Int J Psychoanal 2006;87:423–37

The impulse to infidelity and oedipal splitting

LAWRENCE JOSEPHS
Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, Adelphi University,
Garden City, NY 11530, USA — josephs@adelphi.edu
(Final version accepted 28 June 2005)

Freud suggested that the child perceives parental intercourse as an act of infidelity
by the desired but unfaithful parent. Parental sexual infidelity is felt to be a major
narcissistic injury that gives rise to fantasies of revenge. A defensive organization
arises to manage this trauma and its attendant revenge fantasies. That organization
involves splitting of the desired parent into faithful and unfaithful parts, displacement
of hostility on to the rival parent, and identification with the desired but unfaithful
parent resulting in the impulse to infidelity. Romantic fantasies of escape and rescue
from evil rivals provide guilt free ways of satisfying fantasies of oedipal revenge.
In those fantasies the evil rival is turned into an injured third party who gets his or
her just deserts as the romantic couple gets to live happily ever after. This defensive
organization may embroil patients in complicated love triangles as adults for which
they may seek treatment. Analyzing the repudiated narcissistic wound of parental
infidelity and the disguised revenge fantasies that defend against that wound may
provoke narcissistic rage towards the analyst as a moralistic, possessive, controlling,
envious, and spoiling oedipal parent.

Keywords: infidelity, oedipal splitting, primal scene, seduction and betrayal, oedipal
conflict, defensive organization, identification with desired but unfaithful parent

Seduction and betrayal dynamics tend to be neglected in the way in which the
oedipal conflict is written about in the psychoanalytic literature. This is a curious
omission given that Freud paid significant attention to that dynamic in his writing.
Freud suggested that:
It is a matter of everyday experience that fidelity, especially that degree of it required in
marriage, is only maintained in the face of continual temptations. Anyone who denies these
temptations in himself will nevertheless feel their pressure so strongly that he will be glad
enough to make use of an unconscious mechanism to alleviate his situation. (1922, p. 224)

Freud was suggesting a universal conflict between the requirements of monogamy

and the impulse to infidelity. He linked that conflict to the Oedipus complex.
Freud (1910) explained how the issue of infidelity is an inherent part of the
boy’s oedipal conflict. According to Freud, the boy ‘does not forgive his mother for
having granted the favour of sexual intercourse not to himself but to his father, and
he regards it as an act of unfaithfulness’ (p. 171). This betrayal trauma generates a
love/hate relationship with his mother. As a result, the boy splits the imago of his
mother into ‘a person of unimpeachable moral purity’ (p. 170) and a prostitute,
thinking ‘that the difference between his mother and a whore is not so great after all,
since basically they do the same thing’ (p. 171).

©2006 Institute of Psychoanalysis

424 LAWRENCE JOSEPHS

Freud (1919) discussed the little girl’s feelings of being seduced and rejected
by her father. He noted how her sadistic fantasies of revenge may be turned into
masochistic fantasies of being beaten due to unconscious guilt. In this paper,
Freud mentions that ‘the unwelcome birth of a new brother or sister (which is
felt as faithlessness)’ (p. 188) is experienced as a narcissistic wound. Parental
betrayal isn’t as explicitly the act of bestowing ‘sexual favours’ upon one another
but rather the act of bringing a new baby into the family who may replace the child
in the parents’ affections. Of course, the child may infer that the parents must have
been having sexual relations in order to make a new baby. The female equivalent
of the boy’s Madonna/whore complex that Freud did not spell out as explicitly
would be splitting the father into the image of a ruthless sexual predator who
ravishes women and a genuinely devoted but emasculated man in whom there is
no sexual interest.
Freud makes clear that oedipal infidelity is a huge narcissistic injury that incites
fantasies of revenge. The murderousness felt towards the unfaithful parent certainly
equals that felt towards the rival parent. Shakespeare’s Othello is the best dramati-
zation of the desire to punish sexual betrayal with a death sentence. Nevertheless,
homicidal impulses towards the rival parent are more often cited in the literature
than homicidal impulses towards the desired but unfaithful parent. It is as though the
literature mirrors the child’s unconscious tendency to displace death wishes from
the desired but unfaithful parent to the rival by viewing the desired parent as all
good and the rival parent as all bad.
Freud (1910) noted that one expression of the oedipal conflict in adult love
relations is the generation of the need for an ‘injured third party.’ In love triangles,
somebody is going to end up the excluded other enviously watching a blissfully
happy romantic couple and feeling like a resentful and humiliated loser who is
sexually inadequate. This leads to identification with the desired but unfaithful
parent, a form of identification with the aggressor. The child will avenge him- or
herself by growing up to become an adult who will seduce and betray others as he
or she has felt seduced and betrayed.
Unconscious guilt over the impulse to infidelity can lead to projecting that
impulse on to one’s lover so that one feels like the injured third party jealously
imagining one’s lover’s infidelity while living in paranoid dread of sexual betrayal
(Freud, 1922). Despite the explanatory power of these psychodynamic formula-
tions, most discussions of the oedipal conflict view dread of incestuous involvement
with the desired parent concurrent with dread of retaliation by the rival parent as the
primary situations of danger without reference to betrayal trauma.
Klein developed seminal insights into how phenomena like splitting, projec-
tion, sadomasochistic object relations, and paranoia may derive from conflicts in
the earliest dyadic relationship with the mother. Escaping those conflicts by turning
to the father gives rise to an early oedipal conflict in which feelings of exclusion
from and envy of the parental couple are negotiated (Klein, 1928). Yet Klein did
not highlight, as did Freud, that the sense of painful exclusion is at some point in
psychosexual development interpreted as an act of sexual infidelity. The Kleinian
analysis of splitting, projection, sadomasochism, and paranoia did not maintain
 THE IMPULSE TO INFIDELITY AND OEDIPAL SPLITTING 425

the vital links that Freud established between those phenomena and the narcissistic
wound of sexual betrayal. As a consequence, an oedipal aspect of those phenomena
may be overlooked if those issues are understood as deriving solely from the earliest
relationship with the mother.

