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In The Three Contributions to a Theory of Sex Freud delineated the basic psychological changes of adolescence. These consist in the full attainment of genital primacy over pregenital sexual drives. Under normal conditions, pregenital sexuality remains confined to providing forepleasure, thus contributing greater forcefulness to the genital act. Furthermore, the process of nonincestuous object finding, initiated by the reanimation of the oedipus complex in prepuberty and puberty, comes to a completion during adolescence.
Since 1904 a number of psychoanalytic papers have dealt with adolescence mainly as with a new edition of the oedipus complex. They fail to consider that the reanimated oedipal strivings now impinge on an ego which has "dimensions, contents, capacities, dependencies different from those of childhood" (19). Yet this very interaction between the oedipal strivings and the now matured and developed ego is the source of the manifold new but unclassified manifestations of the adolescent personality. The viewpoint that equates the origin with the ultimate manifestations has been, in part, responsible for the relative lack of psychoanalytic investigations of the problems of adolescence. Yet, there is no doubt that the development of personality continues beyond the period of the original oedipal conflict. Thus Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein (25) point out: "We feel that the potentialities of its transformation [personality] throughout adolescence have for some time been underrated in psychoanalytic writings."
Adolescence is not a simple repetition of the oedipal and postoedipal period. For the first time, the psychic apparatus has at its disposal genital sexuality with adequate discharge for sexual tension.2 The