This paper presents the Marschallin theme from the opera Der Rosenkavalier. It is that of a middle-aged married woman who has love affairs with late teen-age boys. The librettist's poetry and the composer's music are shown to be psychologically accurate in their depiction of the character structures of the Marschallin, of her young lover Octavian, and of her absent husband, the Field Marshal.

Psychoanalytic investigation of women patients with such a youthful love object reveals a fixation in their psychosexual development. He represents a narcissistic choice of love object in which he is the admired, desirable adolescent boy-girl figure which they once wanted to be and which desire they have never relinquished. Therapy involves an exposure of the fixation and an acceptance of the necessity to relinquish an earlier stage for growth to later stages of female psychosexual development in keeping with the inevitable passage of time. The perception of the ongoing