A pattern of oversight in the psychoanalytic literature

Most readers are probably aware from their own experience of reading the analytic
literature that conflicts around oedipal infidelity are infrequently discussed in the
clinical literature. What is surprising is that the issue is curiously overlooked in a
number of classic references, texts, and overview articles from a variety of theoreti-
cal orientations that deal extensively with the oedipal conflict, the primal scene, and
the universal situations of danger. Many of those works even cite Freud’s 1910
paper (Fenichel, 1945; Laplanche and Pontalis, 1973; Brenner, 1982; Schafer, 1983;
Britton et al., 1989; Moore and Fine, 1990; Holtzman and Kulish, 2003; Rusbridger,
2004). This is not to say that these contributions do not address the child’s feelings
of being seduced by the desired parent, of being excluded from the parents’ sexual
relationship, and of hating the desired parent. What these contributions do not do
is explicitly cite the trauma of sexual betrayal and link defenses against that narcis-
sistic wound to conflicts around the impulse to infidelity.
Freud seemed to have set this trend in his own writing. His most extensive
discussion of the issue of oedipal infidelity is in his 1910 paper. He does briefly
cite the narcissistic injury of the parents’ ‘faithlessness’ or ‘infidelity’ in other
papers (1919, 1920). Freud links those betrayals more closely to the birth of a new
baby who may replace the child in the parents’ affections than to the fact that the
parents bestow their sexual favors upon one another. By the mid-1920s, castra-
tion has become the central situation of danger in the Oedipus complex without
much further reference to the trauma of the desired parent’s infidelity (Freud,
1923, 1924, 1925). Freud (1926) does not cite sexual betrayal in his listing of the
universal situations of danger. Thus, Freud introduced an initial understanding of
the oedipal conflict in terms of parental infidelity only to make that earlier under-
standing less central in his later formulations. The analytic literature has mostly
followed his lead in treating oedipal infidelity as though it were only a minor
footnote of the Oedipus conflict.
Citing this general trend is not to say that significant contributions on this topic
have not been made from a variety of theoretical orientations (McDougall, 1972;
Blum, 1979; Arlow, 1980; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1991; Kernberg, 1991; Steiner,
1996; Britton, 1998). Taken as a whole, these contributions reinforce and elaborate
Freud’s central point that oedipal infidelity is a major blow to the child’s narcissism.
That blow stimulates fantasies of revenge that are managed in myriad ways such as
splitting of the desired parent into sexually idealized and sexually devalued aspects,
displacement of hostility on to the rival parent, and identification with the unfaith-
ful parent. The point of the current paper is to illustrate how viewing those various
defenses as a complex ‘defensive organization’ (Steiner, 1993) may illuminate the
psychodynamics of complicated love triangles.
426 LAWRENCE JOSEPHS

How oedipal splitting generates a defensive organization

Dread of being seduced and betrayed by a desired but unfaithful parent gives rise
to a typical defensive organization based on splitting imagos of self and other into
faithful and unfaithful aspects. The function of such splitting is to maintain an
idealized view of self and of the desired parent as sexually faithful lovers who are
eternally united in an exclusive relationship while evil rivals as injured third parties
get their just deserts. That romantic fantasy evokes feelings of erotic bliss and
elation. The fantasy of heroic romantic triumph defends against and compensates
for the opposite fantasy, the dread that an unfaithful lover and an evil rival will
unite as a treacherous couple who will sexually betray an innocent victim who will
be permanently shattered by the humiliation. This defensive organization manages
the intense conflict between the wish for romantic triumph and the dread of a tragic
sexual betrayal.
The defensive process is initiated, as Freud suggested, by splitting the image of
the desired but unfaithful parent into an image of a trustworthy nurturing caretaker
towards whom no sexual or hostile feelings are felt (the Madonna or the absolutely
devoted but emasculated man like the tin man, straw man, or cowardly lion from
the Wizard of Oz) and a potentially unfaithful but sexually desirable lover (a femme
fatale or a ladies’ man). Both sexual desire and sexual frustration are felt towards the
sexually alluring but potentially unfaithful parent. For that reason, sexual feelings
towards the desired but unfaithful parent are displaced from the actual parent to
sexually teasing symbolic substitutes like peers or older siblings. The conflict is
also recreated in the inner relationship with one’s own seductive superego (Josephs,
2001), an overly permissive aspect of one’s own superego that teases, taunts, and
shames the self into doing forbidden things.
Idealization of the faithful parent doesn’t protect that parent from hostility for
long, though the element of sexual desire and sexual frustration in that relationship
tends to remain repressed. The boy may feel that it is an infantilizing and emasculat-
ing dependency to feel stuck in a relationship with a nonsexual nurturing mother.
The girl may feel oppressively stifled by a nonsexual relationship with an overly
protective, overly possessive, and overly demanding father. There may be a desire
to flee as guilt-ridden resentment begins to build. These conflicts may become more
prominent during adolescence when there is an unconscious resurgence of oedipal
issues in the context of raging hormones.
Underneath the manifest resentment about being controlled and smothered by
the devoted nonsexual love of the desired parent may be a repudiated resentment
about the desired parent’s infidelity. A derivative situation in adult relationships is
the frustration a suitor feels when the object of his or her affections just wants to
be best friends but not lovers. That situation may become even more conflictual
when platonic friends confide the private details of their sex lives with other people,
unconsciously hoping to make each other jealous.
An oscillating dynamic may emerge, in which, when the relationship with
the faithful lover feels too suffocating and sexually lifeless, there is a flight into
freedom and vitality in a relationship with an exciting but potentially unfaithful
 THE IMPULSE TO INFIDELITY AND OEDIPAL SPLITTING 427

