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The topic of the conference is how central we see the Oedipus complex as being in analysis and therefore, by implication, in the mind. I will be suggesting that the psychoanalytic theory of the Oedipal situation describes a fundamental dynamic of the mind, which in turn structures the mind. This turns on the subject's response to witnessing a creative relationship of which he is the product and from which he is excluded. This structure and dynamic operate in the mind on all levels of scale, both intrapyschically and interpsychically. They function on every level of psychosexual development and determine the form that this development takes. This centrality means that analysing the patient's characteristic reactions to the Oedipus complex is the core task of analysis. I argue that these reactions can be seen most clearly in the patient's response to the work of analysis.
If, however, the Oedipus complex is as basic and important as this, why is it sometimes thought not to be? I shall make some suggestions as to why this might be so. In particular I comment on how defensive and attacking processes often - perhaps even usually - obscure the open manifestation of an Oedipal situation in analysis. This means that what one sees is not a whole picture but fragments or elements of one. I suggest that the emergence of meaning in analysis is a key Oedipal moment, both for the analyst and the patient, and as such is attacked quite generally. The Oedipal situation in analysis does not consist in only those moments when patterns are evident that one would call ‘Oedipal’, but in this whole process of engendering, disguising, attacking and tolerating meaning.
Freud said that what he came to call in 1910 ‘the Oedipus complex’ (Freud 1910) wa