Editing Psychoanalysis (section)

===Childhood origins===
Freudian theories hold that [[adult]] problems can be traced to unresolved conflicts from certain phases of childhood and [[adolescence]], caused by fantasy, stemming from their own drives. Freud, based on the data gathered from his patients early in his career, suspected that neurotic disturbances occurred when children were sexually abused in childhood (i.e. ''[[seduction theory]]''). Later, Freud came to believe that, although child abuse occurs, neurotic symptoms were not associated with this. He believed that neurotic people often had unconscious conflicts that involved incestuous fantasies deriving from different stages of development. He found the stage from about three to six years of age (preschool years, today called the "first genital stage") to be filled with fantasies of having romantic relationships with both parents. Arguments were quickly generated in early 20th-century Vienna about whether adult seduction of children, i.e. [[child sexual abuse]], was the basis of neurotic illness. There still is no complete agreement, although nowadays professionals recognize the negative effects of child sexual abuse on mental health.<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/child_sexual_abuse.asp |title = Child Sexual Abuse | publisher = National Center for PTSD, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs |url-status = dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130728202304/http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/pages/child_sexual_abuse.asp |archive-date = 2013-07-28 }}</ref>

The theory on origins of pathologically dysfunctional relationships was further developed by the specialist in [[psychiatry]] Jürg Willi (* 16 March 1934 in [[Zürich]]; † 8 April 2019) into the [[Collusion (psychology)]] concept. The concept takes the observations of [[Sigmund Freud]] about the narcissistic, the oral, the anal and the phallic phases and translates them into a two-couples-relationship model, with respect to dysfunctions in the relationship resulting from childhood trauma.<ref>{{cite book | last = Willi | first = Jürg | date = 2011 | title = Die Zweierbeziehung |language=de | publisher = Rowohlt | isbn = 978-3-499-62758-3}}</ref>

====Oedipal conflicts====
Many psychoanalysts who work with children have studied the actual effects of child abuse, which include ego and object relations deficits and severe neurotic conflicts. Much research has been done on these types of trauma in childhood, and the adult sequelae of those. In studying the childhood factors that start neurotic symptom development, Freud found a constellation of factors that, for literary reasons, he termed the [[Oedipus complex]], based on the play by [[Sophocles]], ''[[Oedipus Rex]]'', in which the protagonist unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother. The validity of the ''Oedipus complex'' is now widely disputed and rejected.<ref>Miller, Alice. 1984. ''Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child''. New York: [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux|Farrar Straus and Giroux]]. pp. 105–227.</ref><ref name="Kupfersmid, Joel">Kupfersmid, Joel. 1995. ''Does the Oedipus complex exist?'' [[American Psychological Association]].</ref>

The shorthand term, ''oedipal''—later explicated by [[Joseph J. Sandler]] in "On the Concept Superego" (1960)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sandler|first=Joseph|date=January 1960|title=On the Concept of Superego1|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00797308.1960.11822572|journal=The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child|language=en|volume=15|issue=1|pages=128–162|doi=10.1080/00797308.1960.11822572|pmid=13746181|issn=0079-7308|url-access=subscription}}</ref> and modified by [[Charles Brenner (psychiatrist)|Charles Brenner]] in ''The Mind in Conflict'' (1982)—refers to the powerful attachments that children make to their parents in the preschool years. These attachments involve fantasies of sexual relationships with either (or both) parent, and, therefore, competitive fantasies toward either (or both) parents. Humberto Nagera (1975) has been particularly helpful in clarifying many of the complexities of the child through these years.{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}}

"Positive" and "negative" oedipal conflicts have been attached to the heterosexual and homosexual aspects, respectively. Both seem to occur in the development of most children. Eventually, the developing child's concessions to reality (that they will neither marry one parent nor eliminate the other) lead to identifications with parental values. These identifications generally create a new set of mental operations regarding values and guilt, subsumed under the term ''superego''. Besides superego development, children "resolve" their preschool oedipal conflicts through channeling wishes into something their parents approve of ("sublimation") and the development, during the school-age years ("latency") of age-appropriate [[obsessive-compulsive]] defensive maneuvers (rules, repetitive games).{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}}