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We all agree that a well functioning mother-infant dyad is critical for later mental health. Some clinicians believe that failures in adult
intimacy are solely attributable to pre-oedipal difficulties, problematic nurturing during the oral, anal and phallic psychosexual stages of development, which occur between birth and age three. While this may be true for some patients, others have been profoundly affected by slightly later childhood experiences which involve the triadic struggles of competition and identification that spring from longings for parental love and fear of its loss. If unresolved, these struggles-occurring between ages three and five during the oedipal phase of life also have an impact on intimacy achievements. Oedipal contributions to a patient's inability to love are often neglected by clinicians. Case material in this paper will show how understanding and interpreting a central transference fantasy as an oedipal dynamic helped resolve a patient's core conflict, enabling her to achieve the capacity for heterosexual intimacy. The treatment perspective is contemporary Freudian, involving weekly individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Transference fantasies are feelings and thoughts displaced onto the therapist in the course of treatment, about the loving and/or fmstrating figures of childhood that are (Moore and Fine, 1990, p. 196). A transference fantasy is a regressive phenomenon, giving voice to a patient's most