Ibsen's hero, Peer Gynt, is presented as the typical 'perpetual youth'. Wooing is his domain, but he is 'wrecked by success' and shuns lasting ties. He compensates for the loss of the beloved by hallucinating a patiently waiting mother-wife who is unattainable for direct sexual wishes. Metapsychologically speaking, the problem of this kind of personality may be traced back to a pre-oedipal mother fixation on an oral-narcissistic basis. This would explain the incapacity for real object relations.