Oedipus and the Couple

Francis Grier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429916694
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Santé mentale en psychologie

This title consists of a diverse series of contributions and reflections on couples and the Oedipus complex from leading psychotherapists and psychoanalysts in the couples field. All contributors base their theories on a contemporary Kleinian/object-relations psychoanalytic viewpoint and this helps the reader feel that there is a basic underlying unity to facilitate meaningful links between the ideas and themes in different chapters. The chapters have been organized into three sections. Whilst united in the focus on the Oedipus situation, the individual styles and voices of the authors are very varied. The first three chapters are primarily theoretical. The second section comprises chapters that make use of artistic and cultural themes from the worlds of literature and film to explore Oedipal couple issues. The final section consists of chapters that are specifically clinical in their focus. The manifest focus in most chapters is on the couple, but there are variations on this theme.

CHAPTER ONE

On being able to be a couple: the importance of a “creative couple” in psychic life¹

Mary Morgan

“The idea of a couple coming together to produce a child is central in our psychic life, whether we aspire to it, object to it, realise we are produced by it, deny it, relish it, or hate it”

Britton, 1995, p. xi

Couples coming for therapy show us just how difficult it can be to develop and sustain an intimate, adult couple relationship. This begs the question, what is an intimate, adult couple relationship? Clearly some important earlier psychic developments occur that make it possible to become a couple. In my opinion, a crystallization of these psychic developments occurs, which becomes a part of the individual’s psychic structure and helps to sustain him or her in a couple relationship. I shall refer to this as the internalization of a “creative couple” (Morgan & Ruszczynski, 1998). This development brings about a state of mind and way of relating, to oneself and to the other, that is a change from earlier kinds of psychic development. Because of the vagaries of life the psychic development may or may not be manifested in an actual couple relationship. Without this psychic development couples in a relationship have difficulties, or the relationship is severely limited.

My intention in this chapter is twofold. First, it is to make explicit the process of psychic development as I understand it, and illustrate how two particular areas—the negotiation of the oedipal situation and adolescence—are crucial precursors to the development of a capacity to form part of a creative couple. I will also address the anxiety involved in psychic change.

My second intention is to describe key aspects of a creative couple state of mind and way of relating to another. In particular, I suggest that once an individual is part of an intimate adult couple relationship, if this development has taken place, then the creative couple as a psychic object can be turned to as a “third position” (Britton, 1989, p. 87), to help the individuals sustain their relationship when it is vulnerable. I hope also to show how creative this relationship can be, both internally and as part of a relationship with another; and how, through this relationship itself, further psychic development is possible.

Epistemophilia and the couple in psychic development

First, I will try to put the development of a creative couple as a psychic object within the context of psychic development as a whole. From the beginning of life the infant is struggling to make sense of experience and has an innate expectation of there being an object. Klein (1930a,b) stressed Freud’s (1916–1917) assertion of an epistemophilic instinct, the urge to know or understand, as a component instinct of the libido. In her view, all instinctual urges involved objects, external or internal (Klein, 1952a). In her work with young children she could see inhibitions of epistemophilia and consequent learning difficulties, because the frustration that stimulated the urge to know could also give rise to sadistic impulses inhibiting it. Bion (1962b) saw the epistemophilic instinct in terms of the emotional links between objects, which he formulated as being either ‘L’ (loving), ‘H’ (hating), or ‘K’ (the wish to know the other). He described truth and understanding as food to the mind. Similarly, Britton conceives of the desire for knowledge as existing alongside love and hate: “Human beings have an urge to love, to hate, to know, and a desire to be loved, a fear of being hated and a wish to be understood” (Britton, 1998a, p. 11).

