Editing Psychoanalysis (section)

====Oedipal conflicts====
Many psychoanalysts who work with children have studied the actual effects of child abuse, which include ego and object relations deficits and severe neurotic conflicts. Much research has been done on these types of trauma in childhood, and the adult sequelae of those. In studying the childhood factors that start neurotic symptom development, Freud found a constellation of factors that, for literary reasons, he termed the [[Oedipus complex]], based on the play by [[Sophocles]], ''[[Oedipus Rex]]'', in which the protagonist unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother. The validity of the ''Oedipus complex'' is now widely disputed and rejected.<ref>Miller, Alice. 1984. ''Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society's Betrayal of the Child''. New York: [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux|Farrar Straus and Giroux]]. pp. 105–227.</ref><ref name="Kupfersmid, Joel">Kupfersmid, Joel. 1995. ''Does the Oedipus complex exist?'' [[American Psychological Association]].</ref>

The shorthand term, ''oedipal''—later explicated by [[Joseph J. Sandler]] in "On the Concept Superego" (1960)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sandler|first=Joseph|date=January 1960|title=On the Concept of Superego1|url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00797308.1960.11822572|journal=The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child|language=en|volume=15|issue=1|pages=128–162|doi=10.1080/00797308.1960.11822572|pmid=13746181|issn=0079-7308}}</ref> and modified by [[Charles Brenner (psychiatrist)|Charles Brenner]] in ''The Mind in Conflict'' (1982)—refers to the powerful attachments that children make to their parents in the preschool years. These attachments involve fantasies of sexual relationships with either (or both) parent, and, therefore, competitive fantasies toward either (or both) parents. Humberto Nagera (1975) has been particularly helpful in clarifying many of the complexities of the child through these years.{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}}

"Positive" and "negative" oedipal conflicts have been attached to the heterosexual and homosexual aspects, respectively. Both seem to occur in the development of most children. Eventually, the developing child's concessions to reality (that they will neither marry one parent nor eliminate the other) lead to identifications with parental values. These identifications generally create a new set of mental operations regarding values and guilt, subsumed under the term ''superego''. Besides superego development, children "resolve" their preschool oedipal conflicts through channeling wishes into something their parents approve of ("sublimation") and the development, during the school-age years ("latency") of age-appropriate [[obsessive-compulsive]] defensive maneuvers (rules, repetitive games).{{Citation needed|date=May 2020}}