lover. Yet, when there is too much humiliation and rejection in the relationship with
the unfaithful lover, there may be a flight back into the secure arms of the faithful
lover. Many patients seek treatment mired in the grip of this dynamic, in which they
oscillate between secure but sexually unsatisfying relationships with faithful lovers
and sexually exciting but insecure relationships with unfaithful lovers.
This seemingly unresolvable conflict in relation to the desired but unfaithful
lover may be displaced on to conflicts with sexual rivals. Blame for oedipal defeat
may be displaced from the treachery of the desired but unfaithful parent to the
superior sexual prowess of the sexually predatory rival parent. A fantasy can be
maintained that the desired parent would be sexually available and faithful if only
the more sexually alluring rival could be eliminated from the picture. The desired
parent is thus exonerated of the heinous crime of sexual betrayal and can remain
idealized as essentially pure and innocent at heart if not in deed.
The desired parent may be imagined to be sexually enthralled by the deviously
ensnaring rival (the ogre who imprisons and ravishes the damsel in distress or the
henpecked husband emasculated by his shrewish wife). The child may imagine that
the desired but sexually imprisoned parent wishes to be set free by the child so they
can live happily ever after. The intoxicating power of this romantic fantasy of escape
and rescue blinds the child to his or her humiliated rage at the desired parent’s infi-
delity. Hostility is displaced on to the evil sexually predatory rival over whom the
child aspires to achieve a vindictive triumph.
Identification with the desired but unfaithful lover serves as a defense against
betrayal trauma by turning passive into active. It also serves as a means of gratifying
the wish for revenge against the perpetrators of humiliating betrayal traumas. The
revenge fantasies associated with the impulse to infidelity arouse guilt. This leads to
a split within the self between faithful and unfaithful aspects. There is an idealized
self that is loyal, faithful, and devoted as a lover who would never break a promise.
There is an unfaithful self that is ruthless, devious, conniving, opportunistic, and
cruel, that would betray a lover and lie about it. The idea that all is fair in love and
war captures a certain psychopathic element of romantic love. The unfaithful self is
a ruthless sexual predator, though this character trait is usually attributed to the evil
rival in most romantic fantasies.
This split within the self leads to an ambivalent attitude towards sexual fidelity.
Sometimes there is pride or feelings of moral superiority in fidelity. Other times it
seems foolish and masochistic to remain loyal in a world of unfaithful lovers when
the grass is greener somewhere else. Sometimes there is self-loathing for unfaithful
acts or tendencies. Other times there is exhilaration and smug self-satisfaction in
believing that it is possible to enjoy the pleasures of infidelity without suffering any
of the negative consequences.
The unfaithful aspect of self is often repudiated to attenuate guilt. There is a
strong tendency to deny the sense of vindictive triumph in successfully seducing
and betraying a lover. The betrayed partner seems less of an innocent victim if he or
she is construed as an overly possessive, emotionally withholding, contemptuously
devaluing, exciting–depriving, or otherwise abusive lover. To be rescued from the
clutches of such a ‘bad’ partner can seem like a noble endeavor. Thus, a sadistic
428 LAWRENCE JOSEPHS

fantasy of oedipal revenge is transformed into a guilt-free romantic fantasy of escape

