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This paper deals with variations of the psychic structure in relation to the vicissitudes of the oedipal period. The author describes how the ideals of justice are predicated on the degree of resolution of the oedipus complex. His clinical material illustrates various defensive configurations of the oedipal conflict. Little Hans exemplifies the child's fantasy of father and son married to the child's mother. The refusal to give up the incestuous fantasy leads to the first ideal of justice: what is just and conciliatory is that all of us should be able to have mother. In the next case cited by Saimovici, the child has fantasies that father and son both can possess the mother and have children by her. In this case there is a split. Privately, the individual maintains the fantasy of oedipal transgression. Publicly, he upholds the prohibition and accepts the oedipal renunciation, which gives rise to the second ideal of justice: that none should possess the mother. In the third case an adolescent shows ambivalence between the acceptance of oedipal renunciation and the denial of it. The related ideal of justice is that nobody should incestuously possess the mother and that each should have an exogamous wife. Along the path to the acceptance of the oedipal renunciation expressed by "each one has his own," the transgressions may come from the father's side. Such transgression is not straightforward as in the first two cases but is full of trickery and cheating. This leads to fantasies of how to evade the law and re-establish the state of affairs prior to the oedipal renunciation. The author correlates the level of justice with the degree of oedipal renunciation. He discusses the spectrum starting from a level where there is denial of the oedipal conflict, and its consequent castration and anxiety, to the more advanced configuration where there is acknowledgment of the father-mother couple. The vicissitudes of each stage are described and elaborated.