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The oedipus complex normally is only partially resolved in childhood; in adolescence it re-emerges and is newly elaborated and resolved. Blos proposes that the actualization of this continuing resolution takes place within the social locus of the peer group. Much of the split, the "antithetical world of adolescence," is not an expression of defense and ambivalence; rather it is a developmentally determined polarization rooted in the preambivalent, preverbal stages. Thus it originates from the normative "preconflictual" experience of the immature organism. Blos was led to this formulation by his repeated findings of stubbornly persistent split parental imagos, appearing in the late phases of otherwise successful analyses, which did not yield to the usual working through. These residues seem linked to primitive perception and early split-object experiences and were normative rather than defensive. Thus a crucial conceptual distinction is drawn between developmental components and components of personality dysfunction, although clinically the distinction is rarely clear-cut. Blos views the reappearance of these residues as probably universally characteristic of adolescence, a phase-adequate regressive phenomenon. He describes the adaptations, not parameters, needed to deal with these residues.
Blos views the peer group as "autoplastic milieu." In addition to other functions, the peer group serves as a social milieu upon which and within which the adolescent externalizes the tenuously integrated split parental imagos. The relationships in which this function is served are different from "genuine" relationships in that they serve the sole purpose for the adolescent of changing himself. Although a better integration of individual and social psychologies may not add to our treatment of the neuroses, an analytic social psychology might make significant contributions in the field of prevention. This could be of special importance in the disorders unaffected by psy