Consequences of paternal nurturing.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Adult↗
SEARCH · Search PubMed
Results for “Oedipus Complex”
Search indexed PubMed citations on genomics, clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health. Explore titles, authors and supplied subject terms, then open the PubMed record.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
The analyst, his theory, and the psychoanalytic process.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Humans↗
Transitory symptom formation in the analysis of an obsessional character.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Adult↗
Twinship themes and fantasies in the work of Thornton Wilder.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Fantasy↗
Analytic discussions with oedipal children.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Child↗
From protomasochism to masochism. A developmental view.
A developmental view may help clarify confusions that exist regarding masochism. Following Loewenstein, I suggest that protomasochism be distinguished from masochism. Protomasochism comprises conditions prior to the oedipal period which may lead to masochism. Preoedipal precursors of masochism are organized and transformed during the oedipal stage and later. A conscious or unconscious genital sexual fantasy in which pain is an integral part may appear at that time. The demonstration of such a fantasy is essential for the definitive diagnosis of masochism. It is overdetermined and may result from a variety of dynamic configurations and genetic origins. In making those suggestions, I assume, following Freud, that erotogenic masochism is basic to all forms of masochism.
Adolescent↗
The early abortion of a pseudocyesis. Some observations from the analysis of an adolescent girl.
Clinical material relevant to the emergence and resolution of a pseudocyesis during the analysis of an adolescent girl is presented. This case provides evidence that psychodynamic factors can alter human behavior, produce significant mental disturbance, and even alter physiological functions. The data not only validate the psychoanalytic approach but are relevant to its very origins. The importance of the transference neurosis and the interrelationship of oedipal and preoedipal conflicts are emphasized. A brief comment is addressed to the patient's penis envy which appeared as a secondary phenomenon.
Abortion, Spontaneous↗
What does psychoanalysis have to contribute to the understanding of character?
While character is an indispensable term in psychoanalytic discourse, it is not primarily a psychoanalytic term. The psychoanalytic theories of neurosis and development are built around the idea of the "complementary series." While psychoanalysis has powerful theories about the "accidental" complement, it only recognizes the "constitutional" complement, and psychoanalysis has nothing to say about it. Current research may shed more light on this latter component and also provide the data for future psychoanalytic theorizing about character and personality.
Adolescent↗
Reality approximated, external and internal.
Some of Heinz Hartmann's theoretical formulations concerning the adaptive functions of the ego are described as they apply to the case of a patient analyzed between the ages of five and eight. This boy, vulnerable because of prematurity, was born at twenty-six weeks weighing 2.7 pounds and remained in the hospital newborn unit for sixty-six days. Difficulties and vulnerabilities resulting from this experience are discussed as they appeared in the analysis.
Anxiety Disorders↗
Narcissistic defense and learning inhibition.
This paper presents the case of a gifted scientist, Mr. A, whose inhibitions prevented him from doing creative work. He could learn only when he grasped the material immediately; protracted study was painful and humiliating. The analysis revealed that his early narcissistic grandiosity, engendered by his precocity and parental admiration, persisted through the oedipal phase and then became organized in his character, defending against competitive feelings and castration anxiety. In the analysis, resolution of his oedipal conflicts, both positive and negative, went hand in hand with his relinquishing the narcissistic defenses, which freed him to work creatively. The case elucidates one aspect of work-study difficulties in children.
Defense Mechanisms↗
Analytic abstinence and preoedipal disturbance.
Analytic abstinence entails a technical frustration that may have different meanings for those with primarily neurotic disorder and those with significant preoedipal pathology. It is posited that the greater the degree of preoedipal disturbance, the greater will be the tendency to experience the frustration of the technique itself as transference-laden: conflicts related to frustrating experiences in early childhood are revived owing to the abstinent form of psychoanalytic treatment. Ramifications regarding the analyst's work-ego, countertransference, general strategic considerations, and technical difficulties are discussed.
Countertransference↗
Anna Freud: observation and development.
Anna Freud taught the importance of observation, suggesting that students jot down their observations in a systematic manner. She urged observers to amplify their notes, which were later discussed in meetings. Observations made in the nursery school, for example, were discussed afterwards and classified in a file under appropriate headings somewhat similar to the technique used at the Anna Freud Centre. In this paper I describe my observations of a subject as an infant and a toddler with special reference to the way she looked intensely at the world around her. To some degree, the way she herself looked-i.e., her appearance-was also interesting. The relationship between the child's looking in infancy and the oedipal child's sexual curiosity, exhibitionism, and scoptophilia is suggested by these observations.
Adolescent↗
The concept of penis envy revisited. A child analyst listens to adult women.
