering, there was a parallel version of the “wife’s prob-
7 lem” in the husband’s material. He, like the wife, had designated a
8 “no-go” area in himself, when he asserted that under no circum-
911 stances was he prepared to discuss his attitude to money.
111 We began to wonder if the therapist had been complying with

2 an implicit injunction to avoid focusing on the husband’s version of
3 the difficulties. In fact, the problems were much more shared than
4 either partner could easily acknowledge. It was as if the idea that
5 both partners in the couple might feel deprived and in need of
6 special consideration and care was unbearable to both. They had
711 developed a split view; in which both were complicit, and into
8 which they tried to hijack the therapist. In this view they enacted a
9 picture of one needy one, and one who was supposed to care for
10 them (the therapist being asked to replace the husband), rather than
1 the couple’s having to grapple with competing feelings of need,
2 which would require more flexibility and shifting identifications if
3 some needs were to be taken care of for each. They tried to cling to
4 the dyad to ward off the triangle.
5 Related ideas about supervision as a triangular relationship are
6 explored in depth by Mattinson (1975) and by Hughes and Pengelly
7 (1997). They emphasize the essential point that one cannot avoid
8 being caught up in these enactments, indeed that is a necessary part
9 of the process of reaching understanding. At any one time, either
211 supervisor or supervisee is likely to be more involved with one
1 aspect than another. It is the potential for movement that matters,
2 as opposed to clinging to an idealized “deadly equal” triangle
3 where everything must be even-handed all the time.
4 The task of holding the peacefulness of agreement together with
5 the often uncomfortable, but developmentally important other
6 point of view, without simply shifting to an alternative seemingly
7 cosy duality, is often vividly highlighted in work with couples. One
8 couple I saw were childless at the point when they sought help,
9 seemingly struggling to maintain a particular kind of defence
30 against separateness in an attempt to ward off the feared dangers
1 of being two different people, each with their own relationship to
2 the world outside. They had developed a relationship of the kind
3 Fisher describes as a “false self couple”, in which the husband,
4 Alex, required that the wife, Sarah, should comply with his views
5 on all aspects of behaviour. She should not wear such flamboyant
6 clothes, she should not argue so assertively in company. She should
7 share his tastes. She, an intelligent, attractive, young woman, was
8 doing her best to fit in, convinced that she could make the relation-
911 ship work if only she tried harder, and was frightened by his every
111 frown. Both of them felt completely victimized by this unbearable

2 situation, and yet unable to leave it. As Fisher succinctly puts it,
3 “the failure to master these (oedipal) anxieties is experienced as a
4 desperate lack of a sense of psychological or emotional space—
5 space to think, to be different and separate, space in which to enter
6 or leave a relationship” (Fisher, 1993, p. 145).
7 Sarah was Italian, and naturally expressive. Her mother seemed
8 always to have lived in the shadow of her father, having had a
9 breakdown in the process. When she met Alex, she was unconven-
10 tional and colourful, perhaps in an extreme, and defensively “indi-
1 vidual” way. She was drawn to his apparent solidity and strength,
2 and seemed to have set about submitting herself to him as her
3 mother had done to her father.
4 Alex, on the other hand, was British, and had endured a trau-
5 matic separation from his mother when he was sent to live with a
6 restrictive aunt and uncle, aged six, because his parents went
711 abroad. He had a sense of a lost golden age, and felt he had spent
8 the rest of his childhood trying to fit in with tough paternal expec-
9 tations when he did visit his parents. His mother had seemed grief-
20 stricken and helpless about him ever since. Alex was drawn to
1 Sarah’s freedom and exuberance, but then found himself trying to
2 suppress it in just the way his own had been cut off. He, like her,
3 seemed to be enacting a phantasy of a parental couple relationship
4 where the woman submitted to the man, despite great cost to both.
511 Genuine separateness and individuation seemed highly threaten-
6 ing to each of these two, and their joint solution was to attempt to
7 obliterate it.
8 As the picture unfolded, I felt myself to be witnessing some-
9 thing awful. It seemed extraordinary that Alex had brought Sarah
311 to therapy to get her to behave better. Then I realized that Sarah had
1 the same aim in mind. The fact that serious psychological abuse
2 was going on, with an abuser and a complicit victim, seemed pain-
3 ful truth enough. However, this situation protected both of them
4 from something worse, namely the threat of separation. It felt to
5 them as though the acknowledgement of difference between them
6 could only leave each of them in an intolerably lonely place, and
7 would lead inevitably to actual separation. It seemed to me as if
8 what threatened was a repetition of the premature wrenching away
911 of an infant who was not yet viable from a mother who had not
111 been able to provide a sufficiently solid experience of dyadic secu-

2 rity to enable her infant to face the world beyond her. The response,
3 enacted in this marriage, had been to turn to an omnipotent phan-
4 tasy that there need not be any looking beyond.
5 Alex felt terribly misunderstood, claiming that he wanted noth-
6 ing more than that Sarah should stand up against his pressure, “in
711 a loving way”. Sarah felt that this was an impossible task, but she
8 could sense Alex’s vulnerability, and wanted to make him feel
9 loved. Each of them longed for unconditional love, which for the
10 two of them meant two diametrically opposite things. If Sarah
1 loved Alex she would want to do the “little things” he liked. If Alex
2 loved Sarah he would appreciate her ways more and not try to
3 change them. Their joint solution seemed to have been to sacrifice
4 one for the sake of the other, but without success because neither
5 was happy. Psychic separation was being confused with abandon-
6 ment. Unsurprisingly, therefore, actual separation also seemed
7 unthinkable to both of them, and the ultimate proof of failure and
8 of being unloved.
9 As the therapy proceeded, Sarah was able to explore some of her
211 anxieties about the possible breakdown of the relationship, and
1 found she could begin to distinguish the dilemma facing her in the
2 marriage from others she had lumped together with it in her mind.
3 She clearly felt that to stand up to Alex would inevitably lead to
4 leaving him, or being left by him. On top of that, she assumed that
5 she would necessarily have to leave London, her job, her friends,
6 and even the country if she left Alex. She came to feel that she did
7 have some room to make choices about these things, and could
8 think more flexibly than she had allowed herself to do. She vividly
9 described her expectation that marriage would open things up, and
30 how instead she felt it had narrowed things down for her. Alex, on
1 the other hand, found it harder to think flexibly. He seemed caught
2 in a more rigid version of the shared phantasy, which might mean
3 that change, if it came, would be more catastrophic for him.
4 Alex and Sarah were in trouble as a couple without children, but
5 frequently it is the arrival of children that triggers the breakdown
6 of a precarious balance. Neither partner can maintain even the illu-
7 sion of having the other’s undivided attention. Alternative calls on
8 each of them are unlikely to be symmetrical, and fluctuating
911 inequalities threaten the previous security. Each has to become the
111 parent who in their own early life may have been hated, despised,
2 feared, or who may never have adequately engaged with them.
3 They find themselves in bed with the representative of the other
4 parent, who may have been over-seductive, or experienced as
5 unbearably rejecting.
6 For John and Sally, their relationship appeared to have provided
7 a refuge from the painfulness of their early experiences, until chil-
8 dren arrived. In the early days of the marriage the relationship
9 worked, albeit with Sally being more of the “responsible adult” and
10 John playing more of the adolescent. They had fun together, and
1 each could feel put first by the other. However, trouble came with
2 the arrival of their first child. John felt terribly displaced and
3 rejected, not only by Sally, but also by the baby while Sally was
4 feeding her. He felt could not give his daughter anything. Sally felt
5 she had to become increasingly competent, juggling work and baby.
6 Their relationship deteriorated, and this was when they sought
711 help.
8 Sally was the eldest child in her original family, the children
9 being born at short intervals after each other, with an often absent
20 father. Sally dealt with the painful fact of her father’s rejection, and
1 having to share her mother with the other babies, by identifying
2 with her mother, to the extent that she became a fellow-carer for
3 the others. Characteristically she looks on the bright side, tries to
4 be positive, proactive, and efficient, and her siblings still lean on
511 her. In the couple therapy, she tended to appear competent and
6 cheerful, although in a way that could have a relentless quality,
7 suggesting its defensiveness.
8 Sessions were often dominated by “the problem of John’s
9 moods”. I could easily be drawn into attending more to John, with
311 Sally’s help, because John was the more obviously troubled. Only
1 as this structure was repeatedly interpreted (which required me to
2 notice it in a different way) did Sally become aware of the way she
3 edited out and projected her own distress and rage about being
4 ignored or taken for granted again, as if she had no needs of her
5 own. In the course of the therapy, she became more aware of, and
6 able to be articulate about, how upset and angry she was when this
7 happened.
8 John was also the oldest in his family. His younger sister was
911 quite ill as a baby, and continues to this day to be fussed over and
111 put first. John coped by fitting in, being the good one, and not
2 daring to protest lest things got worse. From when John was eight
3 until he was around eleven, the family had to cope with the
4 mother’s absences due to recurrent bouts of hospitalization for
5 depression. It seems that, in his family, feelings about this were
6 never discussed. This was not unlike what happened in Sally’s
711 family, although she had dealt with it differently. As an adult, John
8 (unlike Sally) did palpably get into bad moods and feel terrible, but
9 tended to have no idea why this had happened, or what his feelings
10 were about. Usually, he could not allow anyone to explore them
1 with him. This seemed at times despairing, and at other times more
2 as if there was an active refusal to allow contact, a perpetuation
3 of the bad experience of being excluded, while at the same time
4 provoking an excluded feeling in whoever was trying to help. This
5 could be understood as being part evacuation, part communication,
6 depending on the capacity of the other to process the experience
7 of how very vulnerable to rejection (by his mother, by his wife-
8 become-mother, and then by me as I stepped back to consider
9 Sally’s side of things) he felt.
211 This couple’s shared early experience was of not being suffi-
1 ciently understood or thought about, and each in their different
2 ways defended against knowingly feeling the pain of this exclusion.
3 The original exclusions for these two were multiple. There was the
4 child’s exclusion from the procreative parental relationship, and, on
5 top of that, rejection by each parent in favour of work or illness or
6 other children. Sibling rivalries, as they so often do, carried a part
7 of the underlying oedipal rivalries. Over the months of couple ther-
8 apy, the couple became more able to see and think about how they
9 provoked each other, the different forms in which each enacted, or
30 hid, or got rid of anger and distress, and why. Eventually they
1 decided to embark on having a second child. Very tellingly, they
2 initially presented this in terms of “then we’ll have one each so no one
3 will be left out”.
4 In the course of the pregnancy, John increased the tension by
5 giving up his job, declaring that he could no longer stand the
6 stresses of his managerial post. He decided to take time to write, as
7 he had long wanted to. So he was at home, but not available, and
8 taking over the dining room with his papers, giving rise to nagging
911 from Sally who would come home from her part-time job to find
111 nothing helpful to the household had been done. There seemed
2 something regressive about this, as if John was reasserting his need
3 to be looked after, and to be more in the home, although doing it in
4 a way that made it a bad experience for him. Neither partner felt
5 looked after. At the same time, John decided the family should
6 move house. This seemed to embody an attempt to make room for
7 the baby, and to acquire enough room to establish a semi-child-free
8 area for the couple. However, he became more and more gloomy, as
9 though trying to extend further beyond the safe pair while at the
10 same time protecting it was all too much for him. He had difficulty
1 joining Sally in any excited anticipation of the baby. Sally, mean-
2 time, despite the anxiety all this stirred up in her, continued to cling
3 to her determination to cope. Both seemed to be making increas-
4 ingly painful efforts to manage having their “safe haven” re-
5 invaded, just when they had begun to re-establish it after the first
6 child’s arrival.
711 Then the boy baby arrived and John seemed to come apart. The
8 baby, by crying all the time and always being in their new adult
9 sitting room or bedroom, had robbed him of the newfound space to
20 be with Sally alone. He hated Sally for having done this to him. He
1 overemphasized his link with his daughter by comparison with
2 both son and wife. Sally was in despair, but continued to manage
3 more or less single-handedly with both children. The baby was
4 brought to the sessions at this time. For me, it was acutely painful
511 to witness this little creature, held on his mother’s knee, having his
6 father glare at him and say how much he hated him. I felt as if I
7 could glimpse Laius wanting to expose baby Oedipus on the moun-
8 tainside.
9 Which pairing was the most in jeopardy at this point: the
311 mother–baby link, the husband–wife link, or the therapist–patient
1 link in relation to John (and of course the one to Sally also)? Each
2 seemed so completely threatened by the others. Somehow, I had to
3 hold together in my mind the intensely powerful and appealing call
4 of the baby’s extreme vulnerability, and the needs of the nursing
5 mother–baby pair, with the plight of the father, also my patient. I
6 had previously experienced the way that John would state things in
7 extreme terms, perhaps partly to provoke from me the condemna-
8 tion and rejection he unconsciously felt towards himself. In addi-
911 tion, at this point his recurring ambivalence towards the therapy
111 itself crystallized into hostility once more. He thought it was a

2 waste of time or worse, because everything was worse, and that the
3 therapy was responsible. I was the parent bound to fail each of
4 them again. I felt under great pressure to join the couple in their
5 sense that our (and their) staying together in this situation was
6 unbearable, even dangerous. John missed a few sessions, and Sally
711 clung to coming to the therapy and to the chance of a pairing with
8 me. She was being, in a sense, the good girl, and projecting into
9 John the messy, destructive rage and near breakdown induced by
10 the situation. She also clung to feeding the baby day and night on
1 demand, finding it a temporary refuge from her despair over being
2 abandoned by her partner. This meant that, to get any sleep at all,
3 John slept in a separate room, increasing the sense of mutual aban-
4 donment. The different pairings were experienced as mutually
5 exclusive, and so the oedipal configuration was reinforced.
6 The difficulties had been more obviously enacted by John up to
7 that point. However, when the time came for Sally to wean her son,
8 she in turn became quite depressed, confirming the lack of a viable
9 “triangular” psychic space internally, within which movement from
211 one pairing to the other felt possible. Instead, it felt catastrophic.
1 Moreover, because John’s internal world matched hers in this res-
2 pect, he felt unable to intervene effectively, but instead felt angrily
3 powerless.
4 For both partners in this relationship, the oedipal configuration
5 contained several elements. They shared an early experience of
6 mothers who seemed to have turned away prematurely from a
7 primary preoccupation with them in favour of one or more siblings.
8 They also shared an experience of abandonment by the parent of
9 the opposite sex. Therefore, for each of them, the necessary support
30 for negotiating the development from dyad to creative triangle was
1 significantly depleted. Excessively painful truths had been prema-
2 turely forced on them. They created a kind of refuge from all this in
3 their relationship and even imagined that having “one child each”
4 could reinforce the refuge. However, when that illusion came under
5 pressure from reality, the old hatreds resurfaced and had to be
6 wrestled with all over again.
7 What determines the extent to which this painful knowledge
8 can be assimilated, metabolized, grown through? This chapter is
911 not about the process or outcome of therapies, but of course the
111 answer lies partly in the nature of the therapeutic engagement the
2 couple enters, and whether they can stick with it for long enough.
3 Some couples feel unable to engage. Some withdraw, either alto-
4 gether, or perhaps one or other into individual therapy, sometimes
5 dissolving their relationship in the process. Some find themselves
6 able to become very committed to the therapeutic work over
7 considerable periods of time. Change sometimes means one or
8 other having something of a breakdown in the process of acquiring
9 a new way of understanding things. It seems likely that these
10 outcomes depend at least partly on the original containment or lack
1 of it that each experienced as an infant, which determined their
2 capacity to negotiate oedipal experiences, and eventually to bear
3 the pain involved in psychic growth and development. The painful-
4 ness of this developmental process means that we all of us, in a part
5 of ourselves, are repeatedly tempted to turn away from it.
6
711
8 Note
9
20 1. I should say at this point that I have disguised my examples, both
1 through the alteration of certain facts and identifying details, and
2 through compositing more than one case within each example. There
3 is no completely satisfactory way of dealing with these issues, but I
4 have tried to preserve the integrity of the experiences I describe while
511 safeguarding the privacy of those involved.
6
7
8
9
311
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
911
111 CHAPTER EIGHT

