Meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

LATENCY AND THE RESOLUTION OF THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX. Martin S. Willick, M.D.

Dr. Willick stressed that in attempting to understand neurosogenesis, the entire childhood development must be considered. The preoedipal years influence the shape, configuration, intensity, and outcome of phallic and oedipal conflicts, as later experiences reverberate with earlier ones. Since the wishes associated with the oedipus complex always succumb to repression and not to destruction as Freud thought, experiences after the so-called resolution of the oedipus complex play a significant role in influencing this very resolution. The repressed oedipal wishes continue to exist in the unconscious without necessarily leading to pathology, and the child entering latency is still struggling against them. This occurs at the same time that profound changes are taking place in the organization of the personality through the consolidation of character traits, identifications, ego functions (including defenses), and the structure of the superego. There is a delicate balance between the drives and the defenses which is constantly being altered, at times leading to a transient outbreak of symptoms or to an excessive use of certain defenses. A continuous struggle occurs during latency over masturbation and oedipal conflicts. Our most accurate judgment about the stability of the resolution of the oedipus complex can be made only after the individual has passed through adolescence.

Two analytic cases illustrated some of these points. One patient, as a child of eight, was propelled into a new, close, and erotically gratifying relationship with her father when her mother had a mastectomy and withdrew from her husband. The child's ensuing guilty feelings contributed to her sexual inhibition after puberty and to her poor relationship with men. She also showed work inhibition and depression connected with success. The hurtful experience of the oedipal period was reawakened by the latency closeness,