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A knowledge of infantile sexual theories in the shapes they assume in the thoughts of children can be of interest in various ways—even, surprisingly enough, for the elucidation of myths and fairy tales. They are indispensable, moreover, for an understanding of the neuroses themselves, for in them these childish theories are still operative and acquire a determining influence upon the form taken by the symptoms [Freud, 1908, p. 211].
Jean Laplanche's theory of generalized seduction takes the adult-child relationship with its assymetric character as the theoretical and observational unit of analysis for studying the construction of subjectivity. Recognizing the role of a concrete adult in the constitution of sexuality and the unconscious leads us to examine the specificity of the adult with respect to the gender-sex system. The adult is male or female; the child, girl or boy (Dio Bleichmar, 1991).
The theory of generalized seduction applied to the girl's psychosexual development can shed light on a problematical point in Freud's theory of feminine sexuality: the change in direction of desire. By looking at the libidinal role of the father in the psychogenesis of the girl's heterosexual desire, we can expand on the explanation that postulates the need to restore a lost narcissism; that is, the search