2
3
4
5
6
711 The oedipus complex as observed in
8
9
work with couples and their children
10
1
2
Lisa Miller
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
W
211 orking with children and their families offers an unpar-
1 alleled opportunity to observe the oedipus complex in
2 action. Whereas work with adults always involves look-
3 ing back to childhood development, combined with direct experi-
4 ence in the transference and deductions from past and current
5 behaviour, work with children gives a taste of the thing in itself in
6 a different way. The child’s struggle with the oedipal configuration
7 of emotions depends, for its success, on how substantially its
8 parents have navigated the same journey. Infant observation shows
9 how early the process begins, and observing young children shows
30 how it goes on. However, clinical practice is interesting in so far as
1 we can take a view of difficulties that are actually preventing
2 emotional growth and causing something disturbed and aberrant to
3 develop instead.
4
5
6 Sarah
7
8 The first case, which impressed itself on my mind as demonstrating
911 this, took place years ago and I have briefly alluded to it elsewhere.
163
111 A couple came to see me under the auspices of the Tavistock Under
2 Five’s Counselling service. This was, and still is, a service offering
3 brief work—up to five sessions—to parents or a parent anxious
4 about their baby or small child. Mr and Mrs S, a young married
5 couple, brought their daughter Sarah to me. Mrs S had made the
6 appointment by telephone, and the intake secretary had noted that
7 the caller was agitated and upset, and could hardly restrain herself
8 from revealing all the details on the telephone. The secretary
9 relayed the salient fact that she had been told the parents had quar-
10 relled violently over the child’s problem. Sarah was fifteen months
1 old and the central trouble, which the parents identified when they
2 arrived, was that Sarah completely refused to be weaned. To begin
3 with, I thought that reluctance to wean at this age sounded a minor
4 trouble, but I changed my mind when I heard that Sarah had almost
5 never been separated from her mother, day or night. I had ample
6 chance to see this little girl’s intolerance of separation and loss. Not
711 only did she cling to her mother, but she wanted the breast every
8 ten minutes or so. Sarah was too anxious to play and was
9 completely silent.
20 Her parents, especially her mother, were notably anxious; the
1 story they told was revealing. Mr S was clearly someone who
2 wanted to be understanding, and said he had expected his wife to
3 be entirely taken up with the baby for a while; but now, he said with
4 a touch of infuriated pride, “I’d like my wife back!” They described
511 how Mrs S and Sarah had found it heard to establish breast-feeding,
6 but how they had been greatly helped by a Breast Feeding League.
7 This group was still most important in Mrs S’s life. The prevailing
8 orthodoxy was the maxim “wait till the baby is ready to wean
9 itself”. However, that day seemed unlikely to arrive at the current
311 rate. With a certain relish, of which she was perhaps unaware, Mrs
1 S detailed the advice she had been given to help move Sarah out
2 of their bed and promote the weaning process, as well as how hope-
3 less it all was. Indeed, I felt hopeless myself, as one after another
4 grandmothers, aunts, neighbours, health visitor, and GP were set
5 up and shot down. All of them had (in my view) been offering
6 excellent advice.
7 What had brought them here at this time? It seemed that Mr S
8 was finally jibbing. The quarrel alluded to in the original telephone
911 call had been the result of his irritation. The quarrel had got out of
THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX IN WORK WITH COUPLES AND THEIR CHILDREN 165
111 hand rather quickly; they “never normally disagreed” but had
2 come to blows, and Mrs S, especially, was shaken to the depths. She
3 explained to me how much she had wanted Mr S to be a “hands-
4 on father” because her own father had combined being away a lot
5 with being heavy-handed in reproach and discipline. She wanted
6 something quite different and felt that, until now, she had found it.
711 For almost three sessions, spaced out at intervals of two or three
8 weeks, I looked set to join the parade of useless advisers. The only
9 difference, I hope, was that I was not giving advice. I was, however,
10 treated as though I were, and sensible ideas (put Sarah in a cot)
1 were pronounced yet again to have been tried and found wanting.
2 Then, towards the end of the third session, Mr S snapped. He unex-
3 pectedly lost his temper with me and plainly outlined his opinion
4 of me, which was low. Inwardly, I felt he had a point. How was it
5 that I lacked any technical equipment, any psychoanalytic appara-
6 tus, to deal with this situation, where a toddler was getting away
7 with murder, and (judging from her unhappy bearing) suffering
8 the consequences? Mrs S seemed surprised and somewhat ener-
9 gized by her husband’s vigorous outburst, and found herself sub-
211 stantially agreeing with him. To my astonishment, they returned
1 three weeks later for the next planned meeting with an account of
2 progress. Sarah was in her room, in her bed at night, and breast-
3 feeding had diminished to an unremarkable level. In this and the
4 final session I saw emerge a small girl who began to take a lively
5 interest in the toys I provided and, more striking still, began to talk.
6
7
Discussion
8
9 From the point of view of her oedipal development, what did we
30 see happen? The picture first presented was of a mother and baby
1 glued together so that it was impossible to insert anything between
2 them. It was hardly even a one-to-one relationship when it was at
3 its extreme; the two of them were one. A state of mind dominated
4 that saw the idea of separation as cruel. This had, I think, been
5 manifest all Sarah’s life. Mr and Mrs S had also been operating as
6 one. Sarah had two mothers rather than a mother and father; her
7 actual mother, and a second one, who deferred to the first, imitated
8 her, felt she was sure to be right, and echoed her narcissistically. At
911 the same time, something potentially destructive was going on. The
111 more I heard about the Breast Feeding League the more convinced
2 I was that for Mrs S it had become, at an unconscious level, a
3 League Against Fathers. Unconsciously, both Mr and Mrs S
4 subscribed to the theory that it was a brutal act for someone to step
5 in and point out that time was passing, that Sarah needed to be up
6 on her own two feet, and must be helped to do it.
7 In short, they had been holding out against the paternal function,
8 against the idea that there was two of anything. For even in the earli-
9 est stages of a baby’s development there needs to be the growing
10 intimation that there is a division between mother and infant, that
1 something comes to part them. At first, we see this in the baby’s
2 need to apprehend small comings and goings, in order to develop
3 the concept of a mind of its own, a place where thoughts, memories,
4 and a sense of self can live. We see babies in the first year of life relat-
5 ing one-to-one with father, mother, or childminder and we think of
6 them as part of a dyad. This is not incorrect, but in order to concep-
711 tualize two, there has to be a notion of three in the background: first
8 one person, then a gap between them, then the second person. The
9 development of the concept of the gap is closely linked to the baby’s
20 growing awareness that, when she is absent, the mother exists else-
1 where and indeed with somebody else. Here, we have the oedipal
2 configuration, which all three members of the S family resisted.
3 They were resisting the idea of being three. The hurdle they
4 were falling at is the classical hurdle of the depressive position, so
511 closely linked to oedipal growth. Mrs S did not want a husband like
6 her notion of her father. However, she had recreated the world she
7 knew; an unacknowledged presence, like her absent father, ruled
8 her actions and kept her under its thumb. Mrs S projected this
9 tyrant into Sarah. It was Sarah’s anger that, without realizing it,
311 both parents feared and dreaded as a fresh version of the primi-
1 tive superego that Mrs S’s thunderous father had embodied. Both
2 parents subscribed to the phantasy that unconsciously told them
3 the heavens would open if anyone said “no” to Sarah. To begin
4 with, the needs of a tiny infant are imperative, but within weeks,
5 the urgency lessens. Mr and Mrs S had, no doubt, also gained satis-
6 faction from projecting their own infantile omnipotence into Sarah
7 and seeing it gratified, thus seeing early need prolonged beyond
8 its life-span. This gratification involved them in another layer of
911 phantasy: the attack on the good, potent father. Instead of fresh
111 ideas entering and becoming real in action, every single useful
2 notion was nipped in the bud. Castration abounded.
3 I sensed this in the “anti-father” quality of Mrs S’s version of her
4 breast-feeding group. For her, at an unconscious level, it signified
5 having joined up with a gang of harpies devoted to denying the
6 paternal principle, and keeping forever at bay the idea of the
711 combined object. Mrs S allowed only similarities, only narcissistic
8 unions of a rather primitive sort, within reach of her mind, and she
9 had found a partner who, for a time, would comply and connive.
10 However, it did not last forever. The corner had, of course, been
1 turned before I ever saw them. Mr S had finally felt driven to
2 protest, and a mixture of fuels presumably fired his exasperation.
3 On the one hand, he was right. It was not good for Sarah and not
4 good for them to be behaving in this way. On the other hand, he
5 had gone along with what Mrs S so feared, and yielded to the
6 impulse to bully, thus failing to contain the implicit sadism. Mrs S
7 was terrified. However, in their encounter with me some measure
8 of containment must have taken place, perhaps at just the right
9 time. Mr S burst forth with his attack on me—attack no doubt full
211 of reproach towards the feeble good father of their combined,
1 unconscious phantasy. It is plain that they both felt let down.
2 Repeatedly, people had tried to insert the reality principle into their
3 family life. The outward form was that of sensible advice, yet the
4 inner meaning was more than that. What other people, and I, tried
5 to say was developmentally vital. The message was the essential
6 oedipal one: you are not two, you are three. That is to say, the inter-
7 nal family consists of a combined object—a couple—in relation to
8 their creation, a child. The parents are, of necessity, older than the
9 child. The child is, by definition, a dependent being. The grown-ups
30 are responsible for looking after the infant not only physically, but
1 also psychically.
2 This involves them in adult action. The step into the depressive
3 position is taken by their accepting responsibility for the child’s
4 anger and distress, out of concern and a realistic estimate of the
5 child’s stage of emotional development. It involves seeing the truth,
6 seeing things as they are. In this case, the truth of the matter was
7 that two otherwise resourceful and ordinary people were being
8 ruled by the whim of a baby. It seems, by their later account, that
911 after the outburst in my room, the parents had been able to connect
111 with each other like two reasonably thoughtful adults working
2 together in the interest of the child. They described how they had
3 discussed implementing again some of the measures suggested
4 before, and finding to their relief that, this time round, they started
5 gradually to work. The parents had discovered independence. Just
6 as the infant, at the first encounter with depressive anxiety, emerges
7 with appetite for the benefits of a separate existence, the couple saw
8 again something they both must have tangled with in infancy. This
9 was to face the difficulty of experiencing one’s own feelings and
10 thus to be granted a greater conviction of one’s own capacities.
1 Mr and Mrs S were able to see that they both felt cross with
2 Sarah. This went with a measure of daring to provoke Sarah’s rage.
3 In the event, Sarah’s rage was a paper tiger. Sarah, it seems, was
4 rather glad to be relieved of her burden of projections and complied
5 with her parents’ requests once they had made up their combined
6 mind. I was interested to see that weaning indeed promotes devel-
711 opment, as Melanie Klein points out. Sarah had been freed from the
8 prohibition enjoined upon her by a narcissistic organization. This
9 organization had threatened that any move towards her separate
20 existence would bring catastrophe, and of course, this is a phenom-
1 enon that we see in a far more established and recalcitrant form in
2 the clinical population of older children. The pleasure that Sarah
3 now took in living her own life was evident. Independence for the
4 parental couple, space to lead their own lives, had led to indepen-
511 dence for her, which she demonstrated in her eager play. The rapid
6 development of her speech followed the unconscious acknow-
7 ledgement of her separateness. This is not a mere separateness from
8 her mother, but involves the unconscious idea that her parents can
9 get together without her and conceive good ideas. Talking always
311 involves some acceptance of separateness. Whereas much, and
1 much that is powerful, can be conveyed wordlessly, only words will
2 do for some things. In addition, verbal communication assumes a
3 gap between the speakers, a gap to be bridged with words. Thus,
4 any communication has oedipal implications.
5
6
The sibling relationship
7
8 The progress of the S family was mildly impeded as they went
911 on their way towards establishing a family. However, both Mr and
111 Mrs S had an unconscious concept of the integral family, an

2 organization that exists to promote the creation, nourishment, and
3 protection of children, either literal or metaphorical. In work with
4 disturbed children and their families we see all kinds of interference
5 with the establishment of external families, which stems from a
6 disturbance (sometimes gross) in unconscious life and the negotia-
711 tion of the oedipal conflict. What does the negotiation of the conflict
8 entail? We are accustomed to thinking that it entails our relation-
9 ship with our parents, external and internal. These people, the
10 king and queen of our childhood lives, must be central to the ques-
1 tion occupying all children—”who made me?” Not quite so much
2 attention has been paid, though, to the equally important deriva-
3 tive question, “Whom else did they make?” And yet our lives in
4 childhood and as grown-ups depend for their success on our rela-
5 tionship with our peers—classmates, colleagues, friends, acquain-
6 tances—in short, our siblings. In work with couples, it is noticeable
7 that the typical features of a sibling relationship also come into play
8 in the couple; not only one’s identifications with internal mother
9 and father, but also those with brother and sister are crucial.
211
1
2 Harry
3
4 Naturally, these particular identifications tend to be lit up at the
5 birth of a second child, when sibling rivalry enters the scene in a
6 literal way. The first time I noticed this was with a young couple
7 who brought their three-year-old son, Harry, and their six-week-old
8 daughter, Jane, saying that Harry’s jealousy was unmanageable and
9 that the family was in uproar. The very first point I noted was that in
30 my room, as the mother and father warmed to their tale, both chil-
1 dren were peaceful. Harry played quietly with my toys while Jane
2 slept. I have come to regard this as an indicator that the parents
3 project their conflict into the children, and so it seemed in this case.
4 The parents told me that before Jane was born they had assimilated
5 Harry into their lives, and into their relationship. They had contin-
6 ued, it seemed, to live a little as though they had not quite registered
7 that they were parents. They told me nostalgically how “portable”
8 Harry had been. A cheerful infant, he had travelled on their backs,
911 slept through adult parties, gone up mountains and all over Europe.
111 However, they knew things would be difficult when Jane was born
2 and they dreaded the change, which turned out to be every whit as
3 bad as they thought. They joined in clamorous complaints; the flat
4 was too small, there was no space to move; the mother described
5 very crossly how she was feeding the baby, getting up at night,
6 doing the washing, trying to soothe the desperate Harry. Her part-
7 ner countered just as injuredly that he was getting up, too, and he
8 was looking after Harry as much as he could, and doing the shop-
9 ping, and he was trying to earn a living for them. There was some-
10 thing so competitive, rivalrous, and self-pitying about them both
1 that they irresistibly reminded me of squabbling children expecting
2 someone to step in and sort them out. It was interesting that when
3 Harry came into action he did a rudimentary drawing—a round
4 face with a huge round mouth, no other feature. This well expressed
5 how the dispossessed Harry was feeling as a small individual, with
6 a dreadful hole in his face, and a sense of having lost something. It
711 also seemed that there was something that the parents could not
8 contain in the way of primitive loss of the object, and being unable
9 to bear the idea, it had gone to somebody else. There was a convic-
20 tion that there was insufficient good stuff to go round.
1 There were reasons for the parents’ anxieties that we could work
2 on, but the point I wish to stress at present is that they presented as
3 ruthlessly warring siblings; however, they were able to enter into a
4 transference relationship with me as their parent, and very
511 awkward they could be before working through some of their envy
6 and jealousy. The constant problem with them and other parents in
7 this situation is the attraction of ganging up, like destructive siblings
8 in identifications with a sadistic couple, to round on the thera-
9 pist. Again, I have an example from some time ago, where I saw the
311 parents of an encopretic child. His symptom, as he worked with a
1 child psychotherapist, disappeared. However, the parents, who
2 looked personable, intelligent, and lively, united in their hatred of
3 the combined object. When they found me reasonably resilient,
4 marrying up (as I would hope) the dual aspects of containment, they
5 began a relentless attack. These dual aspects are the embryonic pre-
6 cursors of the concept of mother and father. Containment consists of
7 holding—maintaining receptive, absorbent response with some
8 quality of endurance in it—with the capacity to focus keenly on
911 what is going on. It derives from the primary experience, the infant
111 held securely, surrounded by mother’s arms, lap, and encircling

2 attention and simultaneously focusing on the nipple while the
3 mother’s eye eventually draws the gaze and invites the child
4 psychically into her mind. This adumbrates the concept of mother
5 and father, vagina and penis, woman and man. The couple I am
6 referring to had all kinds of ways of attacking my power to be recep-
711 tive, and my power to focus. What stays with me after many years is
8 the excited, would-be jokey, hiss of the mother to her partner, “Keep
9 making the bombs!” There was an irresistible image of rebellion and
10 adolescence, but actually not of a transient, healthy, revolutionary
1 kind. This was envious, mindless rebellion. We were not very satis-
2 fied with the progress of the case, but the child was symptom-free
3 and we ended. We were appalled to hear at a later review meeting
4 with the parents that the child was soiling again. The bombs were
5 being delivered. They did not wish for further treatment.
6 This couple, who had many adjacent problems, was essentially
7 united in a cruel way. Perhaps it is important in family work to be
8 clear-sighted about the balance in a couple: are they more inclined
9 to come together for creative or for destructive ends? In consider-
211 ing the oedipus complex we have to think not only of the setting up
1 of a family (both internal and external) but of its dark reverse: the
2 setting up of an anti-family, where children are not protected, their
3 childish needs are not contained and answered, and they are the
4 recipients of damaging projections. People who have not been in a
5 position to negotiate the essential ambivalence of the oedipal situa-
6 tion have unresolved conflicts not just to bequeath, but to force
7 upon the next generation.
8 This can be observed in circumstances of severe damage and
9 privation. Frequently one is left with a broken couple and only one
30 piece of it to work with. The pair who created the child is afraid to
1 get together, unconvinced at an unconscious level of the good func-
2 tion of combined parents. Here the child is left to attempt the work
3 the parents cannot manage—a universal phenomenon, but marked
4 and extreme in the clinical population.
5
6
Projection into the children
7
8 I should like to turn to a family, nominally intact. The children
911 were quite numerous and one was autistic; this child was offered
111 intensive psychotherapy. The parents did not think they would be
2 able to attend meetings with me together, for apparently practical
3 reasons. Therefore, I met regularly with the child’s mother. In the
4 sort of work we undertake in the Child and Family Department at
5 the Tavistock Clinic, we try never quite to forget that the parents are
6 here in relation to the child—on the child’s ticket, so to speak. This
7 does not mean it is inappropriate to attend to the individual or the
8 couple, but it is important to keep a sense of relationships within
9 the family and an eye on the child. Similarly, if one parent comes,
10 I try to remember that this parent is part of a couple—its repre-
1 sentative, perhaps. In the case that I am referring to, I had a strong
2 impression of Mrs G as a parent to the small autistic child, and
3 to her other children. I was in the room with a person who inevit-
4 ably developed an unconscious transference to me, and brought
5 her own difficulties, either implicitly or overtly. However, I also
6 felt in the presence of the parental couple represented by only one
711 of its members. Mrs G did not speak on behalf of her husband in
8 the ordinary sense. Indeed, there seemed so little agreement
9 between them that such a thing would be unlikely. However, at a
20 deeper level I was naturally able to gain a picture of the nature and
1 function of the couple as an entity, especially as it related to their
2 children.
3 This mother presented herself as devoted, reasonable, and
4 humorous. She was able to sustain an amiable, even thoughtful
511 relation with me in the context of which I felt able to interpolate
6 some thinking about the children, about her, and about her parents
7 that she accepted, up to a point. However, surging all round the
8 quiet interchanges she and I shared were the waves of her family
9 life. Here, according to her, the children’s father lived a separate
311 and cut off existence, descending only to fall into ungovernable
1 rages with her and the children. From time to time he was des-
2 cribed as performing eccentric and irrational acts. Gradually, it
3 became clear that my patient was playing her full part in a sado-
4 masochistic relationship. The rages and rows had no resolution.
5 They ended because both sides were exhausted, and started up
6 again under some future stimulus without having changed in the
7 least. This is quite different from the inevitable conflicts and quar-
8 rels that take place in families where—at least some of the time—
911 conflict has a resolution, behaviour and attitudes change, and
111 quarrels are at least in part related to argument and debate. This
2 couple was not hoping for a resolution of their differences; at the
3 time of their battles they were unconsciously enacting a fixed phan-
4 tasy of a cruel primal scene, which nevertheless afforded them
5 unconscious excitement. Though I do not think that Mrs G was
6 always giving me an objective account of her family life, I do
711 believe that the marital relationship had everything in common
8 with those openly engaged in domestic violence. Mrs G, outwardly
9 demure, would madden her husband until he burst. Consciously,
10 she felt her husband’s behaviour was a mystery to her; why did he
1 suddenly fall upon her like a thunderbolt? Unconsciously, the
2 shared phantasy of the primal scene was one of a sadistic inter-
3 course, a cruel conflict mistakenly perceived as a sign of life.
4 Of course, it is more of a sign of death. The sufferers in these
5 rages were (directly and indirectly) the children. While parents’
6 coming together in good intercourse, literal or metaphorical, has
7 the meaning of joining in creative mutuality that can only be to the
8 children’s benefit, the sadomasochistic interchange has the reverse
9 intentions. On the one hand, there are all the phantasies of making,
211 nurturing and looking after children; on the other, phantasies of a
1 bad intercourse, the aim of which is to destroy babies.
2 The G family operated in a way that did not perform the func-
3 tion of fitting its children to participate in real life, and grow
4 towards independent existence. The reverse was true. I was able to
5 catch a glimpse of one child who had phantasies amounting almost
6 to delusions of being grown up. There was scant attempt to restore
7 him to reality; rather he seemed pushed on to ever-greater excesses
8 of projective identification. Another of the children, though of
9 school age, reacted with infantile, uninhibited ferocity when his
30 omnipotence was challenged. I had no doubt but that my patient
1 was using the children as receptacles into which to project unman-
2 ageable parts of herself. The roles of husband and wife could be
3 said to be reversible; on the one hand, during the angry outbursts,
4 the husband took the active role and the wife remained passive, a
5 patient Griselda. However, at the level of unconscious projections
6 into the children, the wife was very active, and the husband did
7 nothing to protect them, but remained absent, as passive as she.
8 Though my patient would have said that she was worried about
911 the children, her attitude struck me often as one of resignation.
111 Within her was a disturbed infant, child, and adolescent, and it was
2 these figures that were becoming embodied in her children. It was
3 clear that the children caused anxiety at school, tormented each
4 other, and presented constant and unappeasable demands. Mrs G
5 portrayed herself as all providing, at their disposal, patient, cheer-
6 ful, and up at all hours. She idealized their rebellious and unseemly
7 behaviour, rejoicing in them as what she construed as “free spirits”.
8 She consciously took pleasure in the notion that they were not
9 crushed or quelled. There was only one way to say “no” in her
10 unconscious mind; brutally, repressively, and punitively. It could
1 never be a benign and essential aid to the establishment of bound-
2 ary setting and orderliness.
3 The parents did not recognize and grapple with their internal
4 states, but projected them into the children. They were none of
5 them in command of their own lives, even to the limited extent that
6 most of us can manage. In fact, the parents were scarcely living
711 their lives at all, as so many of their actions consisted of the drama-
8 tization in external reality of their internal situations. The children
9 were drawn into being players in the drama enacted. The parents’
20 attempt to create something new, something that had never existed
1 before, ended in their merely recreating the world as they knew it.
2 In both their cases this was a severely paranoid world, relying on
3 splitting, excessive projective identification with a strong element
4 of confusion. All available adult aspects of the parents were busy
511 with the business of keeping going; they fed and took the children
6 to school, and they worked. However, significant aspects of their
7 personalities were embodied in their children: intolerance for
8 the negotiation of sibling rivalry; omnipotence, whose angry
9 and impetuous commands must be obeyed—in short, a refusal to
311 engage with the ordinary demands of life, shown at its extreme in
1 the autistic child’s refusal. The children’s preference for the life of
2 omnipotent phantasy naturally put them at odds with school life,
3 and made them unable to get on with the business of growing up.
4 The family was non-functional, perhaps worse than that. Until
5 the destructive force at work in the central relationship (between
6 father and mother) could be acknowledged, the children were
7 compelled to live in a place where their difficulties were fostered.
8 This happens when children are emotionally unmanageable for
911 their parents, when (as in the Oedipus myth) something about the
111 child is felt to be unacceptable, thrust out on to the slopes of Mount

