Franieck - L - Günter - M 2010 - On Latency

ON LATENCY
ON LATENCY
Individual Development,
Narcissistic Impulse Reminiscence,
and Cultural Ideal
Leticia Franieck
and Michael Günter
Work funded by
International Psychoanalytical Association
First published in 2010 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2010 by M. Leticia C.F. Franieck and Michael Günter
The right of M. Leticia C.F. Franieck and Michael Günter to be identified as

the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with §§ 77 and 78
of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-85575-740-0
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Printed in Great Britain
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To my parents and to my twin sons Lucas and Erick
—M. L. C. F. F.
To Franziska, Daphne and Florentine hoping that their latency

experience has