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Rape crisis centres … rape murders - these are regrettably frequent elements of current news. A recent television survey of adults in the UK indicated that about 10% had as children experienced sexual assault and/or excessive violence. Psychoanalysts might say that 10% remembered these experiences so that the real toll might well be considerably higher. Sexual assault and the associated affects, then, must be an important influence in our unconscious minds. Yet because of the extremely distasteful nature of rape - a paradoxical intersection of sex and horrifying violence, Eros and Thanatos - it is seldom discussed except in a strident way. Most pyschoanalysts have encountered phantasies of being raped or having been raped - usually unconscious at first - in both female and male patients. Unconscious constellations involving the dread of rape, accompanied by a certain fascination with it, can quite commonly be associated with such structures as obsessional neurosis and paranoia and would seem to be quite widespread. Postulation of a ‘rape complex’ in the unconscious mind, similar to, but not coextensive with, the castration complex, may prove to be clinically effective as well as theoretically satisfying.
Like the castration complex, the rape complex seems to come into play during the oedipal phase of life, say from three or four until around seven, but has roots going back into the pre-oedipal phases, particularly the anal. Dreads connected with the rape complex concern violent physical and psychic intrusion and/or usurpation of our selfcontrol (mental or physical) by the insistent will of another person - a will enforced by intimidation, backed up by violence or by the overt or covert threat of violence. This puts the rape complex in stark contrast with the castration complex; castration-associated dreads concern severing of members and/or enforced separation.
The rape complex is also distinct from the fears of being smothered or engulfed as highlighted in Object-Rel