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This book has been long needed: a calm and concise examination of the Oedipus Complex, from Freud’s first work on the concept to current perspectives and understandings. The author examines many theories and theorists and integrates their contributions, as well as bringing an experienced clinician’s eye to the subject.
In the introduction the author gives a clear and complete narrative of the Greek myth, which illuminates not only the story of the boy having sex with the mother, but also the backstory of forbidden desires and murderous intentions. This complete retelling sets a model for the book. The author takes the reader through the whole concept and by the last chapters the reader can understand that it is the working through of a complete (rather than a ‘negative’ and a ‘positive’) Oedipus complex that is the developmental task.
The following two chapters are devoted to firstly Freud’s and then Klein’s theories of the concept. Freud’s theory is examined and critiqued with careful attention, and Rohleder’s commentary is written with admirable lucidity. Klein’s work is given the same careful attention, and the author draws out Klein’s ideas of an Oedipal situation which begins to form a springboard for the development shown in the rest of the book. Rohleder’s argument is that the ideas and understandings from the wider concept, stripped of any potential moral judgement or prejudicial aspects, continue to have great relevance in clinical work and in understanding the human condition. The Kleinian chapter concludes with a more contemporary and relational perspective, and this leads into the next three chapters – feminist critiques, French perspectives and the relational schools.
The measured exploration of the feminist critiques in the following chapter not only looks at the phallocentric nature of the original thinking about the Oedipus Complex but also examines some of the cultural perspectives which are further considered in a later chapter. It is here that consid