Oedipal Self

The oedipal self is not only assertively affectionate and competitive. It is a sexy self, in the sense that the affection it experiences has a primary pleasurable, sensuous, and erotic quality to it. It is true; there is sweetness and softness, the appreciative affection of love. The assertiveness, however, manifests as passion, as consuming and ecstatic love. This passionate love does not differentiate between desire and appreciation; it is an intense excitation both consuming and sweet. There is softness and gentleness, but there is also an exquisite lusty passionateness. It is the lusty, erotic, sexy, sensuous, ecstatic love of life. It is a matter of being lovingly and passionately turned on to life, and deeper still to the truth of the mystery of our Being. It is not necessarily genital, and is generally not genital in early childhood, but it can be, and is appropriately so in adulthood. (The Point of Existence, pg 379)

The self that is realized when oedipal narcissism is transformed is not the self patterned by the development of a psychic structure, accruing from experiences at the oedipal phase, as Kohut believes, but a specific essential form, a Presence of being inseparable from love and passion. We recognize ourselves as a Presence that is full, sensuous, vigorous, vibrant, alive, erotic, flowing, beautiful, and youthful. We recognize ourselves as this quality by directly being this vigorous and passionate Presence. The passionate love, the vigor and sensuousness, are not attributes of this sense of self; they are its very substance. One is a vigorous river of aliveness, passionately in love with life and truth. This river is an actuality a tangy flow of Presence, a consuming continuity of Being. (The Point of Existence, pg 381)

This passionate, erotic, and loving presence, which is the self of the oedipal phase, makes it possible for us to experience our bodies and the emotions deeply and fully. We experience the body then as vibrant and alive, and the emotions as deep and expansive. In other words, the oedipal self includes the emotional and physical dimensions of the self. This means the work on oedipal narcissism requires work on opening the emotions, feelings and sensations. This also indicates that disturbances in the oedipal stage may lead to emotional repression and general alienation from our feelings and the aliveness of our bodies. (The Point of Existence, pg 556)