and rescue in which a ‘bad’ sexually imprisoning partner is turned into the injured
third party who gets his or her just deserts.
Guilt-free pleasure in infidelity requires severing the empathic identification
with the humiliation of the betrayed partner by making him or her seem deserv-
ing of punishment. Guilt over enactment of the impulse to infidelity is sometimes
rationalized by the thought that what the betrayed partner doesn’t know won’t hurt
him or her. The betrayed partner is allowed to live in a ‘fool’s paradise.’ Infidelity
seems morally acceptable as long as the unfaithful partner can get away with living
a secret double life. An argument might be made that it is moralistic and repressive
to condemn the seemingly innocent desire for vitally enlivening sexual experiences
with new partners. What may be conveniently overlooked is the morality of an
enlivening sexual affair when that sexual experience requires deceiving and betray-
ing someone one claims to love.
To attenuate guilt as well as dread of being caught, the betrayed lover must be
construed as an insensitive person who could not possibly intuit the false pretenses,
cover-ups, lies, and emotional distance through which the unfaithful lover uncon-
sciously reveals the secret infidelity. It seems as though no damage is done if the
betrayed lover is not capable of reading between the lines or of harboring secret
suspicions. Paranoid dread of being exposed may be associated with the thought
that infidelity may be an unforgivable offense. The unfaithful partner may anx-
iously imagine the ugly scene that would unfold upon being caught in the act. It is
assumed that the betrayed partner will punitively abandon or perhaps even murder
the unfaithful lover in a fit of rage. Or maybe the betrayed partner will stay married
to the unfaithful lover but as a shattered individual. As a shell of his or her former
self, the betrayed lover will eternally exist as a silent reproach the unfaithful lover
can never forget.
Psychoanalytic insights into unconscious communication suggest that at least
unconsciously it is likely that betrayed lovers do intuit their partners’ infidelity even
if they consciously deny it and look the other way. Sometimes the unconscious per-
ception is revealed in joking comments. For example, one betrayed wife noticed that
her unfaithful husband had received an email from an unfamiliar woman. She teased
her husband: ‘I bet that email is from your secret lover.’ He sheepishly gave her
some false reassurance. The husband reported to his analyst feeling flummoxed and
exposed as though his wife had read his mind. His wife overlooked her husband’s
fleeting look of alarm at being caught, taking his false reassurance at face value. He
interpreted his wife’s response to his transparently false reassurance as tacit permis-
sion to continue the affair as long as it was done discreetly.
This defensive organization based on oedipal splitting may constitute a universal
tendency with innumerable variations on the basic themes. The universal appeal of
stories of love triangles in which dramas of seduction and betrayal unfold suggests
such a possibility (the Bible’s Samson and Delilah as well as David and Bathsheba,
Shakespeare’s Othello, or the Kamasutra’s advice on how to have affairs with other
men’s wives without courting disaster). This defensive organization may be a nor-
mative expression of Klein’s paranoid–schizoid position as experienced through the
 THE IMPULSE TO INFIDELITY AND OEDIPAL SPLITTING 429

prism of oedipal infidelity as it utilizes all the same defense mechanisms. Thus, it is
certainly shaped by pre-oedipal/early oedipal factors.
The quality and severity of this defensive organization is multiply determined. It
would be no surprise to discover that infants with secure attachments in the first year
of life were more likely to establish stable monogamous relationships as adults. It
would be no surprise to discover that children whose parents had extramarital affairs
were more likely to have extramarital affairs as adults. Issues of gender, power,
and cultural sanction or prohibition shape this defensive organization. For example,
there is a widespread double standard that makes it more permissible for men than
women to have affairs and more permissible for betrayed men than betrayed women
to openly avenge themselves against their unfaithful lovers.
To what degree is enduring intimacy that integrates love and lust in a long-term
monogamous relationship a developmental achievement, as Freud (1905) believed?
To what degree is infidelity a sign of developmental arrest? These questions are
debatable and may be related to one’s mental health maturity ethic. The morality
of infidelity inevitably becomes a central concern in the analytic relationship. The
patient’s perceptions/fantasies about the analyst’s personal biases often become an
emotionally charged aspect of the analytic relationship that must be openly addressed
when conflicts around infidelity are salient.

Clinical implications
The complex defensive organization that arises around oedipal infidelity may
generate formidable resistances to the analytic process. This is primarily due to the
fact that most people would rather unreflectively enact their romantic fantasies in
search of a happy ending than analyze the anxieties, conflicts, and defenses associ-
ated with such fantasies. Unfaithful lovers, in fantasy or in actuality, would rather not
think about the potential traumatic impact of their infidelity on the betrayed partner
or their forbidden sadistic pleasure in humiliating a loved one. Unconsciously, they
would rather undo the narcissistic injury of their own betrayal traumas by turning
passive into active than by acknowledging their own hurt, humiliation, impotent
rage, and paranoid dread of being betrayed once again.
Patients may regale the analyst with exciting romantic escapades of escape and
rescue from stifling relationships or tragic dramas of sexual betrayal. The patient
would rather vent to an aroused or sympathetic analyst than analyze the uncon-
scious determinants of such perfervid accounts. The analyst is put in the position
of the patient’s own ‘voyeuristic observing ego’ (Josephs, 2003) whose function is
to innocently and passively enjoy witnessing disguised expressions of primal-scene
material that is never analyzed.
To actively analyze the patient’s love triangles may evoke narcissistic rage at an
overly possessive, overly controlling, sexually prohibiting, moralistic, envious, and
arrogant oedipal parent who is trying to spoil the patient’s love life by making the
patient feel guilty. Activation of narcissistic rage towards the analyst is inevitable
as the patient works through defenses against the awareness of the enormity of the
narcissistic wound left by the trauma of parental infidelity.
430 LAWRENCE JOSEPHS

