ABSTRACT
Freud's investigations of psychopathology began with the more "mature" forms of pathology-the hysterias, for example-and deepened gradually to the more severe disorders: compulsion neurosis, and eventually the narcissistic disorders. The latter type of object choice predisposes to depressive pathology. Freud proposed that what characterizes the depressive is narcissism, that is, regression to a narcissistic type of object choice in which the self is fused with object. The "headlines" of this period in the development of psychoanalytic theory are Narcissism, Aggression, Neutralization, Structure, and the Superego. The foregoing theoretical changes applied to "transference side" of the new model in which, as in the earlier model, infantile primary process tendencies could transfer across the repression barrier to preconscious "carriers". As a result, child builds up the structure and capacity for "neutralizing" such drives-a process quite different from repression, reaction formation, and other defences. The parent uses his or her own libidinal and aggressive forces to deal with child's pressing infantile drives.
