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In this chapter the struggle for dominance within the analytic relationship is examined in the context of the Oedipus situation. A proper analytic structure reflects the different roles that patient and analyst play. These are related to family structures, which are represented in the patient’s internal world. A child’s place in the family is determined by reality factors such as his relative size, strength, and maturity, but his subjective sense of his role is affected by phantasy and can be distorted in particular by grandiose narcissistic illusions or delusions. These phantasies tend to be variations on the classical pattern, where in the child’s phantasy he is encouraged by his mother to adopt the role of her husband and in this way to oust his father. This pattern is illustrated in the material I am going to report. This is the archetypal structure represented in Sophocles’ play, in which Jocasta encourages Oedipus to adopt the position of king and husband. Inevitably this type of phantasy leads to a struggle over dominance as the father comes to reclaim his place in the family. In the infantile version of this phantasy, on which all the later versions are based, the struggle is also one between illusion and reality, since the child’s immaturity makes the role he has chosen to adopt unrealisable.
Confrontation with reality is often confused with confrontation with a father who has been excluded and displaced. The patient may attribute various motives to the figures in the drama, some of which are projections of his own situation. Typically the phantasy is one where the mother admires the son and the returning father is thought of as envious of the successful child and tries to regain his position. This leads to a struggle over dominance. This struggle is dealt with in
various ways, which make up the variety of versions of the Oedipus complex.
In this chapter I argue that the classical resolution to the Oedipus complex as described by Freud is a paranoid solutio