ABSTRACT
Sex, to take that first, was understood to begin with the first three relatively distinct and successive pregenital phases of libidinal organization: the oral, the anal, and the phallic. In the phallic phase, there developed the Oedipus complex and correlative castration anxiety and fantasies, on the resolution of which, under favorable circumstances that promote the formation of superego and the renunciation of oedipal objects, depended the attainment of the fourth phase: the genital phase and normality. Genitality was considered a relatively conflict-free post-oedipal organization of desire and capacity for heterosexual gratification. Manifest references to sex issue from varied levels of psychic function, and they play different parts in the analyst's interpretive construction of the here-and-now analytic relationship. Once explored psychoanalytically, with special reference to transference and countertransference, that manifest material often leads into the unconscious fantasies characteristic of the paranoid-schizoid position, as described by Kleinian analysts.