2 Cithaeron as dangerous and potentially deathly.
3
4
5 Reclaiming parental authority
6
711 I want to describe a case where this seemed true to me. The parents
8 of a five-year-old boy had been worried about him since birth. I saw
9 the whole family first (after a referral from a paediatrician, who
10 queried autism) and concluded that although the two elder siblings
1 might well have plenty of difficulties that were going unan-
2 nounced, they were not of the same nature as their younger
3 brother’s, whom I shall call Jack. Jack’s presentation was mildly
4 psychotic. While I did not think he was autistic, I could see that he
5 had difficulties with thinking, with distinguishing between fantasy
6 and reality, that his social relations were impaired and that he
7 inhabited a paranoid world. I also thought the picture was mixed
8 and patchy, with areas of more encouraging functioning, and that it
9 would be worth an attempt at individual work with him to see how
211 far we could get in a year. I offered fortnightly work to the couple
1 while a colleague took on Jack twice weekly, after several further
2 meetings with the parents and Jack in various combinations.
3 The heartening thing about this couple was that they con-
4 sciously wanted to work. I had the sense of parents who would like
5 to be able to take charge of their family life, and perhaps people
6 who were at a stage where the change—unspecified but longed
7 for—that they desired could take place.
8 I should like to describe something of the situation I found,
9 something about the work with the parents and something about
30 Jack’s state of mind and how these things link together. The story
1 of Jack’s life, as it emerged over time, was not substantially differ-
2 ent from the parents’ early accounts. They had been in two minds
3 about wanting a third child. Instead of settling philosophically to
4 the fact that Ms X was pregnant again, they started along a difficult
5 road, as the pregnancy was uncomfortable and the birth—unlike
6 the previous two—was traumatic. They repeatedly impressed upon
7 me that the mother had felt shocking extremes of pain and terror,
8 and had been sure she would die. The normal healing of such a
911 wound takes place through the agency of the baby, as the presence
111 of a live, flourishing infant encourages feelings of repair and hope.

2 In this case, the mother did not recover psychologically. The story
3 was fresh when she recounted it to me. After the birth she had
4 fallen into a depressed state. Jack was a baby who “could not be put
5 down”. Father took over much of the care. The baby was all-
6 demanding and all-absorbing of the attention they felt he would
7 not let them give to the older children. Mother remained depressed
8 for months, and I had the picture of some lurking fantasy of a
9 monstrous birth, some great lump of a child who, instead of being
10 full of a healthy life of his own, was full of an animation that felt
1 malevolent.
2 Jack was, by now, and for many months into the treatment,
3 regarded as the sole bringer of discord into the family. A large boy,
4 when I saw him he blundered about bewildered, as though it was
5 hard for him to connect meaningfully with anything. His father
6 found Jack’s unfocused and disruptive behaviour unbearable, and
711 behaved as though he expected Jack to burst into flames at any
8 moment. Some fleeting play with toys only demonstrated close
9 encounters of a crashing kind. Father, then obedient and placatory,
20 drew pictures for Jack. When Jack threatened his father with the toy
1 crocodile his father flinched, said, “He knows my weak spot”, and
2 said he had a dread of crocodiles. In a meeting with the whole
3 family, a tendency emerged for the older children to laugh at Jack;
4 smirking at his clownishness (which he played up to), and giggling
511 hysterically at his bad behaviour—without anyone getting a proper,
6 serious grip on Jack’s aggression, which was either to be feared or
7 mocked. The elder siblings were said to get on very badly with Jack
8 at home.
9 I had mixed success in seeing Jack on his own, as when his
311 father brought him he hardly dared separate, and father soon had
1 to be included. Father found this terribly trying, and had to control
2 a surge of furious disappointment at my failure and me. I found
3 Jack hard to think about and hard to remember, as though he had
4 difficulty in recognizing me as an object prepared to try to receive
5 him, a process opposed to his projecting into unwilling, uncontain-
6 ing objects via their weakness, which is what he did.
7 When his mother brought him, I managed about twenty-five
8 minutes alone with him. He demonstrated his failure to establish
911 a primary split between good and bad or between adults and
111 children. He tried to make animal families—four groups of mixed

2 wild animals. He was vainly trying to divide them up; “Hot and
3 cold,” he muttered, and I had a strong impression of faulty thought
4 processes, lack of definition and distinction. He passed on to more
5 openly destructive connections: cars, dolls, toys cannoned into each
6 other. Occasionally, I would catch his attention by taking him seri-
711 ously, but little lasted, and things seemed profoundly unstable. His
8 mother had to join us. She was full of relief because he had been
9 able to stay for a while and was lavish in praise—how good, how
10 brave he was. Jack sat and did a little drawing. “What is it?” I
1 asked. “Hot dog . . . hot dog . . . hot . . . dog,” he answered.
2 I thought some appetite had been kindled in him, but that then the
3 idea slipped away—was the dog hot? What dog? His mother found
4 him funny. I also observed how Jack, like a six-month-old baby, was
5 all over his mother as though to be in touch meant literally to touch
6 physically.
7 During the third assessment session with his mother, I saw
8 in Jack a sad, feeble child like a despairing outsider who, arriving
9 as a new boy at school, had been much distressed to find that there
211 was no peg for his coat. He was more attentive, leaning against
1 his mother as I talked about how I thought Jack never felt really
2 comfortable or safe, or as if he had a place in the world.
3 The other significant observation I made was of the quality of
4 his relationship with his mother and her apparent warmth and live-
5 liness mixed with seductiveness. For example, he found a chewing
6 gum bar in her bag. She said he could have half; she broke it and
7 gave him the piece, then he broke his half and gave her a quarter.
8 This was done intimately, teasingly, with Jack passing the gum
9 directly from his mouth to his mother’s.
30 I have said enough to show how identities are blurred, distances
1 unfixed; how Jack was a prey to bewildering rushes of anxiety from
2 without and within. His mind was full of wars and battles where
3 there was no good side. His anxiety was acute, and making connec-
4 tions was a feared activity. The primary connection—first between
5 baby and mother, second between parents—had been interrupted,
6 as with Oedipus himself. The baby was not felt to be a good baby,
7 but a harbinger of disaster. Subsequently, the relationships within
8 the family were disturbed. Father seemed afraid of the son; mother
911 too in a way, but she, despite herself, played a flirtatious part.
111 Siblings were at war with one another, as in Antigone; and the
2 vulnerable side of Jack was still a new boy, an outsider, unaccept-
3 able to the family.
4 His therapist had a difficult job on her hands. Jack turned out to
5 be hard to manage, perverse, and sometimes frankly psychotic and
6 deluded, but she persevered and progress was made. However,
7 what of his parents, when I came to work regularly with them? I
8 had the impression that they were a couple whose worst uncon-
9 scious fears had been realized. They had been treading very narrow
10 lines, separately and together, probably all their lives. He had left
1 home at sixteen and made his way through university. His own
2 father was a damaged man. She had a father whom she described
3 fleetingly but with vivid detail as sadistic. Late on in the treatment
4 she divulged with great difficulty that her brother had sexually
5 abused her, and this brother is now mentally ill.
6 However, they had a touching and determined interest in family
711 building. They wanted to do better. They had capacity to observe
8 themselves and, over time, they came to see how, instead of func-
9 tioning like an adult couple, they readily fell apart into two sepa-
20 rate people bemoaning their lots, reproachful, angry, and cruel. I
1 want to pick out the manner of their leaving the treatment. This
2 couple actually made a move. They wanted to move out of London
3 to somewhere they thought was more salubrious. They half-
4 acknowledged that they had been idealizing the inner-city experi-
511 ence the children had had. But the process—finding a house, selling
6 theirs, finding school places—was excruciatingly difficult, taking
7 place as it did against a background of struggling with Jack’s state-
8 menting procedure, a digestion of the fact that he was really
9 disturbed, and also emerging worry about the two previously fault-
311 less children.
1 I think that when Jack was born both parents began to have a
2 settled unconscious conviction—rather than fleeting phantasies, to
3 be worked through—that their intercourse had produced a bad boy,
4 the envious ghost of the baby they might have had, a destructive
5 creature quite out of their control. This made it impossible to see
6 Jack for what he was, and to feel, contain, and deal with his ordi-
7 nary aggressive and negative projections.
8 Part of the hypothesis that I evolved was the idea that Jack was
911 not an easy baby. There must have been something in him that
111 answered to his parents’ state of mind—a state of mind unwelcom-

2 ing to a baby, fearing the worst, confirmed by the traumatic birth.
3 However, although his problems might have been hard to amelio-
4 rate, they were definitely capable of being made worse. His parents
5 found themselves in the situation of projecting during times of
6 difficulty and trouble, unable to see the new baby as a blessing
711 taken all in all, unable to grapple successfully with their ambiva-
8 lence. No baby has the experience of every single piece of distress
9 and dislike being fielded, absorbed, and transformed by its mother
10 or father. However, Jack’s experience went beyond one of a failure
1 to contain negative emotion. His unpleasant feelings, projected out
2 into his parents, were not received as a sign that “the baby’s feeling
3 unhappy” or “he doesn’t like me today”. They were interpreted, at
4 an unconscious level, as evidence that he was unpleasant. Jack was
5 construed as a baby who brought depression and conflict.
6 Thus, his parents on the one hand tried to behave positively
7 towards him—with patience, encouragement and helpfulness—but
8 just below the surface there was suspicion and negativity. Jack’s
9 father was almost obsequious towards him, but at the same time he
211 simmered with angry resentment beneath. Jack’s mother gave way
1 to what must have been a meeting of her confusion with Jack’s. I
2 was told that Jack got into bed with her in the morning, and wanted
3 to pretend to be a little dog and lick her all over, a process that over-
4 stimulated him and made him impossible to handle. From Jack’s
5 point of view, what was supposed to be a good experience, and
6 what a bad one? His parents behaved as though they were in slav-
7 ery to him; unconsciously, each played out a sado-masochistic
8 union.
9 The work I did with the parents, as another child psychothera-
30 pist grappled with Jack, focused both on their approach to their
1 difficult son, and to their relationship with each other. It became
2 more possible for them to see Jack’s behaviour as comprehensible,
3 composed of the impulses and responses of a highly anxious child,
4 rather than incomprehensible, crazy, and visited upon them by
5 blind fate.
6 Equally, they made a great deal of progress in recognizing two
7 states of mind in themselves as a couple. Broadly speaking, one
8 state was when they could draw together as a parental pair, share
911 their anxieties and ideas about all the children (not only Jack), put
111 aside some time for privacy, and have a clear perception of them-
2 selves as adults, and adults in charge for good or ill. The other state
3 was one where disunity ruled. Mrs X fell into depression and Mr X
4 into anger. Each felt resentfully alone, full of self-pity, blaming the
5 other, both fearing the inevitable violent outbursts and quarrels that
6 were the outcome. In this second state, sides were taken. Mother
7 tended to take the children’s side, and father was cast as lacking
8 understanding, furious, and somehow ridiculous. (This picture also
9 fits the G couple referred to earlier.) While, when the parents were
10 together, they saw all three children as needing their concern, when
1 they were apart Jack became a kind of scapegoat, a receptacle for
2 their fears of catastrophe and collapse. It is also interesting to note
3 that it was with relief for all the children that they became a three-
4 some. The situation at referral, where the elder girl and boy joined
5 to mock and fear the baby brother, had caused much guilt and anxi-
6 ety in the children themselves.
711
8
9 Conclusion
20
1 I have tried to demonstrate with clinical example and discussion
2 the well-known value of working with the parental couple in
3 conjunction with a referred child in order to bring about change
4 (Barrows, 2003). The child’s difficulty can usefully be viewed in the
511 light of the parents’ unresolved oedipal conflicts.
6 With all the couples I have described, the same process is at
7 work. Can the parents draw together as a benign partnership, two
8 people who can manage to reign over their little kingdom without
9 outlawing anyone? Can the family manage to do without a black
311 sheep? Can, indeed, the potential outcasts resist the lure of accept-
1 ing projections? How do children remain loyal to two parents at
2 once, and how can parents bear in mind the whole range of a child’s
3 personality, or the whole range of personalities their family may
4 produce?
5 In work with children and their parents we see the full range of
6 relationships—parents with each other, with the children; siblings
7 with each other, with the parents—and have much to ponder upon.
8 However, not, perhaps, more than Sophocles did, who watched as
911 events unfolded from the original rejection of Oedipus.
111 CHAPTER NINE

2
3
4
5
6
711 Oedipus gets married:
8
9
an investigation of a couple’s
10 shared oedipal drama
1
2
3 Joanna Rosenthall
4
5
6
7
8
9
W
211 hat determines our choice of lifelong partner? For
1 Oedipus himself, this is not a valid question because, as
2 we know, he married his mother. His story is about
3 someone who could not give up his primary passion and move on
4 to bear the pain associated with exclusion from the parents’ sexual
5 relationship. Oedipus, we could say, acted on a universal longing
6 that, in early life, is a consuming desire—continuing the exclusive
7 possession of our first passionate love, our mother. It is therefore
8 not possible to investigate whom Oedipus would have chosen as a
9 wife if he had been able to relinquish possession of his mother. He
30 is a lost cause. However, the question as to why one partner chooses
1 another, and how the choice is linked to each partner’s internal
2 oedipal drama is a valid one, and forms the focus of this chapter.
3 Sophocles’ story of Oedipus was revisited and borrowed by
4 Freud, who articulated the oedipus complex—a mixture of impul-
5 ses, phantasies, anxieties, and defences linked with the change from
6 two-person to three-person relating. Klein and Bion subsequently
7 developed Freud’s ideas, and we now recognize the oedipal situa-
8 tion and its resolution as a necessary part of an individual’s psychic
911 development. Each one of us has to negotiate a journey from being
181
111 a babe-in-arms, absorbed with an illusion of being our mother’s

2 only love, over a hurdle where the existence of the father and other
3 siblings, either potential or real, is recognized and accepted. First,
4 the possessive and exclusive aspects of the relationship with the
5 mother have to be relinquished. This involves bearing a deep sense
6 of loss and pain. The later stages of the oedipal process involve
7 recognizing the differences between the relationship of child and
8 parent as distinct from that of husband and wife. This recognition
9 comes with a further sense of loss and envy, and results in the child
10 giving up his sexual claim on his parents. The child now under-
1 stands the difference between the generations—and has managed
2 to recognize that the parents are in a sexual relationship with each
3 other that does not include her/him.
4 Oedipal development is managed to varying degrees, and, like
5 all psychic processes, it involves a lifelong journey. At any point in
6 this journey each individual has internalized a representation of a
711 couple relationship, “the internal couple”, which is based on the
8 experience of the parents, whose qualities have been influenced by
9 projections and distortions.
20 All individuals, as a result of oedipal development, have an
1 unconscious picture of a couple in intercourse, and this informs
2 their relating style. The partners in a couple must have relating
3 styles that are complementary to each other’s, although what we
4 often see is a more complex picture with each partner changing
511 positions at different points. The couple I want to discuss shared
6 material that communicated something essential about the nature
7 of their unconscious phantasies about coupling, which helped me
8 build up a representation of their shared “couple picture”.
9 In my description of the couple and their therapy I have drawn
311 very heavily on my counter-transference experience. The phenom-
1 enon of counter-transference has been recognized for several
2 decades to be a crucial tool in psychoanalytic work, if the thoughts
3 and feelings that are evoked in the therapist are detected and
4 turned into interpretations in the clinical situation. Heimann (1950)
5 was among the first to address in detail the use of the counter-
6 transference in formulating interpretations that aim at a deeper
7 understanding of patients’ material. She stated that: “The analyst’s
8 emotional response to his patient within the analytic situation
911 represents one of the most important tools of his work. The
OEDIPUS GETS MARRIED 183
111 analyst’s counter-transference is an instrument of research into the