These theories about the human being encompass the idea of an infant who is trying to make emotional links with an object, and to make sense of experience from the beginning of life. Although the newborn infant is not fully aware of the mother as a separate object, it does seem that the infant is born with an innate preconception of there being an object and, therefore, of coupling or linking. The idea of there being an object is very important because it means that there is, in the baby’s mind, the idea of an “other” into which something can be evacuated, from which something can be taken in, or with which he can split off or link up. Following this, as Money-Kyrle (1971) has stated, it is also probable that the idea of a couple coming together sexually is derived from innate knowledge. At the beginning of life the infant seeks the mother’s breast, the nipple and the mouth forming a vital link, both real and symbolic. There is a development of this imperative later in life in the drive to create a sexual couple, symbolized and sometimes actualized by the link between penis and vagina. From this beginning of linking up with an object (the mother) to linking up with another in an intimate adult relationship, much changes and has to be struggled with and negotiated. The important point about this model of development is that there is a process in human development where changes occur using what is already known, albeit often in an entirely new configuration. It also places psychic development within the context of a relationship.

Physiological changes in the individual and environmental responses stimulate psychic development, but such development may also be resisted. It may be possible to form an adult couple relationship without the development that occurs through relinquishing the primary object and negotiating the oedipal situation, but it will be fraught with difficulties. Intimacy, for example, instead of being based on knowledge of the reality of the separateness of the other, and the wish really to know the other, can be based on an expectation of omnisciently knowing the other and/or being known by the other; an experience closer to intrusion (Fisher, 1995; Morgan, 1995). Many couple relationships contain aspects of a regressive wish to be the infant with a mother who can provide everything; emotional, physical, and mental.

The oedipal situation

From Freud onwards, psychoanalysis has fruitfully employed the myth of Oedipus to show the complex centrality of the primary triangular relationship between a mother, a father, and a child. That relationship is considered to be crucial in psychological development because the meanings and patterns the child experiences in that situation are likely to influence all subsequent relationships made in the journey through life.

What is it that is so significant about this early triangular relationship? The child is involved in a nurturing relationship with a mother and with a father, and in a relationship with the mother and father as a couple, including their sexual relationship and their capacity to produce new life. (This is no less true in the situation of an absent mother or father, or in the absence of the actual parental relationship.) By having a relationship with a mother and/or father, coming to observe and, if all goes well, to tolerate the special link between the parents, the child becomes aware of the experience of being included and excluded, and of there being different types of relationships. He also learns that there are generational boundaries (Britton, 1989). In other words, it has a structuring role in the personality. In coming to tolerate these vagaries of relating, the child has to contend with an affront to his or her narcissism and omnipotence. The child is not always at the centre of good relationships, and is needy of something that is creative and outside him or herself which, if his envy and narcissism can bear it, he can draw on. It is only by relinquishing the omnipotent phantasy of becoming part of a sexual couple with mother or father, and by recognizing and tolerating the special link between them, that the child will introject the parents-as-a-couple as a psychic object. The seed of the possibility of forming his or her own adult sexual couple relationship is sown.

As indicated earlier, working through the oedipal situation does not simply enhance the capacity to form a couple relationship but contributes in an essential way to a growing, intrinsic knowledge of what being part of a couple means. There are many aspects of this. Facing the oedipal situation requires the capacity to manage loss, as the idea that one could be the grown-up partner to either parent, and that one could prevent the parents being a couple together, has to be relinquished. If not achieved, it will be impossible to fully invest in one’s own intimate couple relationship. Couple psychotherapists frequently see couples in which one or both partners are still too enmeshed in a relationship with a parent, either as primary object, or as an oedipal object. In this situation there is a lack of emotional investment in the spouse, and the children can be drawn into a relationship with a parent as support or confidant, severely undermining the marriage and the children’s own oedipal development. If the boundary around the parental couple’s relationship is accepted, it becomes possible to see the difference between the parents as a couple and the child’s relationship to the parent. Later in adulthood the situation is reconfigured, as the individual becomes part of an intimate couple and can bear to exclude the children from aspects of the relationship. It is easier, not simply because of having had that experience in relation to the parents as a couple but because the experience is internalized, effecting all kinds of other developments—physiological as well as psychic—occurring in the individual. As Money-Kyrle describes it:

