Fantasy and Reality in the Oedipal PhaseA Conceptual Overview

Samuel Abrams, M.D.

FANTASY
FANTASY IS A SPECIES OF THOUGHT THAT YIELDS PLEASURE without a "dependence on real objects" (Freud, 1911, p. 222). The psychoanalytic view of fantasy is shaped by Freud's biological discovery of the instinctual drives; by his empirical discoveries of infantile sexuality, thedynamic unconscious, and the hierarchical ordering of cognitive processes; and by his conceptual proposals about development and the psychic apparatus. Within that view, the impetus for fantasy is ultimately derived from the instinctual drives. The sources of drives lie somewhere in the soma; the drives appear psychologically as constituents that fuel the mnemic images of the genuine or imagined experiences associated with satisfactions. These mental representations are what Freud called "wishes." Wishes impart a potentially disequilibrating effect upon the homeostatic balance of the mind if they cannot be satisfied. Since drivestimulation is hypothesized as continuous, wishes also are continuous; fantasies express the fulfillment of wishes in thought. The character of fantasy is influenced by the inherent drive stimuli, i.e., by the intensity and distribution of the available

Director, The Psychoanalytic Institute at the New York University Medical Center. Presented to the International Scientific Study Colloquium on "Fantasy and Reality in the Organization of the Oedipal Situation," held at the Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, October 1982.
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libidinal and aggressive currents. Qualitative differences are additionally influenced by the degrees of binding, neutralization, and fusion. Patterns of gratification andfrustration fix such differences, and developmental factors shape them even further (see, e.g., Hartmann, 1952); (Jacobson, 1964). The character of fantasy is further influenced by the fact that wishes in childhood tend to cluster about the nodal conflicts that typify the emerging infantile driveorganization. Consequently, their content changes over time, determined by the experiences that characterize progressive differentiation and by the relationships established between the child and those who provide care. There is a traumatic potential in such caregiving whenever it exceeds or fails to approach certain necessary limits; the final net impact, however, is believed to rest upon the effects such excesses or impoverishments have upon the organization of conflictual wishes. Fantasies yield gratification. In the course of development, what constitutes gratification also undergoes change. The satiation of incorporating passes to thepleasure of power, which in turn yields to the sensuality of genital experiences in the phallic phase. These zonal- and body-bound gratifications further transform into the somewhat more operative, conceptually linked pleasures of erotic and rivalrous desires during the oedipal situation; and these in turn transform further to the frankly conceptual experience in exercising moral precepts. While this sequence is predictable, the shifts and transformations are neither even nor absolute. In addition, what was gratifying at an earlier time may be perceived as potentially painful at a later period; this fact is stressful to patients and perplexing to clinicians. Fantasizing, the active initiation of wish-fulfilling ideas, may be assumed to be present once there is a certain degree of differentiated ego development. Minimally, this necessitates the achievement of intentionality and "object comprehension" (Hartmann, 1939) and a degree of representability approaching "permanence" (Piaget, 1937),

