Directions in psychoanalysis.

This article is intended to familiarize the general practitioner with the important concepts in the practice of psychoanalysis. It provides an overview of the development of the field of psychoanalysis, considering it as theory of personality, as an explanation of psychopathology, and as a research procedure. It also explores psychoanalysis as a method of treatment and presents an outline of the knowledge and training necessary to become a psychoanalyst.

Identity confusion, bisexuality, and flight from the mother.

This paper deals with the effects of an oral-sadistic annihilating mother on her male and female offspring. The all-powerful nature of these mothers, and the corresponding helplessness of the fathers, produce in their offspring a sense of identity confusion, a struggle with their bisexuality, and a need to distance themselves from their mother. Everything unwanted in the mother is externalized onto and into the child, particularly suffering and pain, which are necessary for the maintenance of the (pathological) mother-child relationship.