Susan, a married woman in her early forties, sought treatment because she was
ambivalent about remaining married to her husband. Susan characterized her husband
as an emotionally abusive and emotionally withholding man. She felt herself to be
an innocent victim of his mistreatment. She never saw him as her romantic ideal
and always felt she was settling for second best. Nevertheless, he seemed like a safe
bet and she thought that they might have children together. Yet when the marriage
turned sour her husband felt it would be a bad idea to have children.
Susan felt that her husband had betrayed a promise. As a consequence, Susan
began having extramarital affairs, looking for someone better. She felt she couldn’t
leave him without having first found someone better because she felt it was prefer-
able to have a childless marriage than it was to be single without husband or child.
She did not wish to be a single mother. Susan’s extramarital affairs always turned
sour, as her lovers perceived that she would never leave her husband for them. Yet
Susan always felt betrayed by her lovers as she thought of herself as prepared to run
away with them if only they would make a firm commitment to her in advance of
her leaving her husband. The quality of the extramarital sex began to deteriorate as
mutual recriminations escalated leading to an eventual breakup.
Susan sought treatment looking for help with her inner conflicts about remain-
ing married and having affairs. Susan had difficulty tolerating the analyst’s seeming
neutrality and tended to read into his interpretations implicit judgments about what
she should or shouldn’t do. She tended to accuse the analyst of blaming her, alter-
nately blaming her for masochistically remaining with a husband who would deny
her a child and blaming her for wrecking the marriage by having affairs since she
could not appreciate her husband’s many fine qualities. For example, Susan indig-
nantly wondered if she could work with a male analyst who identified more with her
husband than with herself when the analyst made a comment implicitly suggesting
some empathy with and understanding for her husband’s viewpoint.
The analyst felt the painful sting of her accusations that he experienced as over-
stated though possessing a kernel of truth. The analyst would try to nondefensively
explore the plausibility of her take on him, acknowledging that there could be a
‘kernel of truth’ in her criticisms. Nevertheless, this tack implied that she was taking
something subtle but real that she noticed about the analyst and was blowing it
out of proportion in order to justify and rationalize her paranoid suspicions. Susan
responded to this approach by sarcastically referring to the analyst as the ‘colonel
of truth.’ Susan seemed to project her own unconscious guilt on to the analyst and
attack him as though he were her own harsh superego.
On the one hand, the analyst felt that he would not want to be ‘cuckolded’
like her husband. This was the kernel of truth in her perception of the analyst
as a moralistic authority figure. On the other hand, the analyst also felt that her
husband deserved to be punished for breaking a promise to have children. In
contrast, her analyst would be her loyal devoted servant who would rescue her
from her ogre of a husband and help her make babies. Thus, two sides of the
paternal split were activated in the analyst’s countertransference, identification
with a domineering and arrogant father figure and identification with a knight
in shining armor who would rescue her from abusive men.
 THE IMPULSE TO INFIDELITY AND OEDIPAL SPLITTING 431

Issues surrounding the analyst’s neutrality and authority in the analytic situation
have been controversial in recent years (Renik, 1998). Like Sullivan’s (1954)
participant-observer, the analyst believed that he retained some capacity to observe
and interpret both sides of her oedipal conflict despite his own unconscious tendency
to alternately identify with and enact both sides of the complementary paternal split.
Her transference ‘distortion’ would reside in the fact that she defensively needed
to see only the moralistic side while possessing paranoid suspicion of the side that
accepted her wish to be rescued. Of course, women have good reason to mistrust male
desires to rescue them because once men succeed in that endeavor they may wish to
abandon the women they have rescued in search of new romantic adventures.
The typical session with Susan began with her venting her feelings of hurt,
humiliation, anger, and betrayal that her husband, her lover, or her analyst had
treated her in a rejecting/abusive manner, though she felt she had been treating them
all quite well. Thus, each session began with a narrative of narcissistic injury that
could be understood as a derivative expression of her own buried traumas of emo-
tional betrayal.

Patient: I just want to tell you that you’ve been right all along about one thing.
But first I have to tell you what happened this weekend. [Spoken in an animated,
pressured, breathless manner] I know you won’t approve of what I did. Philip [her
lover] was absolutely horrible this weekend. I invited him to stay with me at the film
festival for the entire weekend because his wife kicked him out of the house and he
had no place to go. I thought he’d be happy to see me and spend the weekend with
me but he was in a really bad mood when I was so happy just to see him. [Sounding
surprised] We just argued the whole weekend. How can I leave my husband for him
when he is treating me so poorly? What should I do? I know. You think I shouldn’t
be seeing him at all. It’s such a big mess. I can’t let him treat me like that. He was
screaming at me in the hotel room. He made such a scene. He has a worse temper
than my husband does. This has got to stop. [Sounding indignant]
Analyst [Feeling confused, asking for clarification]: What were you arguing
about?
P: He overheard me talking to my husband on the phone. Isaac [her husband] was
so sick so I was trying to comfort him. Philip overheard me calling Isaac sweetie. He
blew his top. He said I would never leave my husband for him, that I had been lying
to him all along. That’s what you’ve been saying, that I won’t leave my husband.
I’m not so sure about that. But you were right about Philip. That’s what Philip
thinks, that I won’t leave my husband and I’m just leading him on. You’re always
right. [sounding begrudgingly submissive] You must think I’m ridiculous but this is
really hard for me. [spoken in an accusatory but anxiously placating tone]
A [Feeling unfairly accused but trying to be nondefensive by making an ‘analyst-
centred interpretation’ (Steiner, 1993, p. 131), resentment could be leaking through
in tone of voice]: You seem to feel that my smug self-satisfaction in being right
might outweigh any empathy I might have for your difficult situation.
P: You have to help me. I don’t know what to do. [spoken in a distressed, pleading,
helpless tone] I really would run away with Philip but I know it’s crazy. I’m sure his
432 LAWRENCE JOSEPHS