capacities available by the second half of the first year of life. Empirically, fantasies can vary from peremptory, primary process visual images of a near hallucinatory intensity to more orderly narratives cast in words, bound
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by logic, interwoven with memoriessometimes for purposes of defense (Sandler and Nagera, 1963), and including percepts derived from several sense impressions.Primary process forms are not exclusively tied to the more ancient impulses. Actively evoked fantasies, coordinating wishes and events from earlier and later stages, may also be organized along primary process modes (as in the creative arts, for example), while some archaic wishes can be extraordinarily elaborated. This pliability of form and content is so pervasive that the level of psychological functioning is not necessarily reflected in either the manifest appearance of the fantasies or their state of organization, a fact that often confuses clinicians. Fantasies may be conscious or readily accessible to consciousness or dynamically unconscious (Sandler and Nagera, 1963). Since wishes generally cluster about nodal conflicts, the anticipation of their fulfillment evokes dangers and raises the need for defense. Sometimes, if the dangers are sufficiently threatening, the fantasies may not become consciously accessible at the point in development when they would ordinarily be expected to appear (see Freud [1915] on primary repression). More customarily, some fulfillment is tolerated, at least in a derivative form, despite the expectation of danger. Inevitably, certain infantile wishes conveyed by fantasies herald such awesome threats that they are actively expelled into the unconscious, where they may assume a formative, unrecognized influence on character andsymptoms (see Freud [1915] on secondary repression; and Arlow [1953], [1969], Beres [1962], Conrad [1966], Sandler and Nagera [1963]). Everyone has daydreams and basic themes are shared. This is a wonder to clinicians, causing some to propose hypotheses about universal, inherited fantasies. Freud, who was one of them, also proposed the alternate view that the "constant sameness which as a rule characterizes the phantasies" is accountable by the "uniformity of the content of the sexual life of children, together with the unvarying character of the modifying tendencies which are later brought to bear upon it"(1909b, p. 208). There are variations in intensity, personal embellishments, degrees of complexity and disguise. Active imagining serves several functions. It provides a pathway for tension reduction, thus
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helping maintain psychic equilibrium; it guarantees pleasure whatever the exigencies of reality (Freud, 1911); it restores a diminished self-esteem (Sandler and Nagera, 1963); it facilitates phase engagement by establishing a relatively safe mechanism for psychological action upon the novel components that emerge at each new step; it promotes reality testing and the sense of reality (Freud, 1933); it supports adaptation to reality (Hartmann, 1939); (Isaacs, 1948); it assures a relative autonomy from the demands of reality (Freud, 1924); (Rapaport, 1957). Fantasies can also be used defensively (A. Freud, 1936) and can be applied in the service of art or science.

REALITY
The conceptual view of reality is burdened by differing definitions; by the empirical observation that perceptual, cognitive, and organizational endowments vary widely among persons; by the complexities introduced by the conceptual discovery that reality undergoes progressive differentiation over time even as it is buffeted about by drives and the environs as it does so; and by the requirement that all persons integrate imposed and discovered realities as well as past and present ones. Despite such burdens, psychoanalysis establishes a relatively clear path to determining the perception, testing, and sense of the real. In ordinary usage, reality refers to the environment, i.e., the surround of people and things that exists independent from the individual. This establishes the clinically useful distinction between "material reality" and "psychical reality" (Freud, 1917, p. 368).

Freud (1933) further specifically defined reality as the world outside of the psychic apparatus, including, therefore, the soma and physiological processes. This definition, especially useful for theory-building, contrasts the obvious feature of reality's periodic stimuli that can be "avoided by flight" with the continuous stimulation hypothesized for the drives. Scientifically speaking, however, realityis anything that truly exists, that is objective, whether perceived or logically inferred. This distinguishes the discovered from the invented, fact from theory, existential actuality from contrived fantasy. Bounded by this
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stricter definition, the functions of the mind are also real, as are the instinctual drives. From an empirical viewpoint, the surround is the source of stimuli necessary to promote growth and development. It is also the setting where the major activities of life are carried out: loving, playing, and working. In addition, reality has a stabilizing effect by assuring a relative autonomy from drive demands (Rapaport, 1957), and aspects of it may also be used defensively (A. Freud, 1936). The world is discovered and regularly rediscovered as stimuli are perceived, shaped, mentally represented, ordered, and validated. The recognition of reality, therefore, is limited by the competence of the evolving ego apparatuses, by maturational and developmental factors playing upon functions and systems, and by features derived from the environment. In a sense, therefore, as Freud (1938) asserted, "Reality will always remain 'unknowable'" (p. 196). Preferred perceptual modalities vary among persons and the sense organs mature over time. Some infants live too exclusively in a tactile world, while others show wide variations in the balance between visual and auditory receptiveness, and some, of course, have serious defectsblindness, for example. These proclivities and deficiencies influence the selection of stimuli and the choice of representative experiences during infancy which have an impact on much of what is to come thereafter(see, e.g., Wills, 1965). Orientations can also be observed quite early, and they further shape the discovered world. In the first year of life, for example, some children are inclined to locate themselves more in a sphere of people and others more in a sphere of things; and many frequently retain such learnings throughout life (Abrams and Neubauer, 1976). Quite aside from dispositions and leanings, reality is obviously linked to what is offered from without. Offerings are shaped by the attitudes, orientations, and activities of those responsible for a child's care and by the character of the systematic transactions that appear over time between children and their caretakers. Consequently, the evolving network of object relationships also shapes the world that is being discovered; reality may be facilitated
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or encumbered by the kind of care and by the nature of the network. Reality also undergoes progressive differentiation. Ego development, codetermined by innate and sequential factors intersecting with object relationships, progressively lifts discoveries to new hierarchies. An expectable sequence in the capacity to comprehend the world has been described by various researchersFerenczi (1913), for example, who reasoned retrospectively using clinical observations made of adults; and Piaget, who designed experimental procedures applicable to young children for his studies. The capacity for stable representations, the separation of self and object, and the renunciation of magic and animism are always regarded as minimal critical steps in the progressive differentiation of reality whatever the investigative approach. Drive development encumbers the perception of the outside world. The force field established by the insistent demand for need satisfaction clouds the actuality of objects. The feeding mother is good and oedipal parents are desirable or menacing, whatever other characteristics they possess (e.g., A. Freud, 1970a, p. 32). However,drive development also facilitates the perception of the world. Freud (1911) hypothesized that the distinction between outer and inner reality is promoted once an infant recognizes the effects its behavior has upon mnemic images. Motor action alters percepts arising from the outside, but has little influence upon drive-

