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While self psychologists have pondered the theoretical relevance of the Oedipus complex for many years, there has been a dearth of attempts to examine how we clinically respond to “oedipal”-sounding material in the consulting room. In supervising and teaching analytic candidates and therapists, the author found them highly receptive to experience-near explanations when dealing with their patients' archaic selfobject needs, but resistant to relinquishing experience-distant oedipal formulations when treating high-level, more neurotic, patients, particularly when confronted with sexual or aggressive feelings that are directed toward the therapist or material relating to gendered selves. This article attempts to delineate, using verbatim clinical material, aspects of the self psychological treatment of the neuroses from a connectedness sensibility, illustrating how it differs from traditional and relational models, and how (gendered) individuality is strengthened through deeply experienced selfobject connectedness. At the conclusion of this presentation, the participant will be able to reconceptualize the oedipal phase and respond clinically to oedipal themes from a more experience-near, self psychological listening perspective.