Page - 31 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Psychosexual development in puberty 31 The relationship between his parents is only partially visible to the baby: in his fantasy, the parents can also constitute a threat as a sexual pair. The baby vacil- lates between two modes: either he believes that his parents are only together in order to better care for him – as Winnie the Pooh believes that bees only collect honey for him to eat it. Alongside this first belief, the child believes that his par- ents are only together in order to exclude him. Freud assumed that every human being had a concept of the Urszene (primal scene), the sexual union of her mother and father, where the child is excluded and only has the role of an observer. In his “Moses and Monotheism” (1939, SE XXIII, 3), Freud proceeds from an uncon- scious, archaic scenario that is solidified through early observations. This would constitute an inborn, archaic knowledge, an Urphantasie (primal fantasy). Mela- nie Klein believed that in order to not acknowledge this gradually acknowledged relationship between his parents, the child develops the Oedipal fantasy. Between the ages of three and five, he increasingly gets to know his parents as sexual beings and possible partners. In the continuation of his fantasies of omnipotence, the boy now sees himself as his mother’s lover and wishes to assume the posi- tion of powerful king alongside this “queen”. The mother, whom the boy has already taken up as his first love object in his imagination (although he may often have experienced her as frustrating and inadequate) is now desired by him in a more mature stage as a sexual woman. In his fantasy, he forms a couple together with her. At the same time, he senses that with his much smaller penis (than his father’s) he cannot create babies – but this frustrating and simultaneously reliev- ing thought is suppressed to the periphery. At the same time, this diffuse knowledge lessens the boy’s great fear of his father’s vengeance. In his imagination, the father becomes a mighty rival whom he aspires to defeat, but who will then take vengeance for his deposition by stealing his son’s penis – a notion that Freud called “castration anxiety”. Since the boy also loves his father, turbulent inner conflicts arise, as well as guilt feelings and self - reproach. At times, the boy also devises a solution that spares the actors involved: A therapist’s five -year -old son, who was affectionately attached to him, often attempted to drive him from the marital bed by saying he ought to go read Freud. One day, the son said he wanted to build a big castle for his mother and himself and rule there. The father asked his son: “Where should I go then?” The five -year -old reflected and then said: “In the garden there will be a little house for the gardener, you can live there.” This father, who was theoretically familiar with the Oedipal concept, was still surprised how clearly his son expressed this wish. He felt expelled, but was glad that his son had found a place for him (the garden house) in his inner world. In the father, turbulent feelings of exclusion from his childhood were revived. The fact that he was able to talk with his son in this way evoked painful feelings, since he could never speak with his own father about such matters and had no chance of being understood.