wife will take him back in a few days. That is always the pattern. He always goes
back to his wife when she is ready to take him back. I don’t know what I’ve been
thinking. [sounding partially self-reflective, partially self-critical] Why will this time
be any different? He’s really quite dependent on her. I don’t know what I was thinking.
[sounding resigned, pauses in silence waiting for the analyst to say something]
A [feeling sympathetic, a ‘patient-centred interpretation’ (Steiner, 1993, p. 131)
hoping to invite self-reflection]: You get so caught up in your fantasy of running off
with Philip that it’s hard to see clearly what’s going on.
P: This is so hard for me. You don’t know how hard this is for me. [as though the
analyst is impatient for change] What if it never changes? You must think I’m really
crazy. [pleading for reassurance]
A: You read my mind precisely! [said jokingly, feeling exasperated because the
invitation to be more reflective about her wishful thinking was experienced as an
attack on her sanity but frustrating her wish for reassurance with a teasing remark
gives the analyst a little sadistic pleasure]
P: [Laughs hysterically; as the laughter subsides, patient returns to discussing
the issue in a more contemplative frame of mind] I don’t know why I see Philip
as such a romantic figure. I know it seems absurd but I do. [sounds amused with
her own observation] I really do. There is something about him that I find very
attractive. [spoken as though the analyst wouldn’t believe her] It would be horrible
living with him. I can understand why his wife has a difficult time living with him.
[sounding sympathetic towards her lover’s wife]

The patient draws the analyst into her defensive organization through a complex
narrative style. The manifest content is initially somewhat confusing, as it is unclear
why Susan and her lover are arguing so vociferously. As the situation is clarified,
it becomes apparent that Susan has unconsciously recreated the experience of shat-
tered innocence; of naively seeming to believe that she will run away with her lover
who has left his wife only to traumatically realize that her lover will never leave his
wife for her. Susan acknowledges that from an external perspective it can seem as
though she has seduced and betrayed her lover but she still believes that her motives
have been pure.
Two types of repetitive side comments punctuate the central narrative of the
complicated love triangles in which Susan is embroiled. Negative mind-reading
that is implicitly accusatory alternates with a desperate plea for help and reassur-
ance. The negative mind-reading is always made as a passing comment. It is as
though Susan is simply stating an obvious fact about the analyst’s mind that isn’t
worth discussing because the analyst will only deny it. Instead, Susan waits in
anxious anticipation of the analyst’s response to her insistent pleas for help and
reassurance. The analyst seems to have a forced choice: make a heroic but doomed
attempt to rescue her from her difficult predicament or frustrate her wish to be
rescued and be treated as though he were her own harsh and arrogant superego.
To avoid those two roles, the analyst makes a humorous remark only to fall into
a third role, that of an exciting but sadistically teasing lover, an enactment that
affords the patient intense transferential pleasure.
 THE IMPULSE TO INFIDELITY AND OEDIPAL SPLITTING 433

The sequence of interventions (clarification → analyst-centered interpretation →

patient-centered interpretation → humorous remark) does seem to facilitate an incre-
mental progression towards a more reflective frame of mind. The analyst-centered
interpretation seemed to alleviate her paranoid anxiety due to the projection of her
own self-criticism on to the analyst. The patient-centered interpretation exacerbated
her self-criticism. The humorous remark alleviated her self-criticism and facilitated
the resumption of a more reflective attitude.
The patient is beginning to appreciate that the romantic fantasy of escape and
rescue may be more fantasy than reality in this particular situation. The patient is
beginning to show a little bit of self-reflective curiosity as to what would motivate
her to think and act in the way she does. Yet that curiosity threatens the defensive
organization and is quickly squelched through intensified self-criticism and projec-
tion of that self-criticism on to the analyst. Being able to sympathetically identify
with the point of view of her oedipal rival suggests some progress in overcoming
the maternal split. Susan still believes that she could do better than her husband. Yet
she is conceding that she could do a whole lot worse, making a little progress on the
paternal side of the split.
It became possible to gradually reconstruct her childhood conflicts as the negative
transference was incrementally worked through and Susan became more tolerant of
patient-centered work. Susan grew up in a wealthy family. She felt neglected by
her queenly, entitled mother who left her to the care of a German governess whom
she perceived as autocratic. Her father was described as a sexually insecure and
self-involved man. He treated her in demeaning and sexually inappropriate ways
in front of her mother and, from Susan’s perspective, with her mother’s blessing.
Though Susan resented her father’s mistreatment, she felt some sympathy for him.
She perceived them both as victims of her mother’s cold-hearted nature. She tried
not to take her father’s abusive treatment too personally, as she believed he was
displacing hostility towards her mother on to her. Susan had two older sisters and it
seemed that her mother put them all in intense competition with one another in order
to see who could be the mother’s favorite. Thus, in the early years of the treatment,
Susan viewed her mother as the main pathogenic influence in her childhood.
It is important to note that many pre-oedipal dimensions were recognized and
addressed in her treatment, though the oedipal issues have been highlighted. Susan
never developed a secure attachment to either parent. The analyst often interpreted
that her early childhood was like growing up in an orphanage in which her bio-
logical parents occasionally came for a visit. Due to her basic mistrust of secure
attachments, Susan never ‘put all her eggs in one basket.’ She only depended on
people she felt she could control and tried to never become too dependent on any
one person lest that person abandon her and leave her in the lurch.
Her early relationship with her autocratic German governess possessed many
abusive qualities. Her sadomasochistic relationship with her autocratic German
governess was displaced on to her experience of patriarchal ‘primal fathers’ (Freud,
1912–3). Her father’s sexually degrading treatment of her further reinforced sado-
masochistic tendencies in her relationships with men. Her mother’s disdainful
attitude towards her further reinforced an image of herself as contemptible.
434 LAWRENCE JOSEPHS

