Preoedipal Factors in Neurosogenesis1

The panel subject was briefly introduced by Maxwell Gitelson, its Chairman. A short historical survey was given by Victor H. Rosen. Two phases in the historical development of the problem were indicated, with the advent of interest in the special problems of the female oedipus complex around 1930, as the point of transition. Between 1901 and 1909 Freud advanced his concepts of the role of sexuality in symptom formation on two fronts. The three early clinical studies firmly established the role of the oedipus complex in relation to conversion phenomena, phobia and obsessional symptom formation respectively, while the genital drive lying behind the vicissitudes of this phase of development were already being studied as derivatives and composites of earlier phenomena, in the Three Contributions. This appears to have given rise to a dichotomy in early psychoanalytic writings in which manifest symptom formation is understood largely in terms of its oedipal origins, while mechanisms of character formation are dealt with almost exclusively as resultants of fixations in various phases of pregenital libidinal organization.

The relative overemphasis on pregenitality in studies of character formation and its relative neglect in the phenomena of neurotic symptom formation during the first two decades of psychoanalysis was probably of multiple origin. Among these factors was the relative brevity of psychoanalytic therapies and the relative predominance of symptom neuroses among the cases treated. In the symptom neuroses therapeutic success was often attendant upon clarification of the gross outlines of the oedipal configuration. Material on character formation seems to have been based upon brief observations, intuition and analogies rather than the painstaking working through of the analytic process. Symbolic equations stimulated by Freud's brilliant dream studies and repression standing alone as a representative of the concept of defense lent themselves to a quick trans