Where there has been a favourable development, and the concept of the first good object is well established, together with the capacity to remember it with love, there is far less difficulty in being able to recognise the parental relation as an example of the innate preconception of coitus as a supremely creative act—especially if this is reinforced by the memory of a good relationship between the nipple and the mouth … and after a renewed period of mourning for the child–parent marriage that can never be, to internalise and establish a good concept of parental intercourse as the basis of a subsequent marriage which may in fact take place. [Money-Kyrle, 1971, p. 105]

Adolescence

The unconscious introjection of the parents as a couple in an object relationship to the child aids later psychic development, such as that occurring in adolescence. For example, this triangular configuration helps the adolescent take ownership of his own body and mind, because he can be the one who chooses to exclude himself from the couple and develop his own identity (Laufer, 1975). The typical adolescent then develops a sense of independence that is seen as the ideal. However, this is also a state of mind in which independence is diametrically opposed to the young infant’s absolute dependence on the mother. If relationships are seen as one of these two kinds, utterly dependent or completely independent, then it is easy to see how such a state of mind would be extremely problematic, once in an adult couple relationship, should further development not occur. There is sometimes a tendency for the young adult to believe that his development is over and that he has succeeded in becoming “independent”. Usually, this period of experiment with oneself and one’s identity ends because of the impact of a new developmental imperative to form a couple. To some adults this can feel threatening, as if being part of a couple means the loss of this hard-won independence. It may therefore be avoided for some time, and sometimes forever. This adolescent idea of independence is an illusion because it denies a fact of life, namely that we all need help. Money-Kyrle (1971) conceptualizes this as the “recognition of the breast as a supremely good object”, something that is innately known and discovered as part of experience, though something that can also be turned away from or denied. This is different from a regressive wish for dependence such as the infant had with mother. Both the idea of a relationship with the ideal object (mother) and the idealization of independence as in the adolescent state of mind are deeply problematic for the individual in a couple relationship.

The potential we have as individuals depends upon having the idea of being able to form a couple with another individual. Furthermore, though actually being part of a couple may be the desired state, not every individual chooses or achieves this due to any number of circumstances. More important is the belief in relationships as a source of creativity, and this may be concretely realized through becoming part of a couple from some other source; for example, through contact with colleagues, friends, and even good internal objects. The creativity of practising psychotherapists and psychoanalysts surely stems from an internal dialogue with such good objects.

Everyone struggles in coming to terms with the oedipal situation and, actually, the struggle seems to be an inevitable part of the experience. It is, moreover, not a once and for all development. Negotiating the oedipal situation is not the same thing as resolving it, and difficulties in triangular situations (for example, becoming parents and incorporating a third into the couple), in being part of a couple, and in thinking, may continue in some form or emerge at times of stress. However, for some people there is a fundamental problem in this area of psychic development. Britton has described two areas of difficulty. The first is where the patient cannot allow a couple to come together in his or her mind, or in that of the analyst. The second is an “oedipal illusion”, in which “the parental relationship is known but its full significance is evaded” (1989, p. 94).

The first situation Britton describes leads to serious difficulties in thinking, and is the diametrically opposite situation to the creative couple state of mind, in which it is possible to allow two thoughts to come together with a creative outcome. This process is reinforced by the experience of being in a relationship with another person with whom thinking can take place. The analytic situation that Britton describes is one in which any evidence that the analyst is having this experience inside his own mind, or between him and the patient, is felt as too threatening. He suggests that this is due to an earlier failure of maternal containment. The oedipal couple becomes equated with linking-up an idealized mother and her split-off hostility that threatens a precarious relationship to the primary object:

The idea of a good maternal object can only be regained by splitting off her impermeability so that now a hostile force is felt to exist, which attacks his good link with his mother. Mother’s goodness is now precarious and depends on him restricting his knowledge of her…. The hostile force that was thought to attack his original link with his mother is now equated with the oedipal father, and the link between the parents is felt to reconstitute her as the non-receptive deadly mother. The child’s original link with the good maternal object is felt to be the source of life, and so, when it is threatened, life is felt to be threatened. [Britton, 1989, p. 90]

Britton shows how difficult an analysis with such a patient is, because the patient needs a relationship with the analyst in which there is no psychic intercourse.