The issue of oedipal infidelity did not explicitly emerge in the material until
relatively late in the treatment after much of the negative transference had been
worked through. Susan casually mentioned that some family members believed that
her father had extramarital affairs. When the analyst asked her why she had never
mentioned this fact before after so many years of treatment, Susan replied that she
never thought it was true but more recently had begun to think that it might be true.
Susan also reported that her father openly flirted with other women in front of her
and her mother. Her mother always told her to ignore it because it didn’t mean
anything. Susan began to consider the possibility that her mother might have felt
humiliated by her father’s philandering, which may have been common knowledge
in certain circles. Perhaps her mother’s haughtiness was a way of saving face. Susan
began to feel sorry for her mother as a disgraced woman trying to hold her head up
high. It also came out that it was common knowledge that the husbands of both of
her older sisters had affairs.
It then began to seem that Susan disidentified with her mother because she didn’t
want to identify with a weak, humiliated woman who was seduced and betrayed
by her unfaithful husband. Her unconscious conclusion was that men could not be
trusted to be sexually loyal and faithful. Instead, Susan unconsciously identified with
the desired but unfaithful father and she would do to men what she felt her father
did to women. Men would have to compete for her love and devotion, a competition
that no man would ever win. Susan assumed that, if she ever let a man take her love
for granted, he would know that he had the upper hand in the relationship and would
believe that he could get away with cheating on her. Unconsciously, she imagined
that she was keeping her husband in line by having affairs and keeping her analyst
in line by threatening to replace him with a better therapist.
Susan began to re-evaluate her relationship with her husband as she began to
work through her paranoia in relation to the analyst. Clearly, her husband was a
man to whom verbal abuse and hostile withdrawal came easily. Yet Susan began to
consider her role in provoking that aspect of his personality. She discovered that,
when she acted like a helpless and guilt-inducing victim of an abusive husband, he
only became further enraged. Yet she discovered that, if she used humor to amuse
him, he became much more cooperative. It seemed that Susan had identified with
the teasing way the analyst had begun to handle her when she was being ‘difficult.’
Susan began reporting paranoid fears that her husband had been secretly having
affairs all along just at the moment she began to think that their relationship might
work out. Maybe he had intuited her affairs all along but didn’t care because he was
content to have affairs of his own. She also began to dread that she might lose him
to women who would lure him away from her by flattering his narcissism better
than she did. Curiously, her husband casually mentioned that he believed that some
people needed to have extramarital affairs to work out personal issues and that,
once these issues were worked through, they could be happy in their marriages.
His uncanny comment made it seem as though he had been overhearing Susan’s
sessions. Susan and the analyst were both astonished that her husband had correctly
intuited the true state of affairs in their marriage and that he was capable of such
magnanimity in the face of marital infidelity. The analyst suggested that perhaps
 THE IMPULSE TO INFIDELITY AND OEDIPAL SPLITTING 435

her husband was inspired by the romantic fantasy of rescuing a fallen woman and
that he had been waiting all these years for Susan to finally appreciate his devotion.
Susan mentioned that his previous girlfriend was a high-class call girl.
As Susan moved into her late fifties, she began to describe romantic moments
with her husband. They would sit on the dock in the back of their weekend house
sipping wine while watching the sunset. They would have interesting discussions
about the flora and fauna, though mostly sitting in silence. Susan reported feeling
happy and content during those moments.

Conclusion
The defensive organization deriving from oedipal infidelity rests on the paranoid
idea that appearances can be deceiving. What on the surface appears to be eminently
trustworthy, like parental love and devotion, may be but an ensnaring illusion. This
illusion can seem to be a form of entrapment that provides the setup for a humiliat-
ing betrayal trauma. This paranoid anxiety generates fundamental doubts about the
human capacity for loyalty to others and honesty with oneself in the face of a strong
temptation to sexually betray the ones we love. The relative neglect of the issue of
oedipal infidelity in the clinical literature may be a way of evading full awareness
of the exquisite human vulnerability to the trauma of seduction and betrayal in our
most intimate and trusting relationships.
The trauma of oedipal seduction and betrayal may be a universal situation of
danger. As a consequence, sexual trustworthiness can never be taken for granted
but must be gradually earned in relationships in which strong temptations to seduce
and betray one another have been successfully mastered. The analytic literature has
tended to view basic trust as something that derives almost exclusively from a secure
attachment in the earliest mother–infant relationship. Yet there would also seem to
be at least some aspects of sexual trustworthiness that may not be firmly established
until a monogamous relationship of adulthood has passed the test of time. Until that
point, unconscious conflicts in relation to oedipal infidelity are likely to be a source
of neurotic disturbance.