Current psychoanalytic scholarship concerning gender development rejects recognition of the genital difference, or "penis envy," as central to the construction of "femininity," substituting the concept of "primary femininity." This shift in the paradigm of gender construction has occurred in part because of contributions from child-observational research showing that "gender identity" is acquired by age three. It has also been stimulated by the observations of adult analysts that interpretations organized around the concept of penis envy appear to have little mutative value in contrast to the communications in play and action from the analyses of preschool girls, which seem to reflect intense intrapsychic conflict stimulated by the girls' recognition of the genital difference. Using clinical material, this paper contrasts fantasies of gender found in oedipal girls with those presented in the analyses of adult women. The differences reflect not only the vicissitudes of gender construction and developmental changes in the mind's capacity to adapt to the demands of reality but also the fate of aggressive and narcissistic derivatives as they become entangled in conflict created by recognition of the inherent limitations of the body. The fantasies referred to by the concept "penis envy" are not constitutive of femininity; however, they reflect one approach to a defensive solution to intrapsychic dilemmas stemming from awareness of bodily and generational limits.
Adult↗
Oedipal themes in latency. Analysis of the "farmer's daughter" joke.
A sample of "farmer's daughter" jokes, gathered from archives, personal informants, and published collections, is examined in relation to the developmental progress of the latency-age boys who most often tell them. The joke texts are divided into three categories-oedipal triumph, castration, and feminization-each of which represents a different regressive fantasy. Through these fantasied scenarios, the joke teller can safely work through some of the anxieties he experiences as a result of the recent repression of the oedipal conflict. Common themes of latency fantasies such as separation from the family, confusion of gender identity, and incestuous desires are all present in the texts. Repetition of the farmer's daughter joke not only motivates the child's individual psychological progress but also reinforces his or her awareness of taboos and socially appropriate behavior. Because the parental injunctions are internalized to help consolidate superego formation at the onset of latency and the child must now displace incestuous urges with manifestations of conscience, the retesting of values through joke telling is important during this developmental period.
Adolescent↗
Gustav Mahler's choice. A note on adolescence, genius, and psychosomatics.
At a time of crisis in his marital life, Gustav Mahler met with Freud. After the meeting with Freud, Mahler's spirits and sexual potency were restored, and his attitude toward his wife changed remarkably. However, these changes were accompanied by an apparent loss of the ability to compose: there is no evidence that Mahler wrote any new music between the summer of 1910, when he saw Freud, and May of 1911, when he died from complications of streptococcal endocarditis. Mahler in effect had chosen human love over artistic creativity. An analysis of the encounter and its effects on the composer's artistic capabilities raises questions about the psychology of genius, adolescent trauma, and psychosomatics.
Austria↗
In her mother's voice: reflections on "femininity" and the superego.
For some female analysands the anxiety generated by superego conflict stimulated by aggressive and creative wishes may be warded off by invoking representations of the archaic all-powerful, limit-setting mother. To understand this clinical phenomenon in terms of a specific kind of female superego vulnerability is to miss the possibility that the fantasy of being mother's good little girl may be employed in the service of concealing the analysand's wishes and capacity for creative and destructive power. In the analytic hour we see transformed aspects of the analysand's past that are useful to the mind in its current operations. Representations of the mother and the archaic maternal imago are neither reflections of the past as it was, nor are they monolithic. These maternal representations may reverberate with adult memories of the past, but that remembered experience is a constructed one, constructed to serve particular mental operations. As these apparently remembered constructions arise in the current hour we need to remember that the present is the present, with its immediate desires and conflicts that the mind is attempting to represent. The past as it appears in the present is a new creation and, like the transference, a mutual creation of the analysand with her analyst.
Adult↗
Fathers facing their daughters' emerging sexuality. The return of the oedipal.
I propose that parents revisit their own oedipal passions and conflicts parallel to their children's passages through their oedipal phases. The child's oedipal behavior stirs up in the parent old attachment and separation issues as well as old desires and competitions. This both tests the parent's old solutions and offers the chance of new ones. In my view the parent not only is reacting to the child but is also experiencing the destabilization of his own intrapsychic structures. Such destabilizing, which occurs in any important period of psychological transition or development, is both promising and potentially dangerous; it opens up the possibility of more mature and more adaptive resolutions of revisited conflicts but also poses the danger of cracking a brittle or rigid adjustment, prompting a return to more primitive ways of coping. The resulting inner turmoil may produce disruptive thoughts, affects, and sometimes behavior, ranging from temporary benign regression to severe decompensation. It goes without saying that oedipal revisitations occur in both parents in conjunction with the oedipal stages of children of both sexes, but I focus here on paternal reactions to, and enactments with, daughters. It may be argued that not all men experience such a crisis, although my belief is that all fathers do. This paper illustrates the way it can appear in a number of different men. Awareness of this possibility enhances our understanding and clinical work with men and with their daughters.
Adult↗
Preoedipal factors in relation to psychogenic inhibited sexual desire.
This paper builds upon current theoretical and clinical understanding of inhibited sexual desire (ISD). Kaplan's comprehensive book, Disorders of Sexual Desire, is utilized as a basis for a brief overview of the triphasic model of sexual functioning and desire phase disorders. From this model, development of theory regarding the least understood and most "severe" type of ISD (remote psychogenic causation) is presented, as well as therapeutic implications involving such disturbances. Specifically, it is proposed that preoedipal factors and psychic defenses incurred during the pregenital years may play a significant role in the etiology of ISD as well as account for the tenacious resistance to treatment found in this clinical subgroup. In conclusion, a critical analysis and speculative expansion of this model is presented.
Anxiety↗