2 patient’s unconscious” (Heimann, 1950, p. 81).
3 Most of what is described in the clinical material that follows is
4 my attempt to explore and think about a clinical situation with a
5 couple. My experience does not represent an objective truth, but
6 rather is a complex mix of my own reactions with elements of
711 theirs, some magnified and others entirely omitted. This account
8 does not attempt to closely describe a real couple relationship, or
9 the process of therapy, but aims to use parts of an experience to
10 contribute to the thinking about oedipal issues in couple work.
1
2
3 Mr and Mrs Z
4
5
The therapy
6
7 Mr and Mrs Z came for couple therapy complaining bitterly about
8 their relationship. They quickly conveyed a deep-seated despair
9 about both their relationship and the possibility of receiving any
211 help that was “good enough” for them to use.
1 They presented themselves as seeking a satisfying partnership,
2 but each felt unappreciated, disregarded and abandoned by the
3 other. They both seemed depressed, and each thought it was
4 the other who needed or ought to change. They both believed that
5 they could have found success and happiness if only they had
6 married someone else. As it was, they were filled with unhappy
7 grievance, and each felt unappreciated and isolated. Both Mr and
8 Mrs Z had always been aware of an enormous discomfort in
9 the presence of the other, which, nevertheless, had not acted as a
30 deterrent to marriage and a long-term relationship. Much of the
1 therapy involved an attempt to make sense of this curious fact.
2 They both felt like misfits, with each other and elsewhere. Each of
3 them presented as an innocent victim of the other, although the
4 “fight” had a lop-sided quality because only Mrs Z tended to give
5 voice to it.
6 I quickly came to recognize a style that this couple used to
7 communicate. Both partners were reluctant to start speaking but
8 equally seemed to find silence unbearable. Typically, Mrs Z would
911 start complaining angrily about her exhaustion and misery, and
111 then direct or imply accusations against her husband, using recent
2 examples of his behaviour; usually things he had not done rather
3 than what he had. She would present a case for why all the prob-
4 lems were his fault. He would appear phlegmatic, seem to be listen-
5 ing, but in a passive way which conveyed he was unlikely to
6 answer and enter a dialogue. He would often react to her criticisms
7 by nodding readily, agreeing with her diagnosis, apparently admit-
8 ting his weaknesses and incapacity, but in effect leaving her to have
9 the discussion alone.
10 More rarely, Mrs Z would make it clear she was exhausted and
1 unwilling to start. This absolutely floored her husband, as if he had
2 no thoughts or dilemmas within himself. He would attempt to turn
3 the enquiry back towards his wife, asking her broad questions, such
4 as “What would you like out of life?’ or “What are your aims?”
5 which usually had the effect of deflecting the heat from himself. She
6 would work hard at trying to convey the aspects of her life and
711 their relationship that felt problematic to her, even unbearable,
8 followed by a description of the things she longed for that she
9 seemed to feel he was unreasonably withholding. The discussions
20 always had the same circular quality, as if there was no purpose to
1 the questions other than to be able to ask more questions. In the
2 course of a session, I saw no evidence of them taking things in from
3 each other or of the contact developing. However much they
4 exchanged words and overtly agreed with each other, in fact they
511 each held an unrelenting view of the other and probably experi-
6 enced themselves as victims.
7 There were times when I was drawn into their dynamic. I would
8 point out that Mr Z seemed to be avoiding his own thoughts by
9 asking his wife questions, and I then tried to turn Mr Z’s questions
311 back on to himself, a thing Mrs Z never did. On several occasions
1 it went something like this:
2
3 Therapist: When things get difficult, I’ve noticed that you start asking
4 your wife questions. Perhaps you have your own thoughts about what
5 you are hoping for in your life, or between you.
6 Mr Z: What do you think?
7
Therapist: Are you asking me what I think your thoughts are?
8
911 Mr Z: Yes.
111 Therapist: You seem to be wanting to use my thoughts to have

2 thoughts of your own.
3 Mr Z: Yes, I think that’s right. What’s wrong with that? Do you think I
4 do that?
5
6 Therapist: Well you seem to turn either to me or to your wife for our
711 thoughts at the moment when you are asked for your own. That’s
where we started a few minutes ago.
8
9 Mr Z: Did I say that? I don’t think I said that. No—I don’t think that’s
10 it at all.
1
2 This, and other similar communications between us, resulted in
3 a disconcerting experience for me. On a number of occasions I felt
4 as if I was falling into a dark hole or looking into a hall of mirrors,
5 and would have very much welcomed the presence of a co-thera-
6 pist. Not only was thinking impossible, but I had a very unnerving
7 and powerful experience of losing the baseline necessary for my
8 own sense of self. This was a powerful counter-transference experi-
9 ence that reflected Mr Z’s terrifying feeling that he had no internal
211 resources or markers. He seemed to not know who he was or what
1 he thought, which he managed by asking his wife or myself ques-
2 tions, in an attempt to project the discomfort and disturbance into
3 someone else. These kinds of interactions also had a frustrating
4 quality, as if talking, which involved a lot of hard work on my part,
5 could only end in meaningless circles. It is likely that Mr Z experi-
6 enced my questions as malicious attacks that terrified and angered
7 him, resulting in the infuriating and frightening experience that
8 I have described. These experiences, however, were relatively rare;
9 mostly Mrs Z expressed her grievance and unhappiness, which
30 filled the space and seemed to relieve Mr Z of the need to know
1 his own thoughts. Arguably, her convictions involved rules and
2 markers in her mind that took the place of her own thinking as well
3 as his.
4 In the first year of work they were noticeably reserved and wary,
5 and the sessions were taken up with an attempt to establish a rela-
6 tionship of trust. They seemed puzzled about the concept of “help”,
7 and, although the trust did grow, they continued to hold cynical
8 views of other people and, more often than not, impute them with
911 unkind or malign motives. On many occasions, Mrs Z spoke freely
111 about different attempts of hers to ask others for help. For example,
2 she had asked a relative to help her organize a party and was
3 refused. This, she was convinced, was not for practical reasons but
4 was simply to give her the message that she wasn’t liked, or that
5 she should not expect to be helped because she was in a devalued
6 position. She often talked about other people in a way that indi-
7 cated they were experienced as takers and users, caring only about
8 themselves and what they could get. These communications were
9 further evidence that my questions or interventions were not expe-
10 rienced as helpful, but rather as attacks designed to humiliate them
1 by exposing their ignorance or vulnerability.
2 During the second year of therapy there was some movement in
3 how they used the sessions. They were more willing to share details
4 of difficult experiences and to allow some exploration of the
5 dynamics. I suggested that they were both so afraid of making
6 contact with each other that there was a shared preference for being
711 estranged or, at the very best, distant from each other. I also
8 ventured the interpretation that closeness, to them, seemed to mean
9 either one partner having to take responsibility for both, or else
20 having an experience of losing oneself. Mrs Z, especially, seemed
1 to feel able to take more risks, and began to present a deeper picture
2 of herself and the relationship. She also offered more associations
3 to her early experience. She started openly to express her distress
4 and longing for help, at times bringing lively dreams that terri-
511 fied and confused her. I also noticed, however, that, although there
6 was an increased willingness to discuss complex feelings and
7 motives, and Mrs Z had managed to develop her life more as an
8 individual, they still both insisted that there was no change in the
9 relationship between them. Small gains, they told me, were impos-
311 sible to maintain.
1 Mr Z did not seem to have the increased sense of freedom in the
2 sessions that his wife did. He continued to seem empty of himself,
3 he had little to say except that he longed for more sex. He claimed
4 to feel little or nothing. Occasionally he would report a fantasy he
5 had that he would like to become successful in a new field of work,
6 but it seemed to have the quality of a threat. He did nothing about
7 it, nor did he seem to gain any pleasure from these thoughts. Mr Z
8 largely conveyed an unbearable feeling of being utterly stuck, as if
911 there were no future and no recognition of time passing.
111 I frequently felt invited into a battle where I had to feel I was
2 losing. Much of the time it seemed to be crucial to Mrs Z to paint
3 herself in a perfect light, and convey her husband as the one
4 constantly at fault. She seemed to feel under threat of survival if this
5 view was challenged. Her husband seemed willing to be denigrated
6 as long as her proximity was assured. Later on, we heard more
711 about how he kept her critical attacks at bay and made himself
8 impervious, in order to hold on to his own view of each of them.
9 Their coupling seemed deadly but resilient, and it often felt as if
10 they were pitted against me, hating the possibilities for change that
1 I stood for.
2 Towards the end of the second year in therapy, Mrs Z had a
3 series of dreams that had disturbed her a great deal. There is one,
4 in particular, which helped me to understand that they shared a
5 difficulty in their oedipal development. It also appeared to offer me
6 a picture of their shared internal couple.
7 Readers unused to thinking about psychoanalytic couple work
8 may well be startled by the idea that a dream or story told by one
9 individual can be thought about as conveying unconscious mean-
211 ing for the couple. In couple work, as in group work, there is a
1 change of focus; the two individuals in the room and the material
2 they provide can be thought about primarily as contributing to an
3 understanding of the relationship, rather than simply expressing
4 meaning in terms of them as individuals. This has been expressed
5 most clearly by the idea that in couple work “the couple is the
6 patient” (Ruszczynski, 1993, p. 199). Later on, it should become
7 clearer how the dream helped me to investigate the shared uncon-
8 scious interaction between the partners in the couple.
9
30 Mrs Z’s Dream
1
2
Mrs Z came into a large government building. It was a big, dark place.
3
It reminded her of the building in which the sessions took place. She had
4
to walk along many dark corridors, and then she saw a couple at the end
5 of one of them. It looked as if they were made of iron. They were white
6 people who were a dark colour. It looked as if they had been painted
7 black. The woman was lying down. She was nearly dead. The man was
8 leaning over the top of her, trying to help. It was an awful sight,
911 absolutely awful. She kept repeating that she couldn’t bear to see it.
111 Then she came out of the building and, near the entrance, she saw her
2 father. He was standing behind a stranger. She told him she loved him,
3 but he shrugged it off. He didn’t really acknowledge her. At the end
4 she kept repeating that the whole dream was so awful she could hardly
5 bear to remember it, let alone explore it and allow associations.
6
7 What immediately struck me was the dream’s relevance and
8 meaning to the unconscious couple relationship that, until this
9 point, had been very difficult to see. In the dream, there are two
10 “couplings” or potential couplings. The first is like the primal scene
1 (Freud, 1919e)—a couple in intercourse watched or seen by a third.
2 In the second, there is a stranger (mother?) who is standing in
3 between her and her father—the dreamer makes an approach to a
4 father/husband and is ignored and rejected.
5 The first scene takes place inside a building similar to the one
6 the therapy was in. The intercourse has a much damaged quality, in
711 which one partner is dying and the other is desperately attempting
8 resuscitation, but to no avail. The couple look as if they are made of
9 iron, a hard, impenetrable substance, with no human softness, asso-
20 ciated with machines. They are white, but they have been painted
1 black, as if something has ruined everything, perhaps envy. The
2 dreamer is looking at the couple and finds it a terrible sight, one
3 that can hardly be borne.
4 Why is the primal scene depicted in this way? I believe we are
511 learning first and foremost about an internal state of affairs in
6 which there is an internalized couple where the woman is dying,
7 or hardly surviving. The picture implies that sex has damaged,
8 nearly killed her, and the man is desperately trying to resusci-
9 tate her and repair the damage. This is a picture of an extremely
311 painful, destructive coupling, in which there is little room for
1 creativity, and separation cannot be envisaged as it threatens to lead
2 to death.
3 I would like to expand on what I came to know about this
4 couple scenario from three different sources. First, this “damaged
5 couple” from the dream seemed to be similar to each partner’s own
6 portrayal of each of their parental couples. Second, it was undoubt-
7 edly familiar to each partner, as I have already described and will
8 expand on; and, last, it was congruent with my experience of the
911 relationship with the couple.
111 The parental couples

2
3 There were times in the therapy when Mr and Mrs Z described
4 associations to their early lives and their parents. Mrs Z described
5 her parents as constantly warring. She referred to feeling like a
6 princess during her childhood, as if she felt she came first for each
711 parent. Throughout her growing years she identified closely with
8 her mother, who was ill and vulnerable. At the same time she seems
9 to have managed, while not being close to her father, not to have
10 any battles with him either. Later, her mother left the family home,
1 and Mrs Z’s allegiance changed. She now understood things from
2 her father’s point of view, and felt so close to him that it became
3 uncomfortable, and she felt forced to leave home prematurely. The
4 parental coupling that she did portray involved one very dominant,
5 lively figure (father) who was constantly having to make up for the
6 other (mother), a vulnerable individual who could barely survive
7 the exigencies of family and of life itself.
8 Eventually, discussions about this area made it clear that Mrs Z
9 was suffused with persecutory oedipal guilt, unconsciously con-
211 vinced that she had got rid of her mother and won her father, effec-
1 tively ruining both of their lives. She quickly recognized these
2 feelings when I explored this with her, and clearly stated that she
3 felt unable to improve her own life when her parents’ lives had
4 been so bleak and full of loss. This was a pointer to her unconscious
5 complicity in keeping the relationship with her husband so stuck,
6 hopeless, and full of pain. It assuaged her guilt if her own life was
7 also in ruins, but her anxiety could rise to unbearable proportions
8 if her own life threatened to turn out satisfactorily. It also helps in
9 understanding her need for such deep repression, as portrayed in
30 the setting of the dream—the long dark corridors, the heavy statues
1 made of dark, impenetrable iron—as well as her absolute inability
2 to make associations to her own dream. This atmosphere of suspi-
3 cion and persecution was shared with her husband, who, as I have
4 already described, could bear neither my questions nor to make
5 contact with his wife or myself.
6 Mr Z, when describing his parents, immediately said, “they are
7 always together”. He described his father as the dominant one, who
8 made decisions on behalf of them both. With the help of his wife,
911 Mr Z conveyed a picture of his mother as someone who didn’t
111 really have a mind of her own. She would do and say whatever her
2 husband told her. Mr Z said she had never shown warmth or phys-
3 ical affection. He described her as an iron mother (this made a direct
4 link to the couple in the dream, who also looked as if they were
5 made of iron), mechanical, and as if she had no heart. Mrs Z added
6 to the picture by telling us that relatives, who remembered Mr Z as
7 a baby, had been worried about the way that his mother didn’t
8 seem aware of what she needed to do when the baby was crying.
9 Mrs Z implied the likelihood that he had been left crying, unatten-
10 ded, for long periods. The picture I gleaned of his mother was of a
1 woman so damaged, perhaps psychically near-dead, that she
2 needed to “stick herself” on to a husband in order to be able to func-
3 tion. Mr Z seems to have experienced his two parents in precisely
4 this way—as one stuck-together object that would issue orders or
5 instructions but seemed oblivious of him as a feeling, needy being.
6 Each conveyed a picture of a vulnerable mother who hadn’t
711 individuated successfully herself, nor could she bear the ordinary
8 pain and discomforts in life. They also both described domineering
9 fathers who spent their lives trying to make up for the deficit in the
20 women, and who perhaps chose their wives aggressively and
1 narcissistically so that they could be tyrannical and go unchal-
2 lenged. My patients never seemed to experience their fathers as
3 helping their wives to develop or individuate.
4
511
The central near-dead/resuscitator relationship
6
7 It was clear from the material, and from the dynamic in the room,
8 that most often Mr Z was like a dying person. He always looked
9 pale, with dark eyes; he moved slowly and seemed depressed. He
311 hardly ever spoke without being addressed directly, and while he
1 would express a desire to develop, change, and start new projects,
2 he was always unable to find the motivation, as if he had no inter-
3 nal motor. His early experience seemed to have left him in a
4 severely undeveloped state, so that his wife’s proximity, the pres-
5 ence of her thoughts and feelings and her ability to initiate things,
6 were absolutely crucial to him. His method of attempting to use
7 either his wife’s thoughts, or at times my thoughts, so that he too
8 could feel he had thoughts and feelings, and could survive, does at
911 least indicate a primitive ability to use the mother and her thoughts
111 at a very early stage in his development. However, it was disas-

