Chapter 3. The Two Levels of Analytic Work

In order to describe the characteristic atmosphere of the level of classical therapeutic work, psychoanalytic literature habitually uses the terms ‘Oedipal or genital level’, contrasted with the ‘pre-Oedipal, pre-genital, or pre-verbal level’. In my opinion these latter terms already have a loaded meaning, and I shall presently propose a new, unequivocal term which, I hope, will free us from some latent bias; but before doing so, let us examine the real meaning of these common terms.

The Oedipus complex was one of Freud's greatest discoveries, which he justly described as the nuclear complex of all human development — of health and illness, of religion and art, civilization and law, and so on. Though the Oedipus complex characterizes a fairly early stage of development, Freud had no hesitation in describing the child's mental experiences, emotions, and feelings at this stage in the language of adults. (As I want to keep clear of the vexed problem of chronology, I deliberately leave open the definition of this early age. It suffices for my purpose to state that it is a very early age.) In fact, Freud's assumption was a bold projection, a daring extrapolation. He made the tacit assumption, without further proof, that the emotions, feelings, desires, fears, instinctual urges, satisfactions, and frustrations of the very young are not only closely similar to those of adults, but also that they have about the same reciprocal relation to one another. Without these two assumptions the use of adult language for describing these events would be totally unjustifiable.

I repeat, this assumption was a very bold step, but its results were subsequently fully validated, both by observations of normal children and by clinical experiences during the analysis of neurotic children. Further, it should be emphasized that, although it had started with the analysis of Little Hans (1909), all this validation took place during the same period as Freud's last revision of our