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In continuing the vitality and development of Freud's and Klein's ideas the three clinical papers written by Ronald Brittan, Michael Feldman and Edna O'Shaughnessy expand on the Oedipus Complex today as seen by post-Kleinian psychoanalysts. It is a much-needed and worthwhile contribution to understanding current Kleinian clinical work. Hanna Segal writes the introduction emphasising that one of ‘Klein's earliest discoveries was that of early forms of the superego and of the Oedipus complex before genital primacy’. These primitive forms of the oedipus complex showed that pregenital did not necessarly mean pre-oedipal. All the authors use Bion's concept of the container and the contained as the prototype for perceptions and experiences of the relationships between the parents. Bion's influence is seen in thinking as well. Thinking is based on making links including the links between parents. Patients with the severe disturbances used in the clinical examples of early Oedipal disturbances find these links particularly unbearable. The three authors bring needed and important clinical examples of these primitive and psychotic forms of the Oedipal complex. Following the preface is a reprint of Melanie Klein's The Oedipus Complex in the Light of Early Anxieties , recognising the base for the contributions that follow.
In Chapter Two ‘The Missing Link: Parental Sexuality in the Oedipus Complex’ Ronald Brittan emphasises the Oedipus complex developing hand-in-hand with the evolution of the depressive position - ‘the working through of one entails the working through of the other’. He further brings out ‘if the encounter with the parental relationship starts to take place at a time when the individual has not established a securely based maternal object, the Oedipus situation appears in analysis only in primitive form and is not immediately recognizable as the classic Oedipus Complex’. A clinical example of this is given along with an example of what he calls an Oedipal illusi