Libido Development Research Articles

A sexualidade infantil

A autora salienta, na evolução da sexualidade infantil, a importância da relação de objecto por oposição a actividades auto-eróticas isoladas e reporta o auto-erotismo ao narcisismo primário. Evidencia, ao longo da evolução da psico-sexualidade, a importância do adulto como agente de fixações e regressões no processo evolutivo da líbido durante a infância.

Psychoanalytic Contributions of Karl Abraham to the Freudian Legacy

This article aims to highlight the contributions of the German psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Karl Abraham to the understanding of children pre-genital stages. From a rereading of these phases in the work of Sigmund Freud, the author highlights the Abraham contributions to it, emphasizing how Freud incorporated them throughout his work. This progress in the psychoanalytic knowledge is related to Karl Abraham observations about these pre-genital organizations, which focuses on the libido development. As a result, this article points out the oral and anal-sadistic phases subdivisions, interconnecting them with the melancholy and obsessional neurosis. It is concluded that this understanding is of utmost importance for the differential diagnosis among the narcissistic neurosis and the psychoneurosis, specifically the obsessions.

The History of the Libido's Development: Evidence From Freud's Case Studies

Between 1905 and 1911 a perspective slowly appeared in Freud's works -- a perspective which he considered "historical" and which he eventually named "history of the libido's development" ("Entwicklungsgeschichte der Libido") in 1911. By reading again "The Rate Man," "Schreber" and "The Wolf Man" we can understand how Freud, thanks to the analysis of his case histories, outlined the particularities of this "history of the libido's development," which lies at the core of infantile prehistory. We will also study how this "history of the libido's development," in providing a stereotyped interpretation of psychic material, could lead to a reduction of the very movement of the analysis.

'Original narcissism' or the shadow of a philosophy of history.

Upon reading again the third chapter of Totem and Taboo it becomes clear that it was the English eighteenth-century philosophers and their followers who inspired in Freud his conception of a universal history of man's evolution. This paper analyses, in particular the links between this Weltanschauung and notions such as narcissism, omnipotence of thoughts and the Freudian 'history of the libido's development' (Entwicklungsgeschichte der Libido), the latter usually being considered as the results of clinical observations.

Play and the Metaphors of the Body

Symptoms and the sense of reality are built out of the reified metaphors of the body. In clinical psychology we deal less with the frozen events of “objective reality” and more with the fluid experiences of a subjectivity. Metaphor is the language of experience. In this paper I will cover briefly a wide range of material including children's play configurations, children's fantasy narratives, libido development, the symbolic function, the role of metaphor in the construction of a world view, and the recognition of metaphor as an organizing concept in psychoanalytic theory and technique. In doing so, I will illustrate the relationship between play and the metaphors of the body.

Proceedings: A child is being beaten.

The psychotherapy of a patient presenting the fantasy ‘A Child is Being Beaten’ is described. Reference to Freud's paper on the subject throws light on many aspects of the case history which can probably be regarded as typical of the type of clinical material on which he based his eonclusions but which he did not publish. Freud concluded that the beating fantasy was the product of a regression to the preoedipal, analsadistic phase of libido development at which the patients were fixated and the present case material would seem to provide verification of this assumption, especially in the light of later work elaborating Freud's original observations on the preoedipal phase. The continuing relevance of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in the treatment of personality disorder is stressed.

On Character and Libido Development. Six Essays by Karl Abraham. Edited by Bertram D. Lewin, M.D. Translated by Douglas Bryan and Alix Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1966. 206 pp.

On Character and Libido Development. Six Essays by Karl Abraham. Edited by Bertram D. Lewin, M.D. Translated by Douglas Bryan and Alix Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1966. 206 pp.

On Character and Libido Development: Six Essays by Karl Abraham.

This is a well-chosen collection of some of Karl Abraham's best known contributions to psychiatric and psychoanalytic literature, and makes them available to all students at a price they can afford. The publisher and Dr. Lewin, who contributed a clear and concise introduction, deserve the compliments and gratitude of those to whom the more complete, previously published collections are not easily accessible. The translation is the same as that of the Basic Books edition. There are many eulogies of Abraham's writing. These essays demonstrate his lucidity, simplicity, penetrating insight, and creative ideas. He cut through many bewildering complexities of the symptoms of his patients (many of them sicker than, as a rule, those treated nowadays by psychoanalysts), bringing order into the understanding of the chaos of their feelings, thoughts and behaviors, and generalizing this order to theories of normal and abnormal child development. In this endeavor his own

Review of On Character and Libido Development: Six Essays.

Review of On Character and Libido Development: Six Essays.