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Freud's original theory of psychosexual development has never been without its critics (Jung, 1912; Fairbairn, 1949). In the century that has passed since Freud first formulated his theory of infantile sexuality and its relation to adult neurosis, the cultural and scientific contexts of psychoanalysis have altered immeasurably. Although still mainly embedded in Judaeo-Christian cultures, psychoanalysis has spread throughout Europe to the Americas and has evolved in many subtly different ways in the various places it has taken root and flourished.
As a discipline, psychoanalysis is able to tolerate a remarkable degree of heterogeneity, contradiction and obscurity concerning metapsychology while remaining true to the basic tenets of clinical practice (Wallerstein, 1998). Direct observation and experimentation in the field of infant and child development has brought a new rigour to the psychoanalytic theories of mental development (e.g. Stern, 1985).
Our presenters, from three continents, each in their way pointed to contemporary cultural and scientific developments as they challenge psychoanalytic ideas about gender identity, human sexuality and the centrality of infantile sexuality in organising psychic structure and development.
In his paper ‘On phallic organisation’ Pentti Ikonen proposed that it is at this level of pregenital organisation, as it mimics mature genital sexuality, that violence most readily enters into the sexual act. The ‘phallic’ child's version of the primal scene is one of violent penetration, or from the feminine position being broken into, without mutuality. He suggested that the phallic organisation, because of the compensations it offers to the humiliations of the Oedipus complex, very readily presents itself as a defensive organisation. Indeed, he asked whether the entire phallic libidinal organisation could be a defensive variation on the genital advances of childhood, employing omnipotence, contempt, violence and self-sufficiency in an