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In Sexual States of Mind, Dr. Meltzer takes an in-depth look from the Kleinian viewpoint at the unconscious meanings of sexual states, normal and pathological. Going far beyond our usual descriptive categories and explanations, and full of case examples, it is quite interesting and particularly relevant to clinical practice.
Meltzer opens with a comprehensive historical section, in which he takes up Freud's discovery of the Oedipus situation. He posits that the Oedipus complex dissolves when both maternal and paternal object choices are relinquished and a precipitate in the ego is formed. This precipitate, or “superego,” consists of the maternal and paternal identifications in some way united with each other. This notion is based on Klein's ideas about the combined object, which she described at the whole object level as the phantasy of the creative parents in intercourse that comes to function as an ideal.
After looking at Freud's thinking about the earlier pre-genital organizations of sexuality according to zonal primacy, Meltzer outlines how Freud gradually shifted away from his preoccupation with instincts and their modes of operation toward a concern with the organization of the psychic apparatus and, specifically, to an interest in character structure. He points out that Freud's ideas about object choice, melancholia, and masochism, so important to his thinking on narcissism and perversions, came later in his life and were never extensively developed. Other ideas such as the importance of the primal scene, given such prominence in the case of the Wolf Man, seem to have been forgotten, with interesting implications never pursued.
Meltzer sees Freud's notion about the formation of the super-ego as the jumping-off point for all the investigations of internal objects, the primitive precursors of conscience whose persistence in the deeper layers of the