2 trously inadequate in the context of an adult marriage.
3 In one session I gained a clearer picture of how transactions
4 evolved between them. At the time they were starting a family, and
5 needed to move from a flat to a house. As she was pregnant, he was
6 the one who was trying to search for a house, but found himself
711 unable to act. He said that everything seemed too risky. She had
8 heard about a possible property through a friend. She knew he
9 wouldn’t go, and went herself to meet the estate agent and visit the
10 house. All the time, she felt it was his job, and probably also felt that
1 the visit wasn’t worth it because if something came of it, her
2 husband wouldn’t see it through anyway. She almost didn’t go, but
3 then thought it was worthwhile, just to see what the house was like,
4 and get a picture of what was available. When she arrived, again
5 she thought she was wasting her time, because she imagined the
6 agent would have already sold the house, or would only want to do
7 business with friends. Then she noticed that the agent was friend-
8 lier than she had expected. She came away feeling that he would be
9 good to do business with, and that there was a possibility of their
211 buying the house. She returned home and told her husband that it
1 was a good house and she felt the agent was someone they could
2 trust; she thought they should go ahead. In spite of knowing that
3 her judgement was often sound, he knew he couldn’t manage to
4 take the risk, but he thought that perhaps she would do it for them.
5 He gave her all the financial information she would need to go
6 ahead without him, but she felt she couldn’t do it alone and the
7 opportunity was missed. It is painfully clear in this example how
8 not only were they competing with each other for the near-dead
9 position, but it might also offer a clear picture of the transference
30 relationship from her point of view. She is probably letting me
1 know that she is willing to do work but she has linked her willing-
2 ness entirely to his willingness, so that when he feels unable to
3 move, she also refuses/feels unable to move, even though her capa-
4 city is greater than his. She is wedded to no-change because of her
5 unmanageable oedipal guilt, and if she links change in herself to
6 change in him, she is on very safe ground as he is more stuck and
7 damaged than she is.
8 After offering this account, they talked about previous decisions
911 they had tried to make jointly. He described them as times when he
111 had felt very supported by her, knowing they would share the
2 blame if it turned out to be a mistake. He acknowledged sadly that
3 she was unwilling to do that now. She was shocked by his descrip-
4 tion of the past and convinced that he was either mad or lying. Her
5 view was that she had not supported him but had bullied him until
6 she felt she was going crazy. It had felt too burdensome and
7 weighty, as if she had to find the life in herself and force life into
8 him all at the same time, just like the damaged coupling in the
9 dream.
10 His version of their interaction also gives us a picture of the
1 transference relationship. He is unable to recognize the object as a
2 separate entity. He receives bullying and resentment as support, as
3 this is the only kind of parenting he knows about. This may go
4 some way to helping us know more about their phantasy of the
5 internal couple. His seems to be a picture of a nearly dead man who
6 appears to be made of iron. He can’t think for himself, he doesn’t
711 know what to do, he is full of uncertainty, and he needs the woman
8 to breathe life into him—to fire him up with life and energy. How-
9 ever, even when she does he is almost impervious to her efforts,
20 feeling sure that, if she were to be successful, it would lead to a cata-
1 strophe. Mr Z’s internal world is dominated by a phantasy that
2 intercourse leads to destruction, damage, and maybe death, and his
3 wife shares this view. They both appear to be in the grip of a primi-
4 tive phantasy about the parental intercourse, which has been
511 coloured by the infant’s own projections.
6 Fascinated by the area of early childhood phantasies, Klein
7 (1929), largely through analysing children and by emphasizing the
8 phantasy content of the instinctual impulses, developed the idea
9 of the “combined parental object”. She saw this as a monstrous
311 threatening form made up of the two parents locked together in
1 permanent intercourse, against the child, unmediated by experi-
2 ences of reality that might have modified or opposed it. These
3 united phantasied parents are extremely cruel and much dreaded
4 assailants (Klein, 1929, p. 213). For some individuals this kind of
5 primitive and terrifying phantasy is not significantly modified,
6 leading to disastrous consequences for the formation of an adult
7 sexual relationship.
8 Klein saw the child’s internal experience as heavily influenced
911 not only by the real external parents, but also by the child’s phantasy
111 world. The combined parent figure was seen as a phantasy that
2 emerged from a previous phantasy of penetrating the mother’s
3 body, something that Klein saw as one of the infant’s most profound
4 wishes. The phantasy involves a wish to penetrate mother’s body
5 out of anger and frustration, and do harmful things to the organs
6 and objects found there, partly through jealousy and partly because
711 of a wish to steal them for himself. There is also a phantasy that
8 the mother’s body contains father’s penis, and then there is an esca-
9 lating and terrifying phantasy that mother and the objects inside her
10 will retaliate against the infant. Thus, the aggressive phantasies
1 about parental sexual intercourse arouse huge amounts of paranoia
2 from a very early age.
3 Feldman (1989) shows how individuals who have negotiated
4 the oedipus complex in a relatively healthy way have “an internal
5 model of an intercourse that is, on balance a creative activity. . . . On
6 the other hand, the phantasy that any connection forms a bizarre or
7 predominantly destructive couple seems to result in damaged,
8 perverse or severely inhibited forms of thinking”.
9 Through Mrs Z’s dream we catch a glimpse of the shared phan-
211 tasied internal couple that informs the relationship between Mr and
1 Mrs Z, who have different ways of expressing this phantasy in their
2 relationship. Mr Z lives out the near-dead, or dying position, while
3 Mrs Z carries the energy for her husband. He believes that in order
4 to survive himself he needs her to stay alive, and he is therefore
5 terrified of being abandoned. At the same time, she relies on him to
6 make sure that his efforts are defeated, since if they were successful
7 they would lead to disaster for her in the form of oedipal triumph.
8 She is terrified of being made to experience the guilt attached to her
9 phantasy of having disposed of her mother and won her father.
30 Mrs Z at different times responded differently to her husband’s
1 near-dead stance. She often competed with him for the passive
2 position. She frequently talked about how, when she didn’t know
3 what to do in her life, she would talk to her father. He would
4 always know what to do. So she painted a picture of a child/
5 woman who found it terrifying to stand alone, but who eternally
6 relied on the parent/husband to take decisions and to have the life,
7 as she did when she refused to see through the purchase of the new
8 house. This is very similar to what he felt, and the combination left
911 them in a deadly stalemate in which they were both putting intense
111 pressure on each other to become the lively, active parent/spouse

2 who would take responsibility for everything. When this demand
3 was not met, there was a vicious competition between them for
4 who would occupy the needy, near-dead, but safe—and therefore
5 desirable—position.
6 At other times Mrs Z seemed to find it unbearable to feel her
7 own vulnerability and need, and this was projected into her
8 husband, a willing recipient. She could at times feel comfortable as
9 a domineering rescuer, full of certainty and moral right. This was
10 probably in accord with the role she took in the “coupling” she
1 made with her mother during childhood, and later with her father,
2 in early adulthood.
3 Mostly it was Mrs Z who swapped position from resuscitator to
4 resuscitated. In contrast, Mr Z seemed to be stuck in the near-dead
5 position. I never observed him offering help or comfort to his wife,
6 although there were a small number of occasions when she
711 reported that this had happened at home, but would always com-
8 plain that it hadn’t lasted long. What seems important in this
9 context is that the near-dead and resuscitator positions typified
20 their relationship and the “couple picture” emerging from the
1 dream faithfully reflected their relating style.
2 This kind of intercourse is bleak and disturbing, and Mr and
3 Mrs Z spent many sessions conveying their experience of that.
4 However, it is important to notice that in the dream these white
511 statues had been “painted black”. By this time in the therapy I had
6 come to suspect that some aspects of the relationship might have
7 been working better than were ever conveyed, but I was never told
8 directly about these. My information came from feelings the couple
9 expressed, and incidental facts that seemed to slip out unintention-
311 ally. The dream seemed to confirm my suspicions that there were
1 more hopeful aspects, both within the relationship and also in the
2 therapy, but that the anxiety aroused in the couple by “good things”
3 was so great that they had to be covered over and painted black.
4 There was some movement on this eventually, but for much of the
5 time it was not possible for them to acknowledge that there were
6 some good things on offer that they felt unable to take. When they
7 did start to interact more, it came with such a flood of emotional
8 pain about what had been missing in their lives previously that
911 they often felt it preferable to receive nothing.
111 It is also possible to change the focus slightly and think about
2 the statue couple as representing Mrs Z’s terrible oedipal triumph,
3 where her coupling with father leaves her mother virtually dead.
4 The second scenario in the dream, where she sees father and tells
5 him she loves him, would then express the hoped-for situation
6 where father comes to her for comfort and love, installing her in
711 mother’s place. Instead of this wish-fulfilment scenario, she gets
8 its opposite; a father who ignores her, treats her like a stranger,
9 and acts like a stranger. This is the bitter fruit of her oedipal long-
10 ings, perhaps the result of her persecutory guilt. She ends up in a
1 terrible place, with no live and loving mother or father.
2 There is another element that has enormous importance in
3 working through oedipal longings, and that is the capacity of the
4 child to be on the outside the parental couple and to envisage and
5 subsequently manage standing alone. In the second dream
6 scenario, Mrs Z is left alone as a person in her own right. It is possi-
7 ble that the first couple is the one she feels herself to be in, and the
8 second is one she can envisage for the future, once outside of the
9 building, after the end of therapy, so to speak. It is possible that, at
211 this point in the therapy, she has started to entertain the possibility
1 of moving further away from the damaged couple and managing
2 to exist alone as a person in her own right.
3 If the dream does represent this more hopeful possibility for Mrs
4 Z, I believe it might also contain more sinister overtones, carried by
5 Mr Z. In the second scenario there is no mother: she doesn’t appear
6 to exist. Father stands for mother and father stuck together, and the
7 child is left unable to make contact. There is a dynamic within the
8 couple between these two interpretations. The more Mrs Z devel-
9 oped the capacity to exist as a separate person psychically, the more
30 depressed and deathly Mr Z became, which tended to stimulate her
1 role as resuscitator. A point was reached in this way where couple
2 therapy could no longer contain this dynamic between them, and it
3 was an important outcome of the therapy that Mr Z was referred
4 for individual help.
5
6
Counter-transference
7
8 As I discussed earlier in this chapter, the main source of under-
911 standing during the therapy came from my experience of being with
111 this couple. In the first year of therapy I was often drawn into a
2 battle that seemed never-ending, and without resolution. Each
3 partner invited me in to a “coupling” that felt stagnant and non-
4 developmental. Although they both talked about a desperate long-
5 ing for change, in fact the desire for change and knowledge seemed
6 to be lodged entirely in me, leaving the two of them free to fight
7 against me. I was left to experience a barren and hopeless inter-
8 course. At times, in order to avoid complete despair, I would find
9 myself being abrasive or overly insistent. At other times I would feel
10 in a trance-like state from which I could make intellectual comments
1 that kept me distant and safe from the emotional contact that felt too
2 dangerous and painful. I was experiencing in turn various states
3 of mind and roles in which they each found themselves. It was as if
4 it wasn’t enough for them to tell me about these frustrating experi-
5 ences—they could only trust me to know about them if they could
6 get me, quite concretely, to have these experiences myself.
711 Everything I said, Mrs Z argued against and angrily rejected.
8 Alternatively, Mr Z wholeheartedly agreed on the surface, but
9 secretly disagreed, or did not engage with what I said, and then
20 forgot it moments later. Though their methods looked different, for
1 each of them as individuals, and certainly as a couple, I was usually
2 in the “resuscitator” position. I tried to maintain my sense of hope
3 for them and their relationship, while they both reclined, so to
4 speak, near-dead, as resistant as iron, to their many attempts to
511 move or change anything. At times, they conveyed that I had
6 become a cold, harsh figure, imposing this nasty experience of
7 thinking upon them. I should understand that, really, underneath
8 their iron fortifications, they were so frail and delicate, all they
9 could bear was to be loved unreservedly and fed only very easily
311 digestible, tasty morsels.
1 I was also made to feel indispensable, in that their attendance
2 could feel interminable and yet, I often felt useless and in despair
3 about making any significant impact. It could feel as if there was no
4 real contact between them and me, just words or angry rebuffs. So
5 there was a cold “iron” quality, a feeling that I could never give or
6 receive genuine contact. The result was that I could feel hard-
7 worked but resentful and reluctant, as if I was being used and not
8 appreciated, just as each of them felt about the other. The marriage
911 and the therapy sometimes felt like a hospital for chronic illness,
111 and I was left feeling as if I was forcing unwanted hope and therapy
2 upon them.
3 As the therapy progressed, though, there were moments of real
4 contact with Mrs Z, where she seemed able to engage in a creative
5 intercourse. On one occasion she was able, for the first time, to
6 share real feelings of guilt about the destructive part she had played
711 in the relationship. Other times she talked more freely about her
8 early experiences, and was able to develop a less idealized picture
9 of her family. Initially, she would often forget or have obliterated
10 these experiences by the following week, and it took some time
1 before she was able to hold them in her mind and build on them.
2 Eventually, there was a sense of something cumulative developing
3 within her, and she was able to show some appreciation and grati-
4 tude. As Mrs Z changed, I noticed that my emotional repertoire
5 with them also changed. I felt warmer and more connected, and the
6 flow of my thoughts became less stilted.
7 There was a paradox here, in that the more it was possible to
8 make contact with Mrs Z, the more Mr Z became remote and harder
9 to reach. This increased my anxiety. There were times when I found
211 myself imagining that he might die. This, I think, reflected a shared
1 longing of the couple to be in a fused, blissful state where inter-
2 course was repudiated and differences hated. They were, I think,
3 also defending against hope and the promise of reparation turning
4 out to be yet again a cruel mirage. Not only that, but there was an
5 eroticization of this defence, so that it gained a life and momentum
6 of its own, complete with its own gratification. This element of their
7 shared situation, a constant attempt to return to a primal state of
8 fused togetherness with a primary object, helped to explain why it
9 looked as if there was no oedipal material with this couple. They
30 couldn’t bear to know that they were separate, nor that there was
1 “a third” with which to contend. Staying as they were, maintaining
2 a phantasy that they didn’t have to be separate people, was always
3 preferable to the experience of standing alone, taking risks and
4 suffering pain.
5
6
Discussion
7
8 Feldman’s (1989) paper, “The oedipus complex: manifestations in
911 the inner world and the therapeutic situation”, highlights how
111 patients bring oedipal dilemmas into the analysis in a way that
2 draws the analyst into a re-enactment of the child’s original
3 dilemma. He demonstrates the close relationship between the way
4 patients have negotiated the oedipus complex and the quality of
5 their thinking. It is clear from the paper how the analyst is bound
6 to be drawn into oedipal re-enactments. It is also true that partners
7 in a couple relationship subtly pressure each other into re-enact-
8 ments of their original, and as yet unresolved, oedipal drama.
9 When forming a couple relationship, each partner comes uncon-
10 sciously armed with a complex picture of what a couple looks like,
1 a kind of template for an intimate adult relationship. The partners
2 individually have an unconscious capacity to recognize something
3 shared in the other’s internal couple picture, in each other’s oedi-
4 pal configuration. It is likely that these factors create a resonance for
5 each of them, which seems to contribute towards the “draw” that
6 the individuals feel for each other at the start. After some time in
711 therapy, it should be possible to attempt to elaborate the nature of
8 the couple’s shared unconscious couple phantasy, and how it
9 informs their interactions with one another.
20 Partners in a couple will subtly nudge and pressure each other
1 until they are in a position which is close enough to a shared uncon-
2 scious phantasy about coupling. Therefore, we shouldn’t be sur-
3 prised that as soon as Mrs Z became more open and developed
4 herself in various ways, it had a powerful impact on her husband.
511 The more she gave up the role of resuscitator, the more lifeless and
6 depressed he became. The more she moved towards life and health,
7 the more vulnerable he became, and she found herself under pres-
8 sure to regress and reconstitute a static, psychic relationship with
9 him that reflected the picture in the dream.
311 Britton points out that “external reality may provide an oppor-
1 tunity for benign modification of such phantasies, or it may lend
2 substance to fears” (Britton, 1989, p. 93). Unhappily for Mrs Z, her
3 oedipal phantasy of victory over her parents was confirmed in
4 the external world when her parents separated and her mother
5 removed herself from the picture. The “missing mother” left scope
6 for the phantasy that she had won her father away from her mother,
7 damaging her mother so badly that, like Oedipus, she would
8 forever feel burdened with the guilt of the most terrible crime. This
911 resulted in Mrs Z becoming someone who needed not to achieve a
111 satisfying adult relationship, for fear that this would stimulate
2 intense persecutory guilt for the “crimes” against both parents that
3 she was unconsciously convinced she had committed.
4 Mr and Mrs Z were in a position with regard to each other that
5 made it very difficult for them to change. They were in the grip of
6 a shared oedipal phantasy in which two people ganged up against
711 a third, catastrophically. In Mrs Z’s phantasy, she gangs up with
8 father, and mother is banished and disappears as if dead. Mr Z’s
9 phantasy consisted of an earlier, more primitive, and even more
10 serious triangle. He conveyed that, when he was a baby, his
1 mother’s preoccupation with depression—almost as if the depres-
2 sion constituted a third object in its own right—meant that the
3 infant’s terror of being left alone to die was strengthened by his
4 experience of his mother being unavailable right from the start—an
5 iron mother. Bion (1962a) coined the term “nameless dread” to
6 denote the appalling “black hole” experience of the infant who is
7 left alone to manage his own terrors on too many occasions. He
8 desperately needs the mother to take in and bear his projections,
9 thereby conveying an experience back to him that these kinds of
211 terrors can be mentalized and borne. “If the mother does not accept
1 the projection, the infant feels that its feeling that it is dying is
2 stripped of such meaning as it has. It therefore reintrojects, not a
3 fear of dying made tolerable, but a nameless dread” (Bion, 1962a,
4 p. 116).
5 Later on, Mr Z’s awareness of father coincided with an experi-
6 ence of both parents being locked in a fused coupling that was
7 impenetrable to him, confirming the phantasy of the “combined
8 parental object”—which implies that intercourse has deadly conse-
9 quences as the two partners do not survive as separate individuals.
30 This scenario also rendered both parents unavailable to any sort of
1 flexible relating that would have enabled him as the child to expe-
2 rience and move through his painful oedipal feelings. This level of
3 exclusion and the lack of real contact and understanding for him
4 underscored his terror of being asked direct and personal questions,
5 which he seemed to experience as if they were cruel instruments of
6 torture designed to expose him to contempt.
7 Perhaps it was the differences between their individual oedipal
8 phantasies that provided the hope for intercourse between them.
911 Mr Z did convey, through his urgent pressure to find out my
111 thoughts and those of his wife, that he had managed to find some
2 life in his mother, albeit at a very early stage. It must have been this
3 early success that helped him find a wife who could battle through,
4 in the hope that she could help him battle through as well. He
5 seemed to hope that, as he didn’t know his own thoughts, she
6 would give him hers. However, as we have seen, she was convinced
7 that her fighting spirit was disastrous and led in unconscious phan-
8 tasy to her mother leaving and to the unforgivable crime of her own
9 tragic oedipal triumph. It then becomes clear that it was this pulling
10 in two different directions that drew them to seek help, as they were
1 each desperate to gain support for their own positions. Each felt
2 these longings and fears intensely, which led to an extremely
3 painful and destructive dynamic between them.
4 By the end of therapy, Mrs Z was managing to take more risks.
5 She was leading life with more vigour and vitality, although it was
6 kept within its limits and she still suffered enormously from fear.
711 However, her shift away from her husband created a greater sepa-
8 ration between them which, while it gave her more hope and a
9 vision for the future, left him more desolate. Although Mr Z would
20 mouth a hopeful stance, he became less and less able to act or think
1 for himself. Greater separation, and less safety from their stuck-
2 togetherness, seemed to leave him defeated by his own fears, which
3 had a catastrophic intensity, and also left him exposed to an
4 unmediated experience of his own cathected death-like state.
511 For some time, the oedipal elements in Mr and Mrs Z’s dilemma
6 were not obvious to me. Gradually, however, it became possible to
7 understand something of the complex interweaving and dynamic
8 interaction of their inner worlds. Mr Z, in particular, remained
9 depressed, but he conveyed that his depression was made more
311 bearable by feeling that he understood a little more about what he
1 and his wife had been caught up in; and he also felt, and was, less
2 blamed. While the therapy could not claim to have dramatically
3 and positively transformed the couple’s lives, it seemed that they
4 at least experienced a quieter quality of containment by being
5 attended to and thought about closely over a sustained period of
6 time. This helped them to tolerate their situation and to begin to get
7 some distance from it and to reflect on it, which in itself modified
8 and softened the former deadly, over-entangled and rigid internal
911 structure of their marriage.
111 CHAPTER TEN

