The missing link: parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex

Summary of The Missing Link: Parental Sexuality in the Oedipus Complex

In The Missing Link: Parental Sexuality in the Oedipus Complex (1989), Ronald Britton develops a Kleinian understanding of the Oedipus complex by emphasizing the child’s recognition of the relationship between the parents. He argues that an important aspect of the Oedipal situation is the child’s capacity to recognize that the parents have a relationship that exists independently of the child.

Britton connects this recognition with the depressive position. Accepting the parental couple requires the child to tolerate feelings of jealousy, exclusion, loss, love, and aggression. The child must gradually accept that the mother and father can love each other and have a relationship from which the child is excluded.

According to Britton, difficulties in accepting the parental couple may interfere with the development of a stable internal world and the capacity to perceive relationships between other people. The “missing link” is therefore the recognition of the parents as a couple, rather than viewing each parent only in relation to oneself. This idea has important implications for understanding both child development and psychoanalytic clinical work.