Translations of summary
Der Impuls zur Untreue und die ödipale Spaltung. Freud war der Ansicht, dass das Kind den elterli-
chen Geschlechtsverkehr als einen Akt der Untreue seitens des begehrten Elternteils erlebt. Diese sexuelle
Untreue wird als eine gravierende narzisstische Kränkung empfunden, die Rachephantasien weckt. Zur
Bewältigung eines solchen Traumas und der mit ihm einhergehenden Vergeltungsphantasien wird eine
Abwehrorganisation entwickelt. Sie beinhaltet die Spaltung des begehrten Elternteils in einen treuen
und einen untreuen Teil, die Verschiebung der Feindseligkeit auf den rivalisierenden Elternteil und die
Identifizierung mit dem begehrten, aber untreuen. So taucht der Impuls zur Untreue auf. Romantische
Fluchtphantasien und Phantasien, sich von bösen Rivalen zu befreien, dienen als schuldgefühlfreie
Möglichkeiten, ödipale Rachephantasien zu befriedigen. In diesen Phantasien wird der böse Rivale in
einen verletzten Dritten verwandelt, der das bekommt, was er verdient, während das romantische Paar
fortan ein glückliches und zufriedenes Leben führt. Diese Abwehrorganisation kann erwachsene Patienten
in komplizierte Liebesdreiecke verstricken, die sie veranlassen, sich in Behandlung zu begeben. Die
Analyse der verleugneten narzisstischen Wunde, die die elterliche Untreue hinterlassen hat, und der
verkleideten Rachephantasien, die vor der Kränkung schützen sollen, kann narzisstische Wut auf den
Analytiker wecken, der als moralisierender, Besitz ergreifender, kontrollierender, neidischer und Spaß
verderbender ödipaler Elternteil empfunden wird.
436 LAWRENCE JOSEPHS

El impulso a la infidelidad y la escisión edípica. Freud sugirió que el niño percibe las relaciones sexuales
de los padres como un acto de infidelidad del padre (o madre) deseado. La infidelidad sexual del padre (o
madre) es sentida como una herida narcisista de enormes proporciones, que suscita fantasías de venganza.
Surge de ello una organización defensiva para manejar este trauma y las fantasías de venganza con-
comitantes. Tal organización implica escindir al padre (o madre) deseado en una parte fiel y otra infiel,
desplazando la hostilidad al padre rival, e identificándose con el padre (o madre) deseado pero infiel, pro-
duciendo el impulso a la infidelidad. Determinadas fantasías románticas como salvarse o salvar a otros
de rivales malvados proporciona un modo de gratificar las fantasías edípicas de venganza sin sentimientos
de culpa. En estas fantasías el rival malvado se convierte en un tercero herido que recibe justamente su
merecido, mientras que la pareja romántica tiene garantizado vivir feliz para siempre. Esta organización
defensiva puede causar en determinadas personas complicadas triangulaciones en su vida afectiva, por las
que pueden llegar a buscar tratamiento. El análisis de la herida narcisista repudiada de la infidelidad del
padre (o madre) y las fantasías de venganza encubiertas que defienden contra esa herida puede provocar
una rabia narcisista contra el analista en cuanto padre (o madre) edípico moralista, posesivo, controlador,
envidioso y destructivo.

La tendance à l’infidélité et le clivage œdipien. Freud a considéré que l’enfant perçoit le commerce sexuel
parental comme un acte d’infidélité de la part du parent désiré mais infidèle. L’infidélité sexuelle paren-
tale est vécue comme une blessure narcissique majeure qui donne naissance à des fantasmes de revanche.
Cette organisation implique le clivage du parent désiré en deux parties, fidèle et infidèle, le déplacement de
l’hostilité sur le parent rival, et l’identification au parent désiré mais infidèle, qui peut conduire à la tendance à
l’infidélité. Des fantasmes romantiques d’échappement et de sauvetage face à des rivaux maléfiques fournis-
sent à la culpabilité des voies qui vont satisfaire l’expression de la revanche œdipienne. Dans ces fantasmes,
le rival maléfique est transformé en un tiers blessé qui reçoit ce qu’il mérite, alors que le couple romantique va
vivre désormais heureux à vie. Cette organisation défensive peut entraîner certains adultes dans des triangles
amoureux compliqués, pour lesquels il leur arrive de demander un traitement en tant que patients. L’analyse de
la blessure narcissique répudiée de l’infidélité parentale et les fantasmes de revanche déguisée qui défendent
contre cette blessure peut conduire à des réactions de rage narcissique contre l’analyste en tant que parent
œdipien moraliste, possessif, envieux, tendant à tout contrôler et à tout « gâcher ».

Impulso all’infedeltà e scissione edipica. Freud ha ipotizzato che il bambino percepisce il rapporto
sessuale dei genitori come un’infedeltà da parte del genitore desiderato. L’infedeltà sessuale del genitore
viene vissuta come una ferita narcisistica che fa sorgere fantasie di vendetta. Ne risulta un’organizzazione
difensiva che consente di gestire questo trauma e le relative fantasie di vendetta. Questo tipo di organiz-
zazione implica la scissione del genitore desiderato in una parte fedele e una infedele, lo spostamento
dell’ostilità sul genitore rivale e l’identificazione col genitore desiderato ma infedele che sfocia in una
spinta all’infedeltà. Fantasie romantiche quali il mettersi in salvo e il salvare da rivali malvagi fornisce un
modo di gratificare le fantasie edipiche di vendetta senza sensi di colpa. In queste fantasie il rivale malvagio
viene trasformato nel terzo attaccato per giusti motivi, mentre alla coppia romantica viene assicurato di
vivere felice per sempre. Questa organizzazione difensiva può causare complicati triangoli nella vita sen-
timentale dell’adulto, che sono spesso l’oggetto della cura psicoanalitica. L’analisi della ferita narcisistica
causata dall’infedeltà del genitore e quella delle fantasie di vendetta che mascherano tale ferita può far
sorgere rabbia di natura narcisistica nei confronti dell’analista, che viene percepito come genitore edipico:
moralista, possessivo, dominante, invidioso e distruttivo.

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