2
3
4
5
6
711 No Sex couples, catastrophic change,
8
9
and the primal scene*
10
1
2
Francis Grier
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
211 Introduction
1
A
2 common presenting problem to the marital psychothera-
3 pist is that of No Sex. Sometimes a couple names this as
4 their principal problem at a first interview. Often, however,
5 they will be too embarrassed to be so frank, but it will soon become
6 apparent that there is this crucial absence in their relationship. In
7 this chapter I propose to attempt to make some inroads into under-
8 standing this situation. I want to concentrate, in particular, on how
9 such difficulties often arise when the partners share a history of
30 inadequate working through of certain aspects of the oedipus
1 complex.
2 I will use three clinical illustrations, which represent variations
3 on a theme. The variations are, I suspect, quite commonplace,
4 although the particular version that any couple develops is their
5 own. The underlying theme consists of the dynamic relationships
6
7 *This paper was presented at a Scientific Meeting of the Tavistock Clinic on
8 8 May 2000. It was published in the British Journal of Psychotherapy (2001), Vol.
911 17(4).
201
111 between the child and the parents in intercourse in the primal
2 scene. The three variations represent typical defence systems
3 erected by couples against the psychic pain evoked in attempting to
4 accept the reality of the primal scene. The variation of my first
5 couple, the Flints, consists of their not being able to bear the fact
6 that it is the parents who couple. They insist on a version in which
7 the child and one of the parents come together, the other parent
8 becoming the excluded one. The Grays, my second couple, did not
9 dispute that it was the parents who were intimate, but they could
10 only conceive of the excluded child being cruelly deprived. This
1 justified their complaining about this forever and ever. The varia-
2 tion or solution of my third couple, the Forsyths, was to eliminate
3 the child in the triangle and hence to construct a non-procreative
4 version of adult intercourse. There was to be no problem or pain,
5 because no demanding child would eventuate from the intercourse.
6 For all three couples, their coming to therapy was evidence that
711 they knew something was seriously wrong and that they needed to
8 change. However, when confronted with the reality of the demands
9 made by psychic development, they reacted as if faced with a cata-
20 strophe.1
1
2
3
Theories of the primal scene and catastrophic change
4
511 In his paper “The oedipus situation and the depressive position”,
6 Britton explores the great developmental significance of the child’s
7 unconscious phantasies about the parents’ sexual intercourse. He
8 comments that, though Freud explored the primal scene to some
9 extent,
311
1 he never incorporated the primal scene and its associated phan-
2 tasies as a principal component of the oedipus complex. In contrast
3 to this, Klein not only did so but made it central in her account of
4 what she called the ‘oedipus situation’ (Klein, 1928, 1945). [Britton,
5 1992, p. 36]
6
7 My purpose in this chapter is to show examples of the pathol-
8 ogy that can ensue in adult heterosexual relationships when indi-
911 viduals couple who have not been able to adequately work through
NO SEX COUPLES, CATASTROPHIC CHANGE, AND THE PRIMAL SCENE 203
111 this all-important aspect of the oedipus situation. Not that any indi-
2 vidual or couple can ever fully meet this challenge as, by its very
3 nature, it is a life-long task. I hope to show that, if two individuals
4 come together who have been overwhelmed by its difficulties and
5 opted for maintaining rigid defences against working through the
6 oedipus complex, rather than continuing the struggle, they will
711 almost inevitably encounter serious relationship problems. Often
8 these will erupt, appropriately enough, in the arena of sex.
9 One might say that it is precisely because of the impossibility of
10 full working through of the oedipus complex during the growing
1 child’s developmental phases that continued engagement becomes
2 a universal aspect of the motivation for adult sexual relating. What
3 has not been processed in the turbulent periods of infancy, child-
4 hood, and adolescence remains to be engaged with as an adult
5 sexual being, in addition to those new tasks which are specific to
6 this epoch. If one thinks in terms of each new stage of the life-cycle
7 throwing up developmental crises, challenges, and opportunities,
8 then adult sexual relating offers the chance to engage fully with
9 one’s oedipal difficulties and dilemmas. For all of us, this chance is
211 like a double-edged sword, as seizing it offers the opportunity for
1 growth, but it also forces one to engage with one’s unresolved
2 nightmares. Small wonder, then, that some partners, who may often
3 have unconsciously chosen each other in the hope that the comple-
4 mentarity of their problems may help each to become allies of the
5 other in taking up the developmental challenge, instead uncon-
6 sciously prioritize, work out, and put into practice a strong,
7 combined, anti-developmental defence.
8 One of the difficulties with this strategy is that it can only work
9 (if at all) on a short-term and superficial basis. The psychic subset
30 of the potentially mature, developmental couple within what one
1 might refer to as “the total couple” becomes increasingly frustrated
2 with this anti-developmental strategy. They know that something is
3 terribly wrong, particularly if it results in symptoms like the non-
4 occurrence of sex. However, not only do they not know consciously
5 how to engage with the problem, but unconsciously they fear that
6 were they to do so, the consequences would be catastrophic.
7 It was to describe just such situations, with their attendant anxi-
8 eties, that Bion (1965) coined the term “catastrophic change”. My
911 understanding and application of this core theoretical concept in
111 terms of the couple is as follows. A psychologically healthy part of

2 the joint couple ego—the couple analogy to what Bion (1957)
3 referred to with regard to the individual as the “non-psychotic part
4 of the personality”—wishes to develop, but its dilemma is that it
5 simultaneously fears change. When that fear becomes strong
6 enough, it induces regression in the couple psyche, and joins forces
7 with the anti-developmental aspect of the couple—the psychotic
8 part of the couple personality—that actively hates truth and psychic
9 reality. Psychic reality at this point would entail recognition of the
10 need to risk taking up the challenge of change and development. A
1 lie is preferred over this truth, the deceit being that maintaining the
2 status quo is better and wiser than taking the unknown step into the
3 future, portrayed as leading inevitably to catastrophe.
4 This version contains much truth, which is why it is so beguil-
5 ing. It is highly likely that taking the developmental step will result
6 in major, probably terrifying, internal turbulence, leading to a need
711 to work out all over again the partners’ understanding of them-
8 selves in relation to each other and the world. So, “better the devil
9 one knows”. The forces ranked in triumphant opposition against it
20 may now defeat the “developmental couple”. It is crucial that, if
1 such a couple manages to get to therapy, the therapist tries to link
2 with this “developmental couple”, who correspond to what Rosen-
3 feld (1987) called in the individual “the sane, dependent part of the
4 patient”; but if he does so, he can expect to become an object of
511 suspicion, resentment and hatred to the dominating, allied forces of
6 fear and hatred within the couple.
7
8
9 The Flints: the myth of the excluded parent
311
1 The Flints presented with a case of no sex after the birth of their one
2 and only child, a daughter. They were in their thirties, they had
3 married in their early twenties, and their child was four years of age
4 at the start of therapy. They both agreed that their earlier married
5 life had been quite satisfactory, both emotionally and sexually.
6 However, the birth of their child had presented them with a
7 tornado. Elizabeth had a puerperal psychosis. Andrew had to look
8 after his wife and their child for many months. Sometimes he had
911 to take the child away from Elizabeth for a couple of days, for fear
111 that she might kill her. Elizabeth’s psychosis took the form of
2 immensely strong manic-depressive swings of mood, and it was
3 when she was at her lowest that she would think it in her baby’s
4 best interests to kill her rather than let her suffer the cruelties of
5 life. With the help of psychiatric medication, her mental state
6 improved, and things gradually got better for the couple. By the
711 time they came to us, they were happier and able to live a more
8 normal life. Elizabeth was intensely conscious of all that her
9 husband had heroically done. She was very grateful to him. How-
10 ever, he had only coped so well by becoming quite split off from
1 many of his emotions, so that he could concentrate on doing his
2 duty. Now, when circumstances allowed it and his wife required it,
3 he could not retrieve his former warmth, emotional or sexual,
4 towards Elizabeth. In addition, she, despite and because of her
5 indebtedness, became furious with him for his coldness; and her
6 rage was massive.
7 The couple engaged in their therapy, and fairly soon their rela-
8 tionship ameliorated in many areas, but not sexually. As therapists2
9 we had constantly borne their unresolved sexual abstinence in
211 mind, and had often suggested that material which was not overtly
1 sexual (e.g. their anger, need to control, emotional withdrawal) was
2 played out in the sexual arena.
3 Over the course of time, we became aware of some important
4 similarities in their individual relationships to us. They both tended
5 to engage in a more adventurous, sometimes excited, manner with
6 me, while they could be subtly dismissive and less vital towards my
7 female therapist partner. This dynamic also influenced our therapist
8 relationship, so that I could become rather full of myself at my
9 colleague’s expense, and she could become too backward in coming
30 forward. We then noticed that I would be rather patronizing
1 towards her, and for her part, she would feel not only resentful but,
2 not in accordance with her usual professional character, also rather
3 impotent towards me. This counter-transference experience was
4 disruptive, painful and difficult to process. However, we perse-
5 vered, and gradually discovered how this linked with the deeply
6 held attitudes of both Andrew and Elizabeth towards their parents,
7 and of their internal parents towards each other. Thus, Elizabeth
8 idealized her energetic and potent father, and denigrated her
911 mother—not openly, but subtly, by disparagement. She also felt
111 that her father related similarly to his wife, yet could get excited
2 about his relationship with her, his daughter. Andrew spoke of
3 giving up on his rather depressed mother who never experienced
4 anything in her life with enjoyment and eagerness, including him,
5 her only child. He had turned to his father, a rather wordless, but
6 very competent and warm-hearted man, with whom he had forged
7 a strong bond. He thought his father had given up on women from
8 his disappointing experience with his wife.
9 Much of the content of the therapeutic process flowed from this.
10 We explored Elizabeth’s oedipal phantasy of vanquishing the
1 mother and gaining the father; and we realized that she risked cata-
2 strophically losing this special place by becoming a mother herself,
3 especially since she had produced a daughter. We noted her
4 extreme reluctance to relinquish the gratification of excitement that
5 came with hanging on to this position. We saw this re-enacted in the
6 transference to me, and to other men in their current lives. We
711 understood that part of their marital problems also lay in her con-
8 stantly comparing Andrew with her father unfavourably, partly
9 because in making the choice for a husband the inevitable conse-
20 quence would be to lose her phantasized incestuous relationship
1 with her father. We began to understand that Andrew contributed
2 to all of this. By modelling himself on his own father and modelling
3 his relationship with his wife on his parents’ relationship (as he per-
4 ceived it), he made himself rather wordless and competent, not
511 exciting, and he denigrated and patronized his wife. Severe prob-
6 lems were bound to ensue.
7 Nevertheless, there was a further counter-transference experi-
8 ence, much less frequent, which challenged this set of relationships.
9 On odd occasions, Andrew clearly felt special warmth towards my
311 co-therapist. He would miss her if she had to miss a session. Where-
1 as Elizabeth would set up a triumphantly exciting relationship with
2 me, Andrew never quite conquered my co-therapist in this overt
3 manner. He would tend to build up a warm relationship with me
4 (very importantly, for here we could see for ourselves his capacity
5 for warmth and vulnerability) and then apparently feel rather sorry
6 for my co-therapist who was left out of this—not always patroniz-
7 ingly, but sometimes with a sense of affection and concern. This was
8 hard to process, because almost all of Andrew’s emotional activities
911 towards my colleague were exclusively non-verbal. However, we
111 began to find ourselves giving more weight to certain parts of their
2 narrative than hitherto. For example, Elizabeth told how Andrew
3 would sometimes telephone his mother secretly. Then, in one
4 session, they brought together two incidents, apparently unrelated.
5 They had actually had sex, and good sex at that, initiated by Eliza-
6 beth, but which Andrew had then asked her not to repeat. They had
711 also had a row, because Elizabeth was furious that Andrew wanted
8 to celebrate his birthday by having his mother to stay.
9 The first point seemed almost unbelievable. Here was a couple
10 who had both yearned to get back into a sexual relationship;
1 the man had had huge problems with impotence, to the extent of
2 having medical examinations and advice. Yet when confronted by
3 the evidence that he could not only get an erection but also use it,
4 experience pleasure, and give his wife satisfaction, his response was
5 to ask his wife not to stimulate him again. In explanation and
6 defence, Andrew could only say that he thought his wife was offer-
7 ing him sex without love, yet he himself realized immediately that
8 this was not true.
9 The couple regarded the matter of the invitation to his mother
211 as an entirely separate matter. It had occurred a few days later.
1 However, to us it seemed that they were managing to bring to our
2 notice the intimate unconscious relationship between these two
3 instances, dynamically powerful in the extreme. For, just as the
4 exclusive dyadic unconscious relationship between Elizabeth and
5 her father attacked the couple’s adult sexual relating, so did
6 Andrew’s relationship with his mother. It began to become clear
7 that, internally and unconsciously, underneath his warm man-to-
8 man son–father relationship, which included a sad and worried
9 casting off of the mother, paradoxically and simultaneously there
30 existed a strong phantasy of an exclusive, dyadic union with his
1 mother. Elizabeth was right to be jealous. And just as it was hard
2 for Elizabeth to contemplate losing her exciting relationship with
3 her father for an ordinary adult partner, so for Andrew it was felt
4 as too much to lose that special closeness with his internal mother,
5 particularly as she was depicted there as so depressed that to sepa-
6 rate from her would undoubtedly cause him great anxiety and
7 guilt, both depressive and persecutory in tone.
8 After nearly two years of steady therapeutic work, in which the
911 couple really began to internalize and digest different ways of
111 understanding their relationship, a period of some months

