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This article is a critique of the frequent and reflexive use of the Oedipus complex in clinical discussions as a constellation that refers specifically to experiences of young children. A more fluid concept of the Oedipus complex is described in which it is seen as a constellation of issues that derives from early childhood and recurs throughout development. The adolescent Oedipus complex is described in detail and is seen as the more probable form that occurs in treatment when adult patients are describing their sexual and gender-based lives.
The Oedipus complex is typically thought to be a constellation of internal relationships and fantasies that forms between the ages of 2 and 6 and remains static over a lifetime. In this article I take issue with this notion. I propose instead that we think of the Oedipus complex as a constellation that first takes shape in early childhood but then continues to develop and transform throughout the life cycle. This transforming constellation reflects the ways in which we change in our self and object representations over time. Of greatest importance (in this context) are those representations that reflect our basic sense of ourselves as gendered and sexual beings and as people in intimate relationships.
These particular aspects of our internal self-object representational worlds are altered dramatically during adolescence. This is the time, after all, when the erotic becomes real, the body becomes self-consciously gendered, and the world of adult intimacy comes into focus.
The ways in which adolescents evolve in their thoughts about who their parents are, as well as their growing interest in and awareness of who they are, make for major modifications in their internalized object relations. Adolescence clearly has a powerful impact on the identifications and fantasies that form the oedipal constellation, particularly with regard to the erotic.
In this article, it is my aim to describe the revision of the oedipal constellation during adolescence and then how that revision may have an impact on adult development I use anecdotes from adult treatment to illustrate my understanding of the adolescent Oedipus constellation.
Let me immediately offer a brief case in point:
A young adult man in psychoanalytic treatment comes into the consulting room, looks at me-smiles-then slides onto the analytic couch.
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