One might think that individuals who require this kind of relating would find being in an intimate adult couple relationship extremely difficult. Often this is the case, or it becomes the case. However, sometimes, for a while, such a couple feel they have found a way of relating that relieves them of the anxieties they would experience if there were more psychic intercourse. This relationship requires the kind of intercourse described by Britton with his patient: “We were to move along a single line and meet at a single point” (1989, p. 88). I described this kind of relationship in a previous paper on “projective gridlock”, from which I quote the example of Tom and Rachel:

Rachel reflected on how she and her husband Tom always did everything together: they studied together, shared the same interests and operated as one. He would chose clothes for her, and when they went to parties Tom would speak for both of them. It never occurred to her that she might have a different point of view. She often felt that when they talked to each other, he would lose awareness of her presence, and it seemed that she, for her own unconscious reasons, had gone along with this. For a long time she felt quite content in this situation, except that she had never enjoyed sex with Tom. Tom said that looking back, what had felt awful about having sex with Rachel was that he worked out what she thought, felt, and wanted to such an extent that it was like having sex with himself; paradoxically, he had not really known what was going on for her at all. [Morgan, 1995, p. 44]

In the second situation Britton describes, the oedipal illusion is felt to protect the individual from the psychic reality of their phantasies of the oedipal situation. This evasion has serious consequences for the individual’s mental and emotional life. The patient Britton describes had difficulty in bringing things together in his mind, which affected the clarity of his thinking, and there was a pervasive sense of unreality and feeling of unfulfilment in his life, as well as a quality of non-consummation in all his relationships and projects in life.

Some couples come for therapy with the problem that they are unable to move forward, to make a commitment together (live together or marry with the possibility of having children), or to separate. This can be quite a desperate problem, particularly if the female partner is reaching the end of her fertile years and if one partner longs for children.

One such couple presented their problem as an inability to decide to get married, sometimes expressed by James and at other times by Ellie. They felt they probably would marry at some point, but they didn’t know when that would be or how they would be able to make the decision. Sometimes they felt comfortable in this position, and sometimes they felt in an acute state of anxiety. James was in his late forties and, although he had had previous long-term relationships and, in fact, had been engaged twice, he had never married. Ellie was in her early forties, and this was her first committed relationship. Neither of them had more than a rudimentary sense of a creative couple in mind, and they were frightened of repeating the dynamic of their respective parents’ relationships, which were sado-masochistic in nature. In fact, their stalemated situation had a sado-masochistic aspect to it, of which they were unaware. There was a dynamic in the sessions that felt like treading water as, even when there was a sense of some intercourse taking place between them, or between them and me, it didn’t seem to lead to any outcome. In one session they reported feeling that they had had a good discussion over the weekend with friends they had been away with, and they felt that this was progress. They had talked about the future, where they would live when they were married, in particular Ellie’s hope that they could move closer to her sister, how many children they would have, including the fact they both secretly hoped to have a boy. The content of their discussion felt very new, and the therapist initially also heard this as progress. However, as they shared more of the details, the therapist became aware of how defensive this thinking was. It began to take on the qua...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• CONTRIBUTORS
• SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE
• Introduction
• CHAPTER ONE On being able to be a couple: the importance of a “creative couple” in psychic life
• CHAPTER TWO Reflective space in the intimate couple relationship: the “marital triangle”
• CHAPTER THREE The couple, their marriage, and Oedipus: or, problems come in twos and threes
• CHAPTER FOUR Coming into one’s own: the oedipus complex and the couple in late adolescence
• CHAPTER FIVE Shadows of the parental couple: oedipal themes in Bergman’s
• CHAPTER SIX “It seemed to have to do with something else …” Henry James’ What Maisie Knew and Bion’s theory of thinking
• CHAPTER SEVEN The painful truth
• CHAPTER EIGHT The oedipus complex as observed in work with couples and their children
• CHAPTER NINE Oedipus gets married: an investigation of a couple’s shared oedipal drama
• CHAPTER TEN No Sex couples, catastrophic change, and the primal scene
• REFERENCES
• INDEX