2 followed that was characterized by a flat, depressed, and hostile
3 tone. They voiced their doubts as to whether they any longer loved
4 each other at all, and as to whether it was worth continuing the
5 struggle to develop their relationship. It was a depressing period
6 for all of us, but there followed a time of greater stability in the
7 marriage. The couple began to find more happiness together,
8 including sexually, and they even began to contemplate the possi-
9 bility of having a second child.
10 I think this flat, hopeless period was a symptom of anxiety
1 about catastrophic change. It was as if, as a result of their engage-
2 ment with their therapy, the couple found their ability continually
3 and repetitively to substitute omnipotent phantasies for disap-
4 pointing realities was fast waning, and so they found themselves
5 faced with the unwelcome fact that the only way forward was to
6 take up the developmental path of attempting actually to form an
711 adult—including sexual—relationship with each other. But this step
8 seemed catastrophic, as it entailed trying to deactivate their previ-
9 ous defensive strategies and investing energy into something they
20 had written off long ago: the possibility of two adults engaging in
1 a mutually satisfying, potentially procreative, relationship. The
2 hopeless period perhaps consisted of the time spent between these
3 two alternatives.
4
511
A session
6
7 An example of these different progressive and defensively regres-
8 sive trends, oscillating and vying with each other for supremacy,
9 came in a session during the period in which they were beginning to
311 contemplate whether to try for a second child. They had introduced
1 this important idea and we had discussed their feelings about it for
2 a couple of sessions. For the next session, I was absent; for the
3 following one, some of which I will report here, my co-therapist was
4 absent. Both these absences were unavoidable, and we had warned
5 the Flints about them well in advance.
6
7 Andrew started by telling me all about the previous week’s session.
8 After some time, I pointed out that he had a picture of my co-therapist
911 and me in which we seemed to be like parents. Either we did not have
111 “intercourse” at all or, if we did, our relating did not apparently
2 include ordinary care and concern for our children. In his mind, I had
3 not met with my co-therapist, or, if I had, I had not asked her about the
4 session, nor had she any wish to tell me about it. Elizabeth said she
thought differently from Andrew in one respect, as she would expect
5
the two therapists to liaise in a quick, generalized way, not bothering
6
with the detail of the session.
711
8 They then went on to tell me about another potential project. Andrew
9 said that he had for a long time wished to develop his own business in
10 a particular line, and he had recently been seriously wondering if now
1 might not be a good time to give up his job and try to make his dream
an actuality. Of course, he could only do it if they were prepared to
2
cope with a sizeable drop in income and financial security in the short
3
term, and Elizabeth’s help would be vital. She appeared to be very
4
much in favour. During the last week, she had moved out with their
5
daughter and stayed with friends for a couple of days so that Andrew
6 could formulate some practical plans, undisturbed by family. When
7 she returned she discovered that, although he had done a lot of good
8 groundwork, including arranging a meeting at the end of the week
9 with potentially interested financiers, he had also dramatically lost con-
211 fidence in himself. So she put Humpty-Dumpty together again, partly
1 by reassuring him emotionally but principally by becoming very prac-
2 tical. She examined all his notes and ideas, found unrecognized flaws
3 and constructively criticized his work, adding her own thoughts,
4 finally helping him to put together an even better package of initial
5 ideas for his important meeting. Andrew had quite recovered his confi-
6 dence through Elizabeth’s helpful interventions, and the financial
7 meeting had gone well.
8 They themselves referred in passing to this project as “Andrew’s
9 baby”, an accurate interpretation in my opinion. However, they then
30 continued talking to me about their lack of confidence concerning these
1 two projects, the actual baby and the potential new business. The more
2 they talked, the more anxious and depressed about the future they
3 became, and the more certain that if they actually tried to put these
4 ideas into effect, they would surely come to nothing or eventuate in a
5 disaster. It was as though they were beseeching me for help as a good
6 figure, but simultaneously I was also becoming contaminated by the
evolving gloom.
7
8 I think the couple was showing me the way their minds often worked
911 together as a combined unit. Through their narrative, they told me a
111 story that demonstrated the way they could work well as a couple. It
2 was an impressive story of purposive complementarity. There was a
3 mixture in it of ideas and fantasies (about the potential business
4 project), and evidence of their capacity to transform these into practice,
in reality. Plans had been written down, and a meeting with real
5
financiers had been organized, well prepared for, and had taken place
6
successfully. An inextricable part of the story was their emotional duet:
7
Andrew’s desire to act on his dream; Elizabeth supporting him at some
8 cost to herself (her moving out); his emotional collapse; and her
9 successful repair of him. It was a picture of satisfactory adult inter-
10 course. However, they had then continued talking to me about the
1 future as if none of us had attended to this narrative. We were all
2 expected to believe that their plans would come to nothing, fizzling out
3 or erupting in chaos; that Andrew would be incapable in the business
4 world and Elizabeth would again prove a catastrophic mother.
5 I was experienced ambiguously. I had started by being predominantly
6 a good, helpful figure, but as they felt themselves becoming more
711 acutely dependent on me they seemed to become resentful, as if I were
8 turning in their eyes into someone who had contempt for their needi-
9 ness. Finally, I seemed to have evolved into a figure who had no doubt
20 that they were arrogant, stupid, and wrong to imagine they could actu-
1 ally carry off these two creative projects. This was a verdict they hated
2 me for, but which they themselves seemed fully to endorse. Nor had
they themselves given any weight to a most significant detail in the real
3
event they had narrated, that it was Andrew, not Elizabeth, who had
4
psychically collapsed; and it was Elizabeth, not Andrew, who did the
511
repair work. This was a conspicuous reversal of their habitual and fixed
6 picture of who was strong and who was weak in their relationship.
7
8 Later in the session, they spoke about having enjoyed watching Mission
9 Impossible on the TV together. They described the heroes and heroines
of the drama in tones that seemed to me to be clear pointers to rather
311
excited identifications. It seemed that one strategy for coping with the
1
huge internal attack on the developmental processes we had just
2
witnessed was to “ride high”, to picture their projects to themselves as
3 “Missions Impossible”, and themselves as the protagonists. What was
4 avoided and pictured as far more alarming was taking on “Mission
5 Possible”, i.e., portraying to themselves their projects of having a baby
6 or running a business as quite possible, potentially within their grasp,
7 even if difficult. When I interpreted this, the couple said they felt
8 “depressed”, but to me they seemed more grounded and thoughtful,
911 and less manic. I thought one of the reasons they lost heart and needed
111 to “ride high” was because they felt they lacked internal parents who
2 would back them up, bear them in mind and be interested in them
3 when tackling the ongoing problems of ordinary life.
4
I think the act of telling me this story of a successful creative and
5
cooperative intercourse immediately provoked an internal, envious
6
attack on the parental couple. They attempted to protect themselves
711
from attack, firstly by giving up, and subsequently by adopting a
8
manic defence. However, after this was interpreted, they seemed
9
more grounded, more realistically depressed and more potentially
10
creative.
1
Their case illustrates Britton’s (1989) thesis, that crucial in work-
2
ing through the oedipus situation is the development of what he
3
terms “the third position”; in which one can know one is excluded
4
from the parental couple, and yet still know oneself to be loved by
5
the parents, so learning to tolerate this position. Both Andrew and
6
Elizabeth were possessed by a variation on the primal scene in
7
which they were not excluded by both parents; instead, each excit-
8 edly phantasized that he or she was in an exclusive dyad with one
9 parent, while the other parent, not the child, was in the intolerable
211 cast-out position. This position itself was bad enough, but to
1 contemplate trying to alter it provoked anxieties of catastrophic
2 proportions—which had, in the first instance, necessitated psychi-
3 atric treatment.
4
5
6
The Grays: the myth of the excluded child
7
8 A different dynamic obtained in the case of the Grays. They also
9 had an only child, and had not had sex together for many years,
30 except for isolated instances.
1 Their chief complaint was the state of nearly unremitting war
2 that existed between them. This situation had been chronic, lasting
3 many years. This couple had seemed to use therapy quite well, in
4 the sense that gradually they had used us to help them to listen to
5 each other, begin to hear each other’s point of view, and so on. Their
6 relationship did get better. However, it would constantly threaten
7 to slip back into mindless warfare, and all too frequently it did. On
8 those occasions, it would usually take a long time for their rela-
911 tionship to improve again. The wife tended to sit around (literally)
111 at home, fuming when her husband was absent and attacking him
2 with the utmost ferocity when he was present; the husband would
3 abscond hopelessly to the pub. If, when things got better, he spent
4 more time with her, she would then find a different pretext for
5 attacking him (with which he would comply by providing her with
6 the opportunity for just such pretexts); consequently he would
7 abandon her again for the pub. With regard to the sexual arena she
8 would complain that she did not want him coming in to her bed
9 late at night smelling of beer, having abandoned her to her rage
10 earlier. She demanded a separate bed in a separate room. When
1 things got better, they sometimes even managed to get together
2 sexually. However, not for long: these disquieting and unwelcome
3 outbursts of peace and harmony were soon quelled by a victorious
4 recall to war.
5 In the transference, my co-therapist and I realized that we were
6 being consistently idealized. It was not just that neither spouse
711 became angry with us even when we gave just cause for anger (e.g.,
8 through ordinary mistakes), but that even when we made deep
9 interpretations that must have caused pain, this pain was denied.
20 Moreover, the couple’s chronic tendency easily to slip back into war
1 indicated that these interpretations were not being metabolized and
2 digested. As therapists, we were increasingly frustrated by this too
3 frequently repeated negative therapeutic reaction.
4 It became clear that each cherished a grudge. Their actions
511 proclaimed that, despite their conscious desire to get better, they
6 continually preferred to nurse their grievance. In their marriage,
7 their grievances were against each other; but the depth and dyna-
8 mism of these grudges suggested that these were new editions of
9 what they had originally brought to their relationship from child-
311 hood. We first recognized this when Florence underlined her diag-
1 nosis of their problem. She said that they had never had a good,
2 romantic period when they first went out together. We gradually
3 realized that these words had a deeper significance.
4 On the face of it, each came from quite different families.
5 Florence was an adopted child in a small family; Tony one of many
6 children. However, similarities began to emerge in their experience
7 of their families. Florence’s adoption had taken place immediately
8 after birth, and she was never told about it until, as a teenager,
911 someone in the town mentioned it to her in the assumption that she
111 knew about it. She told us that when she approached her mother
2 about this news, her response was to demand Florence’s sympathy
3 for her predicament and difficulties. Florence felt that her mother
4 apparently did not think she needed either sympathy or an explan-
5 ation. To Florence, this made sense of some of her earlier childhood
6 experiences: her own sense of never quite belonging and her
711 intense jealousy of her father playing with the other child, a natural
8 daughter born soon after Florence’s arrival. For his part, Tony was
9 the sixth child of many, all born fairly close together. Family life was
10 regimented like an old-fashioned boarding school. In this way, all
1 the children were adequately looked after by their parents and by
2 each other. They could talk about this, but could not contemplate or
3 voice thoughts and feelings about not getting any individual atten-
4 tion from the parents, in particular the mother. Both felt that their
5 individual histories were marked by a real degree of psychological
6 deprivation. Florence’s view was that her parents could not
7 empathize with what the experience of a baby torn at birth from her
8 biological mother might be. Similarly, it felt to Tony that his parents
9 could never imaginatively enter their son’s experience of a genuine
211 lack of enough individual love, care, and attention.
1 Tony and Florence met each other in their early twenties, and
2 soon married. It is not difficult to see that each of them brought a
3 basic attitude of grievance towards their parents. However, what
4 they also shared was that they felt their grievances to be quite
5 unjustified. After all, Tony’s parents could justifiably answer him
6 that they had done their best, and Florence’s similarly. How could
7 the child ever complain? Therefore, the characteristic form their
8 resentment took was of guilty, passive aggression. In addition, the
9 narrative of their marriage suggests that they continued along these
30 lines, combining their forces. The psychological events of their
1 years in marital therapy, particularly their continual backsliding
2 and defeating of the therapists’ and their own best endeavours to
3 improve matters, suggest that there was something quite strongly
4 and actively anti-developmental operating in addition to their
5 understandable previous repetition of these dynamics, which up to
6 now had been unconscious. It was as though there was a secret
7 gratification at work in each of them, destroying any good links
8 between them that might develop, including the good sexual inter-
911 course they occasionally managed to re-establish.
111 Discussion
2
3 This case underlined for us the therapeutic importance of trying to
4 understand the couple’s shared unconscious phantasies. When
5 Florence complained that they had had no real romance at the start
6 of their relationship, she could be heard as voicing a deep grievance
7 on behalf of both spouses that each felt he/she had had no good or
8 long enough period of idealization or special individual attention
9 from the parents, especially the mother. But what was more malig-
10 nant was the unspoken and deeply unconscious vow that, since
1 their romantic start to life had not been as desired, then, rather than
2 make use of the marriage as a second opportunity to make good a
3 flawed beginning, the marriage would be used to repeat the bad
4 experience, to harbour an everlasting grudge about this and, in
5 “justified” retaliation, to wreak eternal vengeance on the parents, in
6 the forms of the partner and the couple. The marriage had become
711 so internally organized around these grievances and the gratifica-
8 tion of nursing them that it was almost impossible to think of giving
9 them up, to bear their loss. The rewards of development, by con-
20 trast, seemed much more uncertain and perhaps less exciting. Thus,
1 the upholding and repetition of their grievances also protected
2 them from unconsciously feared further disappointments.
3 Like the Flints, the Grays could not bear to work through their
4 combined oedipal development. They apparently found that the
511 degree of mental pain they would need to tolerate was too great.
6 In eternally justifying their grievance, they were defending them-
7 selves from this pain by clinging to the omnipotent position of
8 the young child who is always in the right, and who can only
9 deal with frustration by accusing and hating his objects, taking
311 up a superior, righteous position. Their developmental challenge
1 consisted partly in bearing the pain of relinquishing this position,
2 through mourning what they felt they had never had. However,
3 this development was feared as catastrophic because it would entail
4 their stepping out of such familiar, well-worn grooves towards
5 quite unknown, frightening territory. Above all, it would entail at
6 its core the surrender of the enormous gratification of the justified,
7 superior position.
8 The Grays seemed to share a basic unconscious phantasy of the
911 primal scene as consisting of parents engaged in an intercourse that
111 utterly—and intentionally—deprived their children of their love,

2 which they hogged all to themselves. Tony and Florence therefore
3 felt they were entitled to feel constant resentment against such
4 depriving and abusive parents. Yet, this version did not quite fit
5 with other perceptions of their parents or their therapists, who at
6 their core felt not greedy and evil, but loving. So the “developmen-
711 tal couple” within the Grays longed to recognize another version of
8 the primal scene in which the parents had a right to private sexual
9 love from which they would properly exclude the children without
10 depriving them of their love. The Grays sometimes imagined that
1 we therapists might well often be too busy, whether with each other
2 or attending to the demands of other patients, to be constantly
3 thinking specifically about them; and yet that did not mean that we
4 had utterly withdrawn our interest and concern from them. They
5 also occasionally slipped—as it were, by mistake—into just such a
6 satisfactory intercourse themselves, both sexual and emotional, but
7 after a while they would usually regress to their old, sterile warfare.
8 Life was much more exciting here. Both they and their objects
9 tended to be very high or very low—and it seemed that they were
211 too addicted to this excitement to bear parting from it.
1 The Grays’ way of handling their difficulties and defending
2 against the oedipal challenges posed by development illustrates a
3 couple version of what John Steiner (1993) has called a “psychic
4 retreat”. They often tantalizingly demonstrated their capacity to
5 enter upon a much more developmental oscillation between the
6 paranoid–schizoid and depressive positions; but then they would
7 slide into this dead-end, anti-developmental warfare as a place in
8 which the pain, uncertainty, and tasks of the depressive position
9 were avoided. Their particular psychic retreat was characterized
30 primarily by their preference for nursing their grievances (Steiner,
1 1993) rather than relinquishing them.
2
3
4 The Forsyths: the myth of the non-existent children
5
6 I have tried to illustrate some of the complex and powerful uncon-
7 scious oedipal dynamics that can be operating when a couple
8 complains that they can no longer make love. I would like to end
911 with a short example of a situation that can apparently turn this
111 clinical picture on its head, and yet can illustrate similar psychic
2 defences against oedipal working through.
3 Jessica and Mark Forsyth encountered intense difficulties soon
4 after the arrival of their two children, especially after their second.
5 They were fairly typical problems (although, of course, not typical
6 to them), consisting of two main strands. They had conceived their
7 children sooner than expected, so that, although there was no doubt
8 that they were loved, their early arrival also made them resented.
9 The resentment of spouses was re-directed from their children on to
10 each other. The second strand was interconnected, as both parents
1 were ambitious and career-minded. Severe quarrels arose over the
2 balance between them of child-care and professional work. They
3 fought bitterly, and contemplated divorce as a despairing solution
4 to their problems.
5 After we had seen them for some months, we realized that they
6 had never spoken about their sexual relationship. We imagined it
711 might well be impaired by their problems, especially as these were
8 directly linked with their procreativity. We had also noticed a qual-
9 ity of excitement in their fights, which suggested that their sexual
20 energy might be finding a sublimated outlet there. We wondered if
1 they were abstaining from sex for long periods, and whether this
2 factor might be exacerbating their problems. To our surprise, the
3 couple told us that sex between them was good, and in fact, was the
4 only good thing that they could consistently rely on. Shortly after
511 this, they left the therapy rather suddenly. We had a sense that there
6 was a connection between what they had said and their leaving.
7 We were curious as to why this intelligent and reflective couple
8 were themselves not more curious, as well as anxious, about the
9 paradox of their sexual relationship flourishing in the midst of their
311 other difficulties. We did not think they were deceiving us about the
1 satisfactory quality of their sexual love. They did not remain in
2 therapy long enough for us to follow this through, but it would
3 seem that they had managed to split off and encapsulate their
4 sexual relating from the rest of their relationship. This meant that it
5 could not be harmed by the poison in the rest of the system, but it
6 also meant that whatever was genuinely dynamically loving and
7 developmental in their love-making was not given the chance to
8 have a constructive effect upon the impaired aspects of their rela-
911 tionship.
111 Discussion
2
3 Britton writes:
4
The oedipal phantasy may become an effort to . . . deny the reality
5
of the parental sexual relationship. . . . The oedipal romance may be
6
preserved, by splitting it off into an area of thinking protected from
711 reality and preserved, as Freud described, like Indians in a reser-
8 vation (Freud, 1924). This reservation . . . can become the place
9 where some people spend most of their lives, in which case their
10 external relationships are only used to enact these dramas to give
1 a spurious claim of reality to their fantasies which lack “psychic
2 reality”. [Britton, 1992, p. 40]
3
4 The Forsyths, like the Flints and the Grays, were taking steps to
5 avoid meeting their developmental oedipal challenge. Part of the
6 oedipal reality is that, when the parents do couple in the primal
7 scene, they may produce real babies—who, once born (and even
8 before), demand to be looked after and insist that the family is
9 reshaped to include them. The Forsyths tried to construct a version
211 of the primal scene that would protect them from this procreative
1 reality. Psychically it was probably not wholly true that they had
2 initially desired children but then found it difficult to cope with
3 them, although this is, of course, how it felt to them consciously. On
4 a different, unconscious plane, however, it seemed as though they
5 had continuously been collaborating in maintaining this psychic
6 retreat—consisting of encapsulated, romantic, non-procreative
7 intercourse—from reality. This retreat was rudely shattered by the
8 arrival of real children with real demands. The Forsyths faced the
9 painful need to get to know their intensely narcissistic aspects if
30 their adult, parental relationship was to develop. Their reaction to
1 this inexorable, developmental demand for change, which felt cata-
2 strophic to them, was to opt decisively to maintain their psychic
3 retreat. Accordingly, they left therapy.
4 One could so easily imagine this couple presenting, like the
5 others, as a No Sex couple if their bad relationship had affected
6 their sexual intercourse. Clearly, the fact that it hadn’t gave this
7 couple a lifeline. They didn’t use it for life, however, but to avoid
8 being more fully aware of the impact of their difficulties. And yet,
911 it would only be through allowing their difficulties to impact upon
111 them, which might well have involved pain in their sexual relating,
2 that their development would have been spurred on.
3
4
5 Conclusion
6
7 In this chapter, I have tried to illustrate some of the consequences
8 that can befall couples who have got together on the basis of a
9 shared, complementary, and inadequate working through of primal
10 scene aspects of the oedipus situation. Their combined defensive,
1 regressive, and anti-developmental characteristics, strategies, and
actions have, in the event of their marriage, proved stronger than
2
their combined developmental and progressive forces, resulting in
3
their sexual relating—as well as other aspects of their relation-
4
ships—being drastically affected.
5
I have illustrated some of the events that can consequently occur
6
in the therapeutic arena. My last two couples, the Grays and the
711
Forsyths, show how defences and anti-developmental forces can
8
strive with a high degree of success against development in therapy.
9
I suggest that an enormously strong factor in all such cases is each
20
couple’s different capacity to tolerate the anxieties associated with
1
change, feared as catastrophic. The desire to change is not enough in
2
itself. Actually to change, to move into new, unknown territory, can
3
be so alarming as to keep the couple continually oscillating between
4
development and a more fixed position, a psychic retreat; or very
511
high anxiety coupled with a real hatred of reality and development
6
can compel a couple into an even more drastic flight from develop-
7
ment into the reassuring arms of an even more rigid and enduring
8
pathological solution. However, my first couple, the Flints, show
9
most clearly a couple that have been able slowly to begin to bear
311
the—often terrible—mental pain of having their inner world scenar-
1 ios become conscious through reflection and interpretation. They
2 have been able to move towards the much more desirable outcome
3 of a creative relationship, possibly even a procreative one.
4
5
6
Note
7
8 1. I have tried to disguise my patients’ material so that, I hope, only perti-
911 nent aspects remain accessible for discussion. In all three cases my
111 understanding of the clinical material has developed largely through

