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Session 3: Latency

Tradition

Problems with the old

Someday plans

Session 2: The Oedipal Period

Jeffery Smith, MD

12/13/2010: Synopsis--Discussion of Bloch's summary and critique of historical and contemporary views of the oedipal period.

Reading: Bloch, Chapter 3, pages 42-81.

 

Traditional Freudian View: In the phallic phase, the sexual drive leads the child to want to possess the parent of the opposite sex and eliminate the same sex parent. For boys this leads to castration anxiety and then relinquishing the desire and identifying with the father and internalizing a prohibition against incest and sexuality in general, ushering in the latency era.

In girls, mirror image wishes run into the problem of the "missing" penis. This leads to wishing for a baby-equivalent from the father and animosity towards mother. It is resolved by fear of mother's unhappiness and identification with her, but in a softer way, explaining the Victorian idea that women had a less rigorous conscience.

Bloch's observations:

1. Castration anxiety is quite prominent in children, and separate from the oedipus complex.

2. The oedipus complex is normally muted and mild. When prominent, it is because of the influence of problematic circumstances.

3. Research shows that boys and girls' superegoes are similar, but respond to personal situations in a more feeling way and to abstract ones in a more categorical way.

Someday:

An alternative view is that around age 5, children develop much more complex cognitive capacity incuding the ability to conceptualize a long-range future. The latter development, especially, allows them to feel better about current problems without having to solve them in the present. The defenses of denial, projection, etc. that allow the pre-oedipal child to push uncomfortable feelings out of awareness have the disadvantage that they distort reality. But they are are no longer necessary when one can imagine and plan a future in which you will "live happily ever after." Fantasy provides an extraordinarily rich and effective way to feel better now without having to change reality or to distort it.

Under good conditions, someday fantasies remain conscious and are gradually modified by new expereinces and better understanding of the world. On the other hand, when the fantasies are perceived as prohibited, dangerous or shameful, they are driven underground in the form of unconscious plans. In psychoanalysis and long term analytic therapy the patient begins to look to the analytic relationship as the place where the plan can be put into action. The class will explore how this can play out in the transference.