Correspondence

Dear Editors,

While reading the rich and stimulating selection of papers in the April 2003 edition, I was struck by points made in your editorial, and would like to make a response to them.

In terms of attention being paid in analytic literature to parental Oedipal issues, I would with respect just like to remind our readers of Lupinacci's (1998) paper in the Klein memorial edition of the Journal (Vol 24, No 3, December) where she revisits the Oedipus myth in terms of what she calls a ‘pathological’ Oedipus situation. She talks about the different kinds of ‘couple’ in the child's mind which are to do not only with internal resistance but external difficulties which devolve from the previous generation's difficulties with the issue. She also elaborates on the different metaphorical meanings implicit in the two couples in the Oedipus myth, the abandoning couple from Thebes and the adopting couple from Corinth, where the couple's death wishes to their child are connected with their own inability to come to terms with the ‘reality’ of the child, with the fear of father being excluded/annihilated from the mother/infant couple.

Perhaps in terms of extended clinical elaboration of the kind which this Journal publishes so well, there may be less available to date because as workers whose primary focus is on children, we see parents in their parental role rather than as analytic patients per se, although of course we would all I think acknowledge the inevitable interface here. Rustin (1998) points out that people in our profession usually have a profound identification with the child's point of view and it is this very aspect which gives us what she calls ‘ready access’ to the child aspects of adult personalities. I would question whether we can characterize our stance as one where we devote ‘little attention’ to the issue, which as Segal (1989) noted, is ‘a central conflict in the human psyche’ — and one which by implication nee