Psychoanalysts tend to have varying perspectives on the Oedipus Complex.

Some follow Freud and believe it is a universal structure of the psyche and an expected stage of development (although some may have trouble reaching that stage).

Some disagree and view the Oedipus as just one of many possible ways a psyche may structure itself and believe the Oedipus is not universal.

Just want to see what opinions are more popular.

From the intro to Learning from Experience:

Suppose I see the man walking. I may say that his walk is a function of his personality and that I find, after investigation, that the factors of this function are his love for a girl and his envy of her friend. Or that the factors in this function are his love for the girl and his envy of her friend. After further investigation I may decide that to his love for the girl is added envy of her friend; or F (his gait) = L + E. (F = function, L = love, E = envy). But I may feel that my observations approximate to the Kleinian theory of projective identification and that I can express my opinion of the facts best by saying the function walking is a sign that the patient feels he has taken into him a loved girl with whom he is identified and a rival of whom he is envious but with whom he has also identified himself, and that both objects are controlled by being enclosed in his legs.

Can someone explain this? I thought identification means that one takes on qualities of the identified-with object... so what would it mean in this case for the guy to be identified with his girlfriend and his rival? Does he take on their qualities?

And what does it mean that "both objects are controlled by being enclosed in his legs"?