Word: childhood
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...resolved by convincing the patient that he is re-experiencing emotional relations which had their origin [in early childhood]." Thus Freud gained, in his patients' minds, the authority of a dearly loved (or violently hated) father, or mother...
Storms of Childhood. After examining a large group of neurotics, Freud was surprised to discover that they all had one thing in common: a frustrated sex life. The neuroses," he declared, "[are] without exception disturbances of the sexual function...
...unhappy marriages or love affairs of adult life that were mainly responsible for neuroses. For the same experiences that normal .persons took in their stride were sufficient to bowl neurotics over. The foundations of neuroses, Freud discovered, were laid in the sex experiences of early childhood. Upon this astonishing fact, which Freud painstakingly confirmed in hundreds of cases, he built his famous theories of the libido (Latin for lust) and the Oedipus complex...
Most powerful force which drives human beings, said Freud, is a primeval sex instinct, the libido. During childhood the libido is bound up with such experiences as eating, excreting and thumbsucking. In later years the libido may be transferred to another person (marriage), may remain grounded in childish sex play (perversion), or may overflow as artistic, literary, or musical creation (sublimation). In fact, said Freud, greatest source of creative work is the sex instinct...
Driven by libido, all children fall in love with their mothers, hate and fear their fathers as rivals. Sometimes they may love their fathers too (ambivalence), but the fundamental hostility remains throughout childhood. (Later on girls often fall in love with their fathers.) This Oedipus complex-sets the pattern for a child's response to other persons throughout the rest of his life. Normal persons outgrow the Oedipus situation by the time they reach maturity. But weaker characters cannot tear themselves away from their parents, hence, "fall into neuroses...