The Emergence of Oedipal Centrality Comments on Michael Feldman's Paper 'Common Ground: The Centrality of the Oedipus Complex'

The Oedipus complex is indeed a central organizing focus of human development. Given the opportunity to review psychoanalytic work illustrative of how this concept influences clinical theory and technique, patches of common ground and of significant differences are described. The patient discussed was in the termination phase of a very long analysis, resulting in a concentration and telescoping of the three weeks of reported material from six months

prior to termination. This facilitated the elucidation of similarities and differences in viewing and handling manifestations of resistance, transference and countertransference. In particular, differences in conceptualization of the Oedipus complex were addressed, especially the constraints imposed on the analyst's thinking and technique by an obligatory perception that all material represented oedipal themes. In an alternative view, a pre-oedipal, dyadic developmental foundation provides a framework for the elaboration and evolution of oedipal, triadic complexities as a developmental achievement. This enables a reconsideration of transference manifestations of conflictual object relations in terms of distinctions between dyadic, pre-oedipal and triadic, oedipal themes, thus enhancing the analyst's interpretive relevance.