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Forty years of evolving ideas are presented in this collection of papers by the late Franz Alexander. One need only peruse the table of contents to realize what a wide range of subjects his fertile mind had considered. With erudition and originality he wrote about psychoanalytic theory and treatment, psychosomatic medicine, sociology, politics, esthetics, criminology, philosophy and literature.
In one paper, “Educative Influence of Personality Factors in the Environment” (), he presented a critique of both the hereditary and the environmental point of view. In his typical way he never hesitated to speak out about his own views or to indicate his differences with the positions of others. He believed that such a basic psychodynamic constellation as the oedipus complex was the most direct expression of the biological helplessness of the human infant, revealing the possessiveness the child feels towards the mother, his main source of security and pleasure. However, he differed with the orthodox view, stating, “… the significance of certain premature genitally tinged sexual interest of the little son in his mother is, according to my experience, overrated.” In other words, he believed that the psychological study of a person revealed man to be “… not only as the exponent of a biological specimen or of a social group, but as an individual, molded by specific personality influences of his early environment.”
He further stated: “… critics of Freud correctly question the universality of the specific form of this emotional constellation … the oedipus complex. They correctly point out its cultural variations, but they err when they do not recognize its biological origin in the prolonged post-natal dependence of the human infant upon