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which gradually emerges, then carries the implication of a
mother who is separate from the infant and not under the
infant's control, having a life of her own, which includes
principally a relationship with father, with all that it
implies, including feelings of exclusion, envy and jealousy.

But, as in the depressive position, there is more
integration and a diminution of paranoid anxieties, and by
degrees love and concern take the upper hand over the
hatred. Gradually Klein came to the conclusion that the
beginnings of the Oedipus complex are not associated with
the phase of maximum sadism -- an idea she came to
discard -- but, on the contrary, it is linked with diminishing
sadism. The awareness of ambivalence in relation to both
parents and to their inter-relationship brings in defences,
including some regression to splitting and paranoid
anxieties as a defence against guilt. But it also brings in
reparative impulses aimed not only at the restoration of the
breast and mother, but also, and increasingly, at restoring a
good parental couple and a good family as a whole.

In her 1945 paper, 'The Oedipus complex in the light of
early anxieties', which we reprint here (chapter one), she
spells out clearly the change in her views, as well as making
clearer where exactly they differ from Freud's. It is her last
paper on the subject, although she refers to the Oedipus
complex in nearly all her later papers. For example she
wrote,

The infant's capacity to enjoy at the same time the
relation to both parents which is an important feature in
his mental life and conflicts with his desires prompted by
jealousy and anxiety to separate them depends on his
feelings that they are separate individuals. This more
integrated relation to the parents (which is distinct from
the compulsive need to keep the parents apart from one
another and to prevent their sexual intercourse) implies

-3-

Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com

Publication Information: Book Title: The Oedipus Complex Today: Clinical Implications. Contributors: Ronald Britton - author, Michael Feldman - author, Edna O'Shaughnessy - author, John Steiner - editor. Publisher: Karnac Books. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1989. Page Number: 3.
    
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