Adolescent Character Formation and Psychoanalytic Theory

Adolescence is a developmental disturbance.

A significant encounter can modify earlier traumas.

At first blush, the classical Freudian theory of adolescence seems widely disparate from the interpersonal and the British object relations views of adolescent development. Despite their differences in metapsychology, there has been a common concern in clinical work with both the object relations patterns underlying the adolescent individuation process and its expression in the adolescent's interpersonal and family interactions. This article compares and contrasts the Freudian theory of adolescent character formation with interpersonal and object relations views. An examination of Freud's case of Dora is used to illustrate not only the partial convergence of the psychoanalytic clinical models, but also the theme of the adolescent's dread of the annihilation of the self and the object.

The psychoanalytic theories of adolescence emanated from a philosophy of development that had been radicalized by Freud's heralding of infantile sexuality. In contrast to his American contemporary, G. Stanley Hall, Freud wrote relatively little about the personality transformations of adolescence. Although the Standard Edition of Freud's complete works contained few references to adolescence, Freud definitively made known the importance of puberty in the resurgence of the Oedipus complex and the adolescent's character consolidation. My objective in this paper is to examine similarities and differences between the Freudian, interpersonal, and object relations theorists' views of adolescent character development.

This focus on character etiology does not include an overview of character typology, and it limits my discussion of sexuality and identity, even