Freud's Adolescence: Oedipus Complex and Parricidal Tendencies

125 Pages·2023·1.717 MB·English

by  Florian Houssier

‘This book demonstrates that S. Freud’s adolescent crisis is far from being calm,
despite the appearance that he gave of it. It is certainly upsetting, rich in emotions,
creative, questioning. Was adolescence so disliked because it was at the very origin
of Freudian thought? To what extent did Freud try all his life to find his buried
adolescence? In the same way, an adolescence refused in its difficulty could, in its
time, become a privileged source of metapsychology and its technical corollaries.
The richness of the “biographic-theoretical” field opened by Florian Houssier’s
book is thus an event.’
Philippe Gutton, Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst, University Professor,
Founder of the Revue Adolescence (France)
This book was translated by Kristina Valendinova, psychotherapist and psycho-
analyst in London.
The translation of this book was financially supported by the Transversal
Research Unit: Psychogenesis and Psychopathology (UTRPP – UR 4403), Uni-
versity of Paris 13, Villetaneuse, Sorbonne Paris Nord (SPN) – France.
Freud’s Adolescence
In Freud’s Adolescence, Florian Houssier looks at the early years of the Father of
Psychoanalysis and considers how his personal experiences shaped his later work.
Including excerpts from many letters written by Freud himself, this volume allows
a rare glimpse into the inner thoughts and emotions of one of his generation’s
greatest minds.
Engaging with this lesser-known period of Freud’s life, the vivacity of his
incestuous and parricidal fantasies comes to the surface, infiltrating his relational
life as well as his dreams. Houssier proposes a new hypothesis about the conflicts
of Freud’s adolescence, and their impact on his tendencies in later conflicts. This
is the first book that sustains a systematic analysis of this material and adds a
new dimension to the biography of Freud by exploring links between his life and
creativity from a current theorisation of the adolescent process.
This book will be an essential read for all psychoanalysts, psychologists,
lecturers, followers of Freud’s work and those looking into psychoanalysis as a
whole.
Florian Houssier is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst (Société de
Psychanalyse Freudienne). He is Professor of Clinical Psychology and
Psychopathology at the Sorbonne, France; Director of the Laboratory Transversal
Unit of Research: Psychogenesis and Psychopathology (UTRPP – UR 4403); and
President of the Collège International de L’Adolescence (CILA).

Freud’s Adolescence
Oedipus Complex and Parricidal
Tendencies
Florian Houssier
Designed cover image: GeorgiosArt / Getty Images
First published in English 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 Campagne-Première/SPF-CP/First Campaign editions
The right of Florian Houssier to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Published in French by Campagne-Première/SPF-CP/First
Campaign editions 2018
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Houssier, Florian, author.
Title: Freud’s adolescence : Oedipus complex and parricidal
tendencies / Florian Houssier.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022037703 (print) | LCCN 2022037704
(ebook) | ISBN 9781032375748 (paperback) | ISBN
9781032375755 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003340898 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Freud, Sigmund, 1856–1939. |
Psychoanalysis. | Adolescent analysis. | Oedipus complex. |
Psychoanalysts—Austria—Biography.
Classification: LCC BF109.F74 H684 2023 (print) | LCC BF109.F74
(ebook) | DDC 150.19/52—dc23/eng/20221017
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022037703
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022037704
ISBN: 978-1-032-37575-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-37574-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-34089-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003340898
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Adolescent psychoanalysis: the French perspective 1
1.2 Travelling in Freudland 3
1.3 Generational transmission 5
1.4 A pivotal period: 1895–1905 6
1.5 Between modesty and shame 8
1.6 Elements of a process 10
1.6.1 A Freudian memory: the non-elaboration of
adolescent experience in adult treatments 11
1.6.2 Significant occurrences in Freudian theory 12
1.6.3 Escaping parental authority, between idealisation
and murder 14
2 Infantile traces and first connections 18
2.1 Return to origins 18
2.2 Checkmate 23
2.3  The first link between childhood and adolescence: 
the “frenemy” 25
2.4 Vienna, terra ambivalente 26
2.5 Humiliation, between father and son 27
2.6 Heroism and revenge 29
2.7 The passion for books 31
3 Adolescent life 36
3.1 An (almost) model student 36
3.2 Giving one’s life to a greater cause 38
3.3 Meeting a young professor 40
3.4 The birth of a hero 42
3.5 A young monk discovers free-association 44
viii Contents
3.6 A gift for life 46
3.7 Caesar and Brutus, a drama scene of fratricide and
parricide 47
3.8 Student memories: from Trieste to Athens 49
3.9 Writing like a German stylist 53
3.10 Heinrich Braun, another inseparable friend 54
3.11 A question of rivalry 55
4 Girls: a troubling otherness 59
4.1 Sexual life and its vicissitudes 60
4.2  Emil Fluss: the first secrets 62
4.2.1 Let the high society know 62
4.2.2 Fair sex, sad life 63
4.3 The weight of sexual prohibitions 64
4.4 An immortal principle 65
4.5  Gisela, a potentially traumatic love at first sight 67
4.6  Looking for daughter, finding mother 68
4.7 Living through the Oedipus complex before its
discovery 70
4.8 Remembering the experience: Gisela, a third? 71
4.9 Girls: between poison and boredom 72
4.10 A ghost comes and goes 73
4.11 Man down: a principle gets married 75
4.12 Return to a created biography: memory and its screens 76
4.12.1 A profusion of excitations 77
4.12.2 Struggling with masturbation fantasies 78
4.12.3 A young virgin is deflowered 79
5 Eduard: the passion of friendship 84
5.1 An overview 84
5.1.1 Friendship as a vital need 84
5.1.2 Founding a royal academy 86
5.1.3 A terrible tale: the witch’s terrifying sexuality 88
5.1.4 First writings on unconscious searching 89
5.1.5 Blood relations 90
5.2 Writing one’s feelings 92
5.2.1 The pure gold of language 92
5.2.2 Matters of the heart 93
5.2.3 Alter ego or double? 94
5.2.4 A house for two 95
Contents ix
5.2.5 A lost letter 97
5.2.6 Language of the body and sexual identity 98
5.2.7 Sigmund and his sisters 100
5.2.8 Matura-tion: the exam and sexual maturity 101
6 Conclusions 107
6.1 This is not a question of age 107
6.2 An adolescence avoided 109
Index 112