derived ideation. Hence, the psychoanalytic axiom that frustration mobilizes the secondary processes by requiring discriminating behavior (Rapaport, 1951). Because of the facilitating influence of the drives, the capacity for discovery becomes increasingly sophisticated as the id grows and interacts with the evolving ego. Any psychoanalytic clinician can affirm that reality clarifies whenever unconscious fantasies become accessible and newly integrated. Societal views also influence the recognition of the real. Every social unit imposes "truths" so as to insure group cohesiveness. Throughout life there are many such realities determined by consensus, e.g., the reality of philosophical, political, religious, and scientific ideas; the reality of ethics, moral principles, and
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valuesall proposed realities that may complement or conflict with the progressively discovered (Hartmann, 1956). The final task is one of synthesis. The sequence of imposed and discovered worlds must be harmonized into some usable scheme so that a proper setting for working, playing, and loving can be established and maintained. And synthesis is never an easy task. Both competence and need vary among persons, for one thing; and for another, the synthetic capacities are too often compromised by an intolerance for ambiguity, a proclivity for regression to more immature states, and either a threatening surround or an intimidating fantasy life. If the relative frequency of shared fantasy is a wonder to many clinicians, the greater wonder still may be the relative frequency of shared reality, what with the many complexities in perceiving, testing, and sensing truths.

THE OEDIPAL PHASE

The oedipal phase, like any other phase of development, is a step in a discontinuous sequence of progressive hierarchies. Like others, it organizes about the experiential products of the interaction between maturation and the environment. Maturation supplies the pull forward toward differentiation and integration, whileenvironment supplies the appropriate nutritive stimuli. And like other phases, it is subject to the influences of antecedent steps and to inherent progressive and regressive rhythms. However, the oedipal phase is unlike any other phase, any that has preceded, any that is to follow. Most phases feature discrete functions, e.g., sexuality, self-object differentiation, reality; the oedipal phase is conceptualized so as to encompass virtually all of the evolving psychological functions. The phases that precede it facilitate the development of one aspect or a part of a system and those that follow "modify an existing structure" (Hartmann et al., 1946, p. 34). The oedipal phase, on the other hand, is pivotally placed; its yield is the very foundation and framework of the entire psychic apparatus. Earlier, only building blocks could be created; during the oedipal period the building blocks are assembled into a coordinate whole.
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The unique features of oedipality can spring forward only after several preconditions are in place. Prior developmental steps must have been at least minimally negotiated, ego apparatus appropriately matured in a relatively even fashion, and the new reorganizing biological pull of sufficient intensity to lift much of what has preceded to the new hierarchyand quite a new hierarchy it is. Immediacy has significantly yielded to the capacity for delay; egocentricity to attention to the world about; the stimulus-bound to stable mental representations; low action upon stimuli (even "passive" responsiveness) to greater complexity (even innovativeness); the diffuse to the increasingly discriminate; and the inchoate to the potential for true integration. Nowhere has the change been more clearly researched than in libidinal development. During preoedipality, the nodal points of the oral, anal, and phallic periods were closely linked to body zones; the movement from erotogeneity to libidinal cathexes required little mental action. The drives were more mobile and less fused, thus accounting in part for the immediacy and for the limitations on perceptual discrimination and synthesis. While persons had inevitably been pulled into the evolving libidinal experiencesthey provided

