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Psychoanalysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

David Taylor
David Taylor*
Affiliation:
The Tavistock Clinic, 120 BelsizeLane, London NW3 5BA
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Extract

The reading I suggest first is concerned with the Oedipus complex, a major explanatory theory of psychoanalysis based upon a set of observations and crucial to the understanding of the personality and its relationships. It refers to an organised configuration of loving and hostile feelings which the child experiences towards its parents. It is the desire for the total possession of mother and the death of father as a rival, but is also love of the father and rivalry with the mother. Siblings, babies and genital and pre-genital versions of sexual intercourse and masturbation enter into it as well. My brief description draws upon the discussion in Laplanche & Pontalis' (1973) invaluable dictionary of psychoanalytic terms and concepts.

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Reading About…
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 157 , Issue 6 , December 1990 , pp. 940 - 943
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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