2 discussion with my co-therapists and supervisor, to all of whom I
3 would like to express my gratitude, while absolving them of responsi-
4 bility for the particular opinions expressed here.
5 2. For this therapy, as with both the other clinical examples discussed in
6 this chapter, I was co-working with another therapist, in each case a
711 different co-therapist.
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10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
211
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
911
111
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
711
8
9
20
1
2
3
4
511
6
7
8
9
311
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
911
111 INDEX
2
3
4
5
6
711
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
adolescence/adolescent, 10, 13–14, 139, 147–148, 181, 199, 203–204,
211
32, 73, 75–77, 79–81, 84–88, 90, 221–222
1 92, 100, 114, 158, 171, 174, 203 Birkstead-Breen, D., 52, 54, 67–68,
2 agoraphobia/agoraphobic, 43, 52, 222
3 64, 69–70 bisexual, 86–87
4 anxiety, 10, 17–18, 36, 41, 44–45, 51, Boswell, J., 107, 222
61, 64, 66, 68, 97–98, 111, 143, breast, 11, 14, 75, 83, 97–99, 126–127,
5
160, 174, 177, 180, 189, 194, 197, 165
6 208, 218 -feeding, 164–167
7 agoraphobic, 64 British Association of
8 annihilation, 53 Psychotherapists, x–xi
9 claustro-agoraphobic, 52, 54 British Psychoanalytical Society,
30 depressive, 168, 207 ix–xi
oedipal, 81 Britton, R., 9–11, 12, 15–16, 18–19,
1
persecutory, 2, 207 21–22, 31–33, 36, 38–39, 42,
2 arrogance/arrogant, 3, 117, 210 49–54, 56–57, 59, 61, 63, 65–66,
3 As You Like It, 87 69, 73–74, 78, 90–91, 102–103,
4 Austen, J., 79, 81, 85 115–116, 119–120, 124–125, 144,
5 146–148, 198, 202, 211, 217, 222
Barrows, P., 180, 221 Brontë, C., 78
6
Bergman, I., 101–102, 104-120, 221
7 Bick, E., 91, 221 Canham, H., 2, 222
8 Bion, W. R., 10, 18, 21, 29, 31, 38–39, catastrophic change, 201, 203, 208
911 70, 80, 121, 124–128, 130–134, Chasseguet-Smirgel, J., 124, 222
229
230 INDEX
111 claustro-agoraphobic/ –daughter couple, 138

2 claustrophobia, 42–43, 49, figure, 93
52–56, 64–65, 69–70 League Against, 166
3
container–contained/containment, anti-, 167
4 15, 18, 20, 21, 25, 29, 31, 38–39, –son relationship, 207
5 41, 45, 51, 53–54, 84, 89, 92, 99, substitute, 143
6 102, 115, 119–120, 128–131, 134, Feldman, M., 45, 144, 147, 153, 193,
7 137, 148, 162, 167, 170–171, 176, 197, 222
8 178–179, 193, 195, 200 Fisher, J., 11, 22, 33, 37, 45, 100,
creative couple, 9–10, 15, 17–18, 147–148, 155–156, 223, 226
9
20–24, 26–27, 29–30, 42, 73, 149 Freud, S., 1, 10, 12, 31, 54, 74, 76, 91,
10 118–119, 122–124, 141–142, 144,
1 Dahl, R., 146 147, 181, 188, 202, 217, 223
2 deceit, 3, 204 Freudian/post-Freudian, 50
3 defence(s), 6, 26, 37, 60, 70, 76, 79, Contemporary, 52–54
81, 110, 148, 155, 181, 202–203, functioning, 3–5, 7, 21, 33, 46, 58,
4
207, 216, 218 149, 154, 175
5 depressive position, 77 “Corinthian”, 4
6 eroticization of, 197 narcissistic, 41
711 manic, 2, 35, 211 paranoid, 36
8 paranoid–schizoid, 33, 74–75 parental couple, 45
9 primitive, 19 psychic, 22
psychotic, 2 “Theban”, 4
20
denial, 3, 44, 52, 74, 87, 91, 142, 146
1 dependence, 14, 20, 25, 33–36, 44, Gittings, R., 139, 223
2 106 Glasser, M., 52–54, 56–57, 223
3 depressive position, 19, 22, 33, 39, greed/greedy, 3, 35, 66, 215
4 73–75, 77, 81, 92, 99, 143–144, Grier, F., 149, 225
149, 166–168, 202, 215 guilt, 33, 41, 89, 98, 110, 119, 124,
511
Dicks, H., 32, 222 142–144, 180, 189, 197, 207
6 oedipal, 189, 191, 193, 198
7 Edwards, J., 93, 95, 222 persecutory, 2, 189, 195, 198
8 Eliot, G., 78, 80–85, 99–100, 222
9 Emma, 79, 81 Hamlet, 108, 142, 144
311 envy, 2–3, 12, 26, 34–35, 38, 66, 119, hatred, 2–7, 26, 68, 111, 113, 126,
170, 182, 188 143, 161, 170, 204, 218
1
epistemophilia, 10 self-, 105
2 Evans, C., 149, 225 Heimann, P., 182–183, 223
3 Horrox, A., 101, 223
4 father(s), 3, 5, 12, 31, 43, 45–46, 51, Hughes, L., 155, 223
5 53, 63, 88–89, 101, 103–109,
113–119, 124–126, 128–130, 132, idealization/idealized, 4, 14–15, 20,
6
136, 142–147, 151, 153, 156, 158, 32, 35, 38, 58, 60, 63, 69, 75, 80,
7 160, 165–167, 169–172, 174, 85, 88–90, 92–93, 95, 97–100,
8 176–180, 182, 188–190, 193–195, 102, 113–115, 133, 137, 155, 174,
911 199, 205–207, 213 178, 197, 205, 212, 214
INDEX 231
111 self-, 109 between oedipus complex and

2 incestuous, 3, 7, 206 unconscious guilt, 119
independence, 14, 18–20, 36, 41, 44, between parents, 38, 51–52, 115,
3
52, 168, 173 146
4 intercourse, 17, 22, 52, 178, 182, 188, between penis and vagina, 11
5 192, 194, 199, 209, 215, 217 penis-as-, 52, 68
6 adult, 202 love, 3–4, 6, 11, 13, 20–21, 26, 28, 31,
711 bad, 173 51, 75, 78–79, 81–82, 85, 88, 92,
8 creative, 29, 147 193, 197, 211 100, 107, 111, 114, 117–118, 123,
good, 173 128, 133–135, 137–138, 146, 157,
9
parental, 13, 33, 51–52, 105, 178 181–182, 188, 195–196, 207–209,
10 192–193, 202, 211 211, 213, 215–216
1 psychic, 15–16, 51 and hate, 4, 6, 10, 38, 101, 115, 132
2 romantic, non-procreative, 217 -object, 74–75, 93
3 introjective
identification/processes, 37, 77, marriage(s), 3, 13, 22, 34, 44, 58,
4
83, 85, 91–92 64–68, 70, 78–79, 81, 84–87, 89,
5 99–100, 103, 113, 143, 157–158,
6 James, H., 121, 123–139, 223 183, 191, 196, 200, 208, 212–214,
7 Jane Eyre, 79 218
8 jealousy, 2–3, 5–6, 66, 79, 81, 111, gridlocked, 40
9 118, 141, 169–170, 193, 213 masturbatory fantasies/practices,
Johns, M., 107, 223 88, 97, 99
211
maternal reverie, 127, 131
1 Kernberg, O., 39–40, 107, 224 Matilda, 146
2 Klein, M., 10, 18–19, 33, 37–38, 50, Mattinson, J., 155, 225
3 73–74, 81, 124, 127, 135, 144, McDougall, J., 124, 225
4 147, 168, 181, 192–193, 202, Middlemarch, 79, 85, 99–100
224–225 Money-Kyrle, R., 11, 13–14, 33, 225
5
Kleinian(s)/post-Kleinian(s), 1, 7, Morgan, M., 7, 9, 11, 16–17, 33, 37,
6 50, 54, 73–74, 124, 135, 149 42, 66, 105, 225
7 mother(s)(‘s), 3, 11, 14, 76, 88, 90–91,
8 Langer, S., 86, 225 93–96, 103–110, 112–113,
9 Lanman, M., 7, 141, 149, 225 115–119, 126–130, 134–135, 139,
30 Laufer, M., 13, 225 143–146, 154, 156, 158–159, 161,
link/linked/linking, 11–12, 15, 42, 164, 171–172, 175–177, 179–182,
1
51–52, 58, 60, 62, 68–70, 93, 188–190, 193, 195, 200, 205–207,
2 99–100, 127, 129–131, 133, 213–214
3 135–136, 138–139, 147–148, 154, affection, 101, 105, 107, 119
4 160, 166, 175, 181, 190–191, and father, 12, 31, 45, 125, 165,
5 204–205, 213, 216 169, 174, 195
between claustrophobia and anxieties, 45
6
agoraphobia, 70 as ideal/separate object, 11, 14,
7 between oedipal situation and 22
8 depressive position, 33, 73, –baby couple/relationship, 18,
911 92 25, 27–28, 46, 49, 51, 53–54, 63,
232 INDEX
111 77, 93, 100, 147, 160, 165, 177, mother as separate, 11, 22
2 194 oedipal, 13
body, 193 part-, 52
3
breast, 11, 83 partners as, 27, 29
4 catastrophic, 210 paternal, 97
5 dead, 107–108, 195, 199 primary, 11, 13, 15, 45, 51, 89, 197
6 deadly/devouring, 15, 53 relating/relationship(s), 7, 13,
7 feeding, nurturing, 76, 88 25–26, 32–33, 37–39, 41, 50, 54,
8 female genital, 124 77, 103, 116, 149
“good-enough”, 148 whole-object, 38, 41, 46
9
idealized, 15, 93 stuck-together, 190
10 internal, 100, 169, 207 third, 46, 61, 63, 68–69, 199
1 loss of, 83 oedipal
2 mind/madness, 89–90, 92, 100 conflict(s), 36, 46, 50, 146, 148,
3 missing, 198 169, 180
narcissistic, 45 couple, 7, 15
4
over-attentive, 43 father, 15
5 separated/single, 89 illusion, 15–17
6 separation from, 156, 164, 166, situation, 11–17, 22, 29, 33, 37–39,
711 168, 213 45, 47, 49–51, 54, 62–63, 70,
8 sexual, 76, 88 73–75, 77, 87, 89, 92, 99–100,
9 sexual feelings, 148 119, 123, 130, 144, 147, 171, 181
unavailable, 199 oedipus complex, 1, 31–33, 49–53,
20
mourning, 13, 21, 38, 41, 214 70, 73, 75, 77, 107, 115, 119, 144,
1 147. 163, 171, 181, 193, 197–198,
2 nameless dread, 199 201–203
3 narcissism, 12, 18, 33, 38 Oedipus Rex, 108, 141–142
4 no sex couples, 201–219 omnipotence, 12, 18, 33, 74, 86, 138,
Northern Lights, 145–146 142, 166, 173–174
511
O’Shaughnessy, E., 73, 90, 225
6 object(s), 10–11, 52, 80–83, 86, 93, other, the, 10–11, 35, 37, 40, 51, 54
7 100, 104, 115, 125, 176, 192–193, and self, 4, 9, 41
8 214–215
9 and symbol, 52 paranoid–schizoid position/
311 bad, 63 defence, 18–19, 33, 74–75, 81,
combined, 95, 97–98, 165, 167, 99, 133, 149, 215
1
170, 192, 199 Pengelly, P., 155, 223
2 couple as psychic, 10, 12, 18 phallus, 52, 67
3 couple relationship as, 39–40 phantasy, 3, 12, 21, 37–38, 42, 50–52,
4 fear of engulfment by, 56 60, 68, 70, 102, 104, 107–109,
5 fusion of self with, 52 111, 113, 115, 119, 124–125,
good, 13–15, 77, 83 141–142, 144, 148, 151, 153,
6
ideal/idealized, 15, 28, 98, 115 156–157, 166–167, 173–174, 178,
7 loss of the, 170 181–182, 192–193, 197–199, 202,
8 love-, 74–75, 93 206–208, 211, 214, 217
911 maternal, 119 pleasure principle, 32, 75
INDEX 233
111 Portman Clinic, xi subset, 203

2 primal scene, the, 50, 124, 173, 188, survival, 67
201–203, 211, 214–215, 217 take-over, 60, 68, 70
3
projection(s), 2, 27, 37, 40–41, 45, 53, work, 147
4 74–75, 77, 80, 86, 93, 98, 101, world, 108
5 105, 127, 135, 146, 168, 171, 173, psychosexual development, 76, 89
6 178, 180, 182, 192, 199 Pullman, P., 145, 147, 225
711 projective gridlock, 16–17, 37
8 projective identification/processes, Quinodoz, J. M., 92, 99, 225
34, 37, 40–41, 44, 46, 76, 85, 87,
9
91, 135, 173–174 reality principle, 32, 75, 167
10 psychic Rey, H., 31, 49, 225
1 accompaniments, 75 Rilke, R. M., 131, 225
2 annihilation/disintegration, 21, Rosenfeld, H., 204, 226
3 65, 68 Rusbridger, R., 73–74, 226
apparatus, 148 Rustin, M., 146, 226
4
capacity, 144 Rustin, M., 4, 146, 226
5 catastrophe, 56 Ruszczynski, S., 7, 9, 19, 30–33, 37,
6 change/disruption/shifts, 10, 19, 42–43, 103, 187, 225–226
7 85, 92
8 collapse/pain/predicament/ sado-masochism, 17, 33, 36, 41, 43,
9 turmoil, 76, 85, 89, 202, 210 91, 172, 179
container, 134 Segal, H., 38–39, 51–52, 63, 226
211
continuity, 86 sex/sexual/sexuality/sexual rela-
1 death, 67 tionship, 3, 6, 11–12, 16, 20, 23,
2 defence, 67, 216 25, 28, 31, 34–36, 38, 45, 50, 57,
3 development, 9–11, 13, 15, 18, 76, 103, 105–107, 112, 115–118,
4 22–23, 27, 31, 101, 202 138, 146, 181–182, 186, 188, 192,
differentiation/non- 203, 207–208, 212–213, 216, 218
5
differentiation, 66, 68 abuse/perversity, 90, 94, 178
6 equilibrium, 40, 44 chat lines, 91
7 existence/ life, 9, 30, 51, 60 commitment, 86
8 experience, 54, 89 fantasies/phantasies, 39, 98, 153
9 functioning, 22 feelings, 148
30 impact, 91 fulfilment/satisfaction, 81, 103
inheritance, 120 heterosexual, 66, 68, 202
1
intercourse, 15–16, 51 homosexual, 64–66, 68
2 linch-pin, 92 identity, 73
3 object, 10, 12, 18 parental, 88–89, 193, 202, 215, 217
4 relationship, 198 see also: primal scene
5 retreat, 37, 60, 95, 215, 217–218 promiscuous approach to, 76
separateness/separation, 27, 105, rivalry, 142
6
157, 195 theories, 124
7 space, 42, 49, 51, 59, 66–67, 161 sibling(s) 6, 43, 88, 90, 92, 158, 161,
8 state, 21–22 169–170 175–176, 178, 180, 182
911 structure, 9 relationship, 42, 168–169
234 INDEX
111 rivalry, 159, 169, 174 third position, 10, 22, 24, 26, 38, 51,
2 Society of Couple Psychoanalytic 56, 61, 64, 69, 102, 116, 120, 125,
Psychotherapists, ix–xi 131, 138, 211
3
Sophocles, 108, 122, 124, 141–142, threesome relationship, 1–2, 36, 69,
4 180–181, 226 106–107, 141–142, 149
5 split-off/splitting, 11, 15, 34, 40, 51, Törnqvist, E., 101, 118, 226
6 63, 74, 86, 98, 119, 137, 174, 176, transference/counter-transference,
7 205, 216–217 35–36, 41–47, 58, 61–62, 77, 88,
8 Steiner, J., 1, 3, 37, 41, 51, 60, 63, 95, 91, 93, 100, 163, 170, 172,
142, 144, 215, 226 182–183, 185, 191–192, 195,
9
stepchildren, 89 205–206, 212
10 stepfather, 88, 90, 92–95, 101, triangle(s)/triangular, 7, 74, 99,
1 109–111, 113, 115, 134, 136, 139, 154–155, 161, 199, 202
2 143 “marital”, 31–47
3 step-parents, 4, 136 oedipal, 22, 38, 52, 132, 146
superego(s), 39–40, 50, 144, 166 relationship, 12–13, 15, 22, 51,
4
couple’s, 39 117, 155
5 supervision/supervisor, 154–155, space, 52, 54, 68, 115, 119, 147, 161
6 219 Twelfth Night, 87
711 twosome relationship, 2, 49, 69
8 Tavistock Clinic/Marital Studies
9 Institute, ix–xi, 30, 164, 172, 201 Waddell, M., 7, 32, 73, 85, 100, 227
Tavistock Society of What Maisie Knew, 121–122, 125
20
Psychotherapists, x Winnicott, D. W., 28, 148, 227
1 The Brothers Karamazov, 142 Winter, S., 123, 227
2
3
4
511
6
7
8
9
311
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911

(Francis Grier) Oedipus and The Couple

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Grier prelims 1st prfs 19/10/04 4:04 pm Page i

111 Tavistock Clinic Series

111 CHAPTER FOUR

111 Psychoanalytic Psychotherapists. He is a Visiting Research Lecturer

111 SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

xiv SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE

2 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

4 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 more reality-based, though often more superficial, level of func-

6 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 developmental movement can happen within the couple dimen-

111 enough common ground—broadly speaking, a contemporary

8 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 CHAPTER ONE

10 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 couples in a relationship have difficulties, or the relationship is

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 11

111 to love, to hate, to know, and a desire to be loved, a fear of being

12 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 The oedipal situation

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 13

111 to be relinquished. If not achieved, it will be impossible to fully

14 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 typical adolescent then develops a sense of independence that is

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 15

16 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 17

111 One such couple presented their problem as an inability to

18 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 19

111 is a synthesizing move into what Klein described as the depres-

20 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 21

111 also discovered that conflict, if containable, could lead to solutions.

22 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 psychotherapy, which could be conceptualized as helping the

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 23

24 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 25

26 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 violent—primitive because they had never been processed—that he

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 27

111 this way the relationship is subjectively experienced as a resource,

28 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

ON BEING ABLE TO BE A COUPLE 29

30 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 possible—solutions that neither of the individuals would have

111 CHAPTER TWO

32 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 triangular space within which observation, reflection, and thinking

REFLECTIVE SPACE IN THE INTIMATE COUPLE RELATIONSHIP 33

111 dependent on the reasonable achievement of depressive position

34 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 increasingly frequent oscillation between cooperative and loving

REFLECTIVE SPACE IN THE INTIMATE COUPLE RELATIONSHIP 35

36 OEDIPUS AND THE COUPLE

111 As their history unfolded in the treatment it became clear that

REFLECTIVE SPACE IN THE INTIMATE COUPLE RELATIONSHIP 37

111 of this triangular oedipal situation leads to the developmental