Psychodynamics Commencing in Early Childhood: The Case for an Additional Tripartite Complex

Psychodynamics Commencing in Early Childhood: The Case for an Additional Tripartite Complex defines, delineates, and demonstrates the usefulness of an earlier variant of the Oedipus Complex, a complex first manifesting itself with the onset of separation-individuation and ending around the age of three. Of course, a child younger than three years of age has not matured to the degree of selfhood or become the psychically separate entity that, with usual maturation and development, are the attributes of the older child of the Oedipus complex, proper. Under these circumstances, the tripartite psychodynamics that are characteristic of and derived from the earlier period will differ from the better known triadic psychodynamics of Freud’s Oedipus complex, proper. This book presents clinical case studies psychological research and psychological understandings from other fields of endeavor that focus on and document psychodynamics of the complex of the earlier age period and their reverberations throughout life. The material that is presented in this book is theoretically and clinically significant, and the psychodynamics it elucidates has heretofore not been sufficiently recognized and appreciated.

About the Author

Marvin P. Osman, MD, is member and training and supervising analyst at the New Center for Psychoanalysis.