Oedipus at play 1

Abstract

Like Marion Burgner, Ken Robinson writes of what can go wrong in the oedipal phase. Robinson brings together Freud and Winnicott, arguing that they share a conviction that a capacity to entertain illusion and reality simultaneously makes engagement in illusion and play possible, and he extends this to describe transitional play as a fundamental aspect of the parental function in the oedipal stage. He emphasises that the development of sexuality is inseparable from the development of mind and the sense of a self as personally engaged in the world. The parents hold the reality of generational difference and the incest taboo so that the child is free to play at being the lover of the chosen parent, to explore emerging sexual fantasies, wishes and feelings. In his clinical example Robinson describes a case, Debra, where her tender, potentially playful overtures to her father were treated as adult sexual advances, leading to sexual abuse. In the course of the analysis Debra had to develop a capacity to play rather than re-enact her abuse in the transference as she moved towards treating her analyst as a new developmental object in relation to whom she could explore her hitherto distorted oedipal feelings.