channels for gratification, imposed controls, and shaped stylesthe overriding egocentricity, the leanings upon stimuli, the poor differentiation, and the relatively low psychological action limited the capacity of the outer world to assert itself. Moreover, since a thumb, feces, and an erogenous genital area were always readily at hand, tension relief was available without the necessity to insist on much participation by the environs. During preoedipality, analogous events also occurred on the ego side. Expectable steps in development were negotiated: intentionality, separation-individuation(Mahler et al., 1975), the capacity for stable mental representations. Caretakers necessarily constructed a narrow, well-insulated setting, gauging the influx of nutritive stimuli and seeing to it that neither drive nor reality would prove disequilibrating. Excesses in instinctual or environmental stimuli could pose the threat of flooding. Impoverishments in drive or reality could lead to impairments in structures, leaving fragile building blocks and a less secure future foundation (Greenacre, 1960). The stimuli originating
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from the inner and outer worlds had undergone a degree of differentiation and progressive organization. Initially, actions were limited, affects unreliably diffuse, defenses sparse; but the inherent pull toward object-seeking converged with the maturing apparatuses, assuring ego growth and development through the "taking-in" of necessary nutrients and proposed adaptive strategies. The taking-in had been of the order of a relatively simple incorporating of day-to-day rhythms, attitudes, and modes of reacting, the more complex and increasingly discriminate identifications still in the future. A progressive shift in what is perceived as dangers also occurred, catalyzing the forward steps. In preoedipality, the dangers generally were envisioned as external ones. The agents of the outside world, the guardians of security and survival, could leave, or cease to care, or inflict injuries. Each successive threat could be countered by the child's coming to terms with these agents. This entailed incorporating proposed patterns, mobilizing age-adequate defenses, or modifying a bit of behavior. Sometimes, the agents' terms had required that a child endure much more than he could safely tolerate, or make do with much less than he required, leaving the potential for a serious malformation of character. At the threshold of oedipality, the drives have advanced to a new plateau; cathected mnemic images can coordinate libidinal and aggressive currents with zones and persons, so that wishes are less bound to concrete stimuli and may have both an interactional and potentially more complex conflictual context. The ego has developed and its apparatuses have grown considerably; there are notable qualitative changes in the perceptual system, in the capacity to experience and represent experiences in a stable form, in the degree and complexity of psychological action upon stimuli, in defense, in cognition, and in the synthetic function. The envisioned dangers are soon to be drawn inward; different adaptive strategies will have to be mobilized for such threats. The object relationships have acquired a more clearly regulated transactional base so that the emerging wishes can assemble into highly personal frames of reference. The preconditions for oedipality are in place. Its fate is now tied to the adequacy of the phase's engagement.
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The various components are activated. The maturing drive organization persists in shaping the perception of stimuli, processing events into experiences that accord with the newly emerging wishes; this draws reality into a fresh force field of meanings, desires, and threats. At the same time, the capacity to discover the actualities of the world advances to a heretofore unrealized level: the wish and the real can become jarringly disparate, can show a "startling contradiction" (Freud, 1909a, p. 93n.). A wider defensive and integrative repertoire arises to deal with the disparities, fulfill the fresh wishes, counter the envisioned threats, and realize the promise of enhanced adaptedness inherent in the newly recognized actualities. A several years' struggle ensues, a struggle between the wish and the real. The struggle, fueled by maturation, highlights the expectable engagement and promotes psychic reorganization. The fate of the phase rests upon the various actions mobilized by

