Citing recent developments in research on child development and gender as well as theoretical advances in selfobject theory, intersubjectivity theory, and motivational systems theory, Brothers and Lewinberg reveal the shortcomings of oedipal theory, in particular how feelings and behaviors traditionally associated with the oedipal stage of development can be seen as products of traumatizing betrayals in parental figures that occur with the imposition of dichotomous gender. They argue that so-called oedipal passions result when children, forced to dissociate aspects of themselves as gendered, find these aspects of their self-experience embodied in caretakers.