ABSTRACT
Another major issue that needs clarification regarding the various concepts related to mental objects is that related to the ‘developmental’ frame of reference and the development of various ‘capacities’ of the individual. Freud expressed interest in the idea that different psychopathologies were related to different periods in the child’s life even before he arrived at the conclusion that children were sexual beings (for example, Freud 1950a: Letter 46). His original ideas were related to the conjecture that differences in types of psychopathology could be traced to differences in the age at which the child underwent the traumatic seduction. Later, after he developed the theory of infantile sexuality (1905d), and gradually sketched out the different stages of the development of the libido, he remained interested in the possibility of specifying different pathologies as related to different libidinal stages (for instance, 1908b, 1913i, 1914c). Furthermore, he extended this approach to include different character traits, and eventually also a view of different character types, all on the basis of different levels of libido corresponding to the different libidinal phases (1931a).
