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The Oedipus complex remains central to human psychic development because the differences between the sexes and between the generations remain indisputable facts of life. Indisputable these facts may be, by the criteria of external, objective reality, but undeniable, by the criteria of human wishes, they are not, as any acquaintance with human kind, let alone any experience of patients in psychoanalysis, quickly and convincingly shows. It is the power of human denial, as well as its simultaneous ineffectiveness in reality, which gives analysis of the Oedipus complex the central place which it continues to hold in clinical practice.
In addition, failure to come to terms with these particular facts of life is a crucial matter for analysts because of the devastating effect this failure has on psychic development, in my view a life-long task and one which fundamentally involves separation-individuation (to use Mahler's term) from both external and internal objects. Failure of oedipal resolution is an intergenerational problem; it impedes both the development of the individual concerned, including in his analysis, and the development of his or her children. The manner of dealing with the Oedipus complex, by working through and mourning or by denial, is intimately associated with the manner of dealing with all the mourning involved in separation-individuation; ultimately, difficulty in achieving a degree of working through which is adequate for ongoing development always rests on a more general difficulty in acknowledging that an object is separate and independent from oneself (and therefore capable of having a relationship with a third object). This difficulty is the essence of a narcissistic mode of relating, one which seeks to prevent or deny autonomy.
In the patient I am going to present such difficulties could be seen clearly. Mr B appeared to have an internal model, which he did his utmost to preserve, of two objects, himself and another, existing inside one another. A