Freud claimed that all boys experience a developmental phase in which they desire their mother and see their father as a sexual rival. But, as O’Shaughnessy identifies it in the essay ‘The Invisible Oedipus Complex’ (1989), a problem threatens: what happens when one’s client exhibits ‘little or even no Oedipal material’? She describes how the Austrian psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut suggests setting aside the Oedipus complex altogether. But this won’t do: it risks a major departure from Freud’s key teachings. Fortunately though, O’Shaughnessy has a breakthrough with the help of Leon. Drawing on his case, she posits that clients can have an ‘invisible’ Oedipus complex – with its invisibility taken to show not that it is irrelevant to the client, but so central and intense as to be the dominant force acting on his mental life. With this, O’Shaughnessy has achieved quite a feat: for psychoanalysts wondering whether the Oedipus complex is universal as Freud claimed, they can reassure themselves that either the presence or the absence of ‘Oedipal material’ is proof of its existence. (View Highlight)
Successful psychotherapy requires, above all else, that the therapist attune herself to the other person in the room. Any set of presuppositions is a potential obstacle to that task (View Highlight)