the child and the surround to manage the progressively differentiating disparities, the desires, the dangers, and the experimentation with adaptive strategies. The emergence, engagement, and passing of the phase have been studied by their most dramatic feature, the oedipus complex. The oedipus complex is a set of necessary, expectable experiences: incestuous desires, the feeling of murderous rivalry and attendant dreadful threats. The complex is the major experiential conduit of the underlying processes of the phasehence, both a concrete event and a metaphor. Some students of child development regard the complex as merely a metaphorsince they usually investigate one or more of the behavioral characteristics of the period and have less access to unconscious intrapsychic events. The analyst involved with prelatency children views the oedipus complex both concretely and metaphorically; he must confront the erupting new experiences and distorted antecedents and precursors while also attending to the surround where the forward pull toward a new developmental organization is being actualized. The clinicians treating older children and adults are generally inclined to look upon the oedipus complex primarily in literal terms, since the analytic situation is uniquely designed actively to revive the repressed pathogens of the conflict in the service of the cure. Future clinical research
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with adult patients may suggest ways to tap other features of the phase without doing violence to the technical procedures that promote the transference neurosis. Regrettably, some analysts in recent years seem to have sacrificed the opportunity to mobilize what is essential in order to facilitate differentiation, selectively alter an aspect of the personality, or foster new identifications. During oedipality reality can facilitate or encumber engagement and growth (see, e.g., Burlingham et al., 1955); (Benedek, 1959). The pull forward is facilitated by a surround that tolerates the emerging wishes and encourages more sophisticated stimulus-seeking. Daydreams, play, and the customary moment-to-momenttransactions usually provide ample opportunities to promote the development of fantasy and reality, work the oedipal wishes over, and transmit a wider repertoire of more appropriate ways of being and doing. A facilitating surround also establishes palpable limits; it requires, it curbs, it channelizes into suitable derivatives even as it encourages and tolerates. A facilitating surround further defines the social setting within which wish and containment, new structures and stimuli, confront one another; such a setting includes a relative consistency, a fair degree of family cohesiveness, and the unambiguous offering of values, ideals, and principles that more or less harmonize with the society at large. Development is encumbered by a reality that blurs, inhibits, or intimidates. The stimulation aroused by sexual seductiveness impairs the capacity to establish the necessary limits upon wishes; this impedes the progressive differentiation of fantasy, burdens the dynamic interplay between the wish and the real, and distorts the nuclear complex. The loss of a parent, especially through death, during this time, can also have a devastating impact, as can genuine threats to the body's integrity due to accident or illness (A. Freud, 1951); (Kavka, 1962). Although children create rivalrous triangles even when reared in one-parent families or in otherwise atypical units, the actualities of such disfigured environs virtually assure some form of disturbance, developmental or otherwise (Bennett and Hellman, 1951); (A. Freud, 1951); (Neubauer, 1960). A reality may also encumber through subtler excitements and assaults, especially if a child has
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brought less than optimal equipment to meet the challenges and the opportunities of the period. Such subtleties include imprecisely drawn limits, inconsistencies in implementing discipline, a fragile family setting, a disharmony in dispositions (Kris, 1962); (A. Freud, 1963). At times, the parental bedroom is too available, the availability often guised as useful for some other purpose. In few areas is the wish and real more vulnerable to blurring and more likely to result in pathogenic sequelae than in the encounter between primal scene fantasy and witness (Blum, 1979); (Arlow, 1980). Reality is additionally encumbering whenever information is shaded, ignored, or altered (Sachs,

