Archives par mot-clé : Oedipus complex

Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor : the seducer as ferryman

Within the interplay of sexes and generations, the seducer is above all a “ ferryman ” enabling the adolescent girl who embarks with him to find again both the multiple harmonies of her polymorphic infantile sexuality and an incestuous dream. This passage is a re-crossing of time and of a socially regulated evolution towards the status of woman and mother ; it will make a little girl of her again. It is passage also in the sense of a fantasy transgression which is possible only if it has not already happened earlier in reality. For incest is not the Œdipus complex but rather crushing of it, as dream and reality collide.

Anna Maria Nicolò : all roads lead to rome

The author discusses the paper of Catherine Chabert point out how different theoretical and technical approaches can achieve analogous results. The author suggests an interpretation of the material dealt with by C. Chabert which considers the most primitive and pre-Oedipal needs, highlighting problems linked to homosexual investments and the primitive need to be seen and contained by the mother.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°1, pp. 81-89.

Catherine Chabert : does the Oedipus complex still exist ?

The author observes that in Freud’s work the Oedipus complex is omnipresent but rarely theorized as such; she asks whether the Oedipus complex is characteristic of neuroses or if it also occurs in narcissistic and borderline functioning. The case history of an adolescent girl shows that dependence and prevalence of the narcissistic relationship with the mother may mask a paradoxical but strong relationship with the father. Returning to Freud’s writings (Three Essays, The Ego and the Id), Chabert seeks connections between the Oedipus complex and objectal loss-anxiety, and even more, a consubtantiality of loss and the sexual, which is the central idea of Mourning and Melancholy.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°1, pp. 65-79.

François Richard : discussion 1

The author highlights the original axes of Kari Hauge’s clinical presentation: which combines an accommodation of the regression of the adolescent girl as in the treatment of a child with an encountering technique based on the specificity of the adolescent dimension – the formulation of interpretations both of unconscious content and of the actual relation between the patient and the analyst. This practice allows for an elaboration of infantile Oedipus complexes re-actualized by adolescence while facilitating a resumption of the process of subjectivation, once the needs of dependence have been acknowledged.

Adolescence, 2009, T. 27, n°1, pp. 29-40.