The development of the drive object concept in Freud's work: 1905-1915

Did Dora have an oedipus complex? A reexamination of the theoretical context of Freud's "fragment of an analysis"

A careful review of the Dora case refutes the commonly held view that it reflects Freud's adoption of his classical oedipal model. Through Dora, Freud examined some of the theoretical and emotional underpinnings of the seduction theory and began a complex and very gradual move toward an oedipal model, never reaching his classical formulation. The transitional nature of this case allows for an understanding of some of Freud's difficulties in adopting the oedipal model and the considerations that, nevertheless, eventually determined the move. How and why this was overlooked in all later studies of the case has important implications for the process of development of psychoanalytic theory and the writing of its history.

Objects and attitudes

The concept of an attitudinal object has long been present in psychoanalysis but almost entirely neglected. This omission is integral in the confusion and controversy about the object concept in general. It has left a theoretical gap which the so-called object relations theories have attempted to fill. This paper offers some preliminary suggestions for a psychoanalytic understanding of attitudes as a first level of inference in the study of relationships and their psychological basis.

Freud: objects and structure

This paper, part of a series exploring the development of Freud's object concept, deals with the concepts of objects and psychic structure in the period from 1915 to 1938. In connection with the increased prominence of object loss and hostility in his clinical material, the role of objects in the building of psychic structure via identification assumed increased importance from 1917 on. After introduction of the ego-id-superego model, Freud asserted for the first time that object choice does take place as early as the oedipal period, and interpolated the phallic-oedipal phase into his sequence of developmental phases. The prominence of structure formation through identification continued, but no new object concepts are discerned.