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PARTISAN REVIEW
have powerful wishes and fantasies but are not physically able to fulfill
them-always vaguely apprehended and clarified by psychoanalysis, is
no longer understood by such ideologically constricted parents. What
had been a denial of the child's sexuality is replaced by a failure
to
take
it seriously, to grasp the power of instinctual drives, sexual and
aggressIve.
Society has always understood the latency period as the time when
the child, less troubled by drives, is capable of learning in school and
family the tools of our civilization, of developing cultural interests and
of strengthening the ability to master drives. We now see a less marked
latency period in many children, obviously as a result of their different
upbringing. Freud pointed out that the latency period is absent in
primitive societies and is found only in higher cultures. We now see in
many young people a certain primitiveness and vulgarity that might be
attributed to the decline of this civilizing period.
In this climate of playful participation in the child's Oedipal
drives, the incest taboo is only halfheartedly observed. This impairs the
ability to love in adulthood, as the libido is not freed from ambivalent
infantile attachments. This inability to love leads necessarily to a
regression of the libido and may explain the "narcissistic personality"
about which so much is being written these days.
Recently many analysts have become particularly interested in the
pregenital drives and their work is contributing a great deal to the
study of the narcissistic personality. Others, however, feel that this
emphasis on the earliest years can lead to an underestimation of the
Oedipus complex, which may still be the most fruitful field for the
therapeutic endeavor. The thorough analysis of the Oedipal stage, the
uncovering and re-experiencing of important memories from this
period and their repetition in the transference make for therapeutic
success in the treatment. The attitude of society and parents towards a
child's upbringing in his first years has not changed much, but it has
changed considerably towards the Oedipal period, so that the regres–
sion from this period may be the decisive reason for the increase in
narcissism. The cause of this regression lies in the diminishing
effectiveness of the father, which confuses the Oedipus complex and
impedes its progressive resolution.
In a more stable society, the analyst's main task consisted of
interpreting the patient's associations and dreams and helping him to
lift his repressions and bring unconscious conflicts into consciousness.
Irrational, punishing guilt feelings could be understood as remnants of
the forbidden infantile, mostly Oedipal, drives. In this process, the
cruel, primitive elements of the superego that conflicted with a mature
attitude were eased. The protective and controlling function of a
