Freud and the Father Complex

IN STUDYING ADOLESCENCE FROM MANY ANGLES, I RECOGNIZED gradually but ever more clearly the boy's father complex—more precisely, the father complex of the son—and its influence on his personality formation. This discussion of the father complex is devoted to the male gender, a restriction that is based on my opinion that boys and girls pursue their own particular and specific lines of development early in life. They certainly cannot be viewed as mirror images in which we see the male as the original or standard bodily model. This early Freudian schema of infantile psychic development has received many decisive corrections, the results of systematic, observational infant studies. My own adolescent research has contributed its share to delimit and describe the particular stages of adolescent male and female development. Since I intend to submit to you in what follows some corrections of the classic Freudian theory, I wish to let you know in advance that I shall return to Freud, the scientist, and to Freud, the son and man, as they both were affected by the father complex. I shall then attempt to apply my corrections of Freud's developmental schema of early object relations to a review of