Oedipal determinants in differential outcome of bereavement

According to psychoanalytic theory, a bereaved individual's prior relationship with the lost person affects his vulnerability to bereavement. Freud attributed the vulnerability to the intensity of ambivalence, and Fenichel saw Oedipal rivalry as one example of that ambivalence. It is argued that, after the death of a parent, reality testing, crucial to the resolution of the Oedipus complex, is disrupted differently for children of the same sex, from those of the opposite sex. Based on Freud's and Fenichel's clinical observations, the effects of disrupted reality testing were transformed into a testable hypothesis. The predictions were validated by testing them against the data supplied by patients before they had any professional contact, when two-thirds of bereaved psychotherapy patients exhibited different effects when the deceased parent was of the same sex, from when he/she was of the opposite sex. A majority of the same-sex children develop an unconscious sense of guilt, which blocks their expression of Oedipal attitudes towards both parents and which attacks their capacity to function adequately at work, and in their sex-linked roles; while the opposite-sex children maintain their preference for the dead parent, aversion to the alive one, and have idealized expectations of their lovers or spouses.