The Third Experiential Area: Problems of Rivalry and Genitality

Abstract

IN THE AREAS OF EXPERIENCE thus far considered, the child’s interpersonal relations are relatively simple and consist, for the most part, in the various aspects of his relationship with his mother. We have noted the possibility of interpersonal relations somewhat more complex: the triangular relationships of a proto-Oedipal situation if the child’s specific circumstances tend to bring this about; that is, if there is a younger sibling, or if his observations have led him to speculate on the possibilities of a unilateral or mutual nursing situation involving the mother and a rival. But such triangular relationships are far from being universally experienced in the two earlier areas, and it may be stated that the child in the oral and disciplinary areas of experience is principally related to the mother in a one-to-one, or linear, pattern, and that when a third person enters the picture, the child regards him with hostile, competitive feelings. The one not infrequent exception to this is the solution of the late oral phase in which the child may regard the father or older sibling as a potential substitute for the mother in a nursing situation. But this involves merely a displacement of one linear relationship by another.