1967), even for reasons that are alleged to be in the child's interests. And finally, reality encumbers when values and principles are proposed within the family setting that are vastly discordant with those that exist in the rest of the world at large. The conflicts inherent in the complex and the disparities inherent in the phase are empirically observable in prospect and demonstrable in retrospect in clinical settings designed to retrieve them. The conflicts and disparities organize in the form of an infantile neurosis, a particularly felicitous phase-appropriate occurrence (see Kris et al., 1954); (Tolpin, 1970). On the one side, there is the attempt to assimilate external circumstances into the force field created by the evolving wishes, despite the potential dangers and whatever the cost in limitations on expansion; and on the other is the expectation to accommodate to the actualities of the world in the service of survival, despite the frustration and whatever the extent of the pain of renunciation. Nagera (1966) asserts, "The infantile neurosis is an attempt to organize all the previous and perhaps manifold neurotic conflicts and developmental shortcomings, with all the conflicts typical of the phallic-oedipal phase, into a single organization, into a single unit of the highest economic significance. This is possible at this point because of the relatively high degree of developmentreached in several areas, particularly in that of the ego's integrative and synthetic function. For these reasons the 'phallicoedipal' phase is in fact an essential turning point in human development" (p. 57). The infantile neurosis is a shelter; it carries the wishes and threats forward in displaced forms and allows for continuing acclimatization and expansion, so that progressive
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differentiation of fantasy and reality can proceed. When the infantile neurosis is pitched at just the right level, any attempt at merely reassuring a phobic child is met by a response that reflects the child's awareness that what he fears is recognizable nonsense but still dreadful nonetheless. This confirms that wish and real are firmly in place, and that the necessary, inevitable struggle is proceeding at the expectable pace. A pathogenic outcome of oedipality can often be anticipated if the nuclear complex is insufficiently available to catalyze the phase, or, when available, if the anxietyis simply to pervasive and attempts at displacement falter or fail. A pathogenic outcome can also be anticipated where there is too determined an insistence that the dangers actually exist in the outer world, or where the actions mobilized to meet them lead to a significant forfeiture of fantasy or reality. Finally, a pathogenic outcome is likely if the infantile neurosis fails to form, is perversely disturbed, or entirely too pervasive and intense. Anna Freud (1970b) has summarized the deviations and variations with precision and parsimony: Not every child's psychopathology assumes the form of an infantile neurosis. The construction of the latter presupposes that various important developmental steps have been negotiated successfully and, as we know, this is not always the case. Due to constitutional defects, early deprivations, lackof suitable objects, wrong environmental handling, etc., the capacity for object relatedness may have remained inferior; identifications and internalizations may be weak; structuralization may be incomplete; the idego borders may be permeable; the ego itself may emerge from its early experiences as immature, deformed, distorted, etc. Where such developmental failures dominate the scene, the child will present clinical pictures on the border to much more severe pathology such as psychosis or mental deficiency; or he will remain arrested on the described lower level or disjointed neurotic symptom formation which corresponds to a preoedipal organization of the personality. As analysts we hold a multiple view of the infantile neurosis. On the one hand, we regard it as belonging to the realm of psychopathology and realize that in its excessive forms it can be severe and crippling. On the other hand, we also know that it has a regular place in the childhood of many individuals whose
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future adaptation to life is successful, and that the conflicts underlying it are normal ones. Looked at from the developmental point of view, the infantile neurosis doubtless represents a positive sign of personality growth; a progression from primitive to more sophisticated reaction patterns and as such the consequence and, perhaps, the price which has to be paid for higher human development [p. 201f.].

When the biological timetable, the developing systems, and the facilitating environs are reasonably well coordinated, the oedipal phase passes on to a well-fashioned foundation and framework for the psychic apparatus. The transition is achieved by the use of higher-order defenses, more discriminate and selective identifications, and newly evolving transformational processes (Hartmann et al., 1946). The result is the birth of the tripartite mind; the yield, under optimal circumstances, is harmonious, interdependent, and mutally enhancing systems. A portion of the conflictual wishes with their preoedipal accompaniments is indefinitely preserved, "granted a form of existence in which they are left free from the claims of reality" (Freud, 1917, p. 372), albeit relegated to the dynamic unconscious primarily by repression. This is a victory for the drives. Daydreams, self-initiated or activated from the outside, assure a channel for instinct expression and provide pleasure; as a consequence, instinctual stimuli are less likely to achieve traumatic levels. Hence, this victory for the drives is also a victory for the personality as a whole. With the passing of the oedipus complex and phase, the actual world is firmly acknowledged as the source of growth and the setting for personal existence. This is a victory for reality. The child selectively identifies with patterns of behavior and modes of being and, in the course of further growth, is free to expand his base of information. The child is available for new discoveries, enrichments, and opportunities, as well as more complex pleasures, and more innovative adaptive strategies. Hence, this victory for reality is also a victory for the personality as a whole. A major portion of the oedipus complex is transformed into the core of a new system, the superego. Superordinate values, principles, and ideals are established. The commitment is made to the collective actions of society at large; guilt becomes a new
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signal guaranteeing social cohesiveness. The child becomes a participant in the setting where work, love, and play are actualized. This newly found tie to values, principles, and ideals also assures a relative autonomy from the insistent demands of the drives and from the obligation of mere conformism. This model of oedipal phase engagement and yield may imply an orderly, sharply demarcated progressive differentiation, but that rarely occurs. Neubauer has summed up the actualities: The notion of an orderly progression in development is not a clinical reality; phases overlap, earlier ego modalities or conflicts can coexist with later stages, or can be intermixed with one or more stages, and, additionally, individuals differ in their progression-regression balances and in their unevenness in ego development earlier development and pathology [can exist] beneath as well as side by side, and/or interwoven with the oedipal organization: [there are some] patients who made the appropriate step forward into the oedipal involvement in situations where early faults and imbalances continue, but without undergoing developmental transformations and [there are others] where the developmental process is impaired by fixation or regression so that the main features of the oedipal organization do not develop [Panel, 1977, p. 209]. It may also be true that there are occasions when the progressive pull during oedipality can radically transform earlier structures into a new set of higher-order meanings and thereby convert a potentially serious malformation of character into merely a neurotic disposition. Indeed, one of the challenges of clinical research with prelatency children is to devise approaches that might enhance the oedipal engagement and promote the forward reorganization and thus assure the acquisition of a firmer foundation and framework. Once the psychic apparatus has become hardened and the maturational pull has faded, treatment may be unable to achieve anything of an analogous sort. A different mode of therapeutic action needs to be activated.

SUMMARY
The facts and theories of psychoanalysis provide the language, the categories, and the organizing framework that make fantasy,
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reality, and oedipality comprehensible. Propositions about instinctual drives and psychic structure lead to the understanding of the impetus, character, contents, and functions of fantasy. Psychoanalytic hypotheses and discoveries of the emergence of differentiated systems, of the general and specific influences of theenvironment, and of adaptation provide a more precise recognition of what is real. Views of development permit the delineation of a complex sequence of progressive differentiation of both fantasy and reality. The oedipal phase, a discovery of psychoanalytic clinical research, differs in substance from all phases that precede it and, in a certain way, from all that follow it.Fantasy and reality enjoy a particularly rich interplay during this period. Id and ego become more firmly integrated, and fantasy and reality more separable and climactically differentiated. There is usefulness in distinguishing the oedipal phase and the oedipus complex. The phase features the emerging struggle between systems; it bears the disparities between fantasy and reality. The complex contains a concrete set of necessary experiences; it is the nodal conflict of the phase and the nuclear conflict of childhood. Disparities are reconciled and the conflict resolved as the phase is engaged, negotiated by way of a developmentally specific organization, and brought to an end through new defenses, more discriminate identifications, and transformational processes. The yield is the tripartite mind. There are many points of vulnerability in this sequence, but the phase may also provide a reorganizing pull forward that can correct or soften antecedent malformations. Many clinical research opportunities in child and adult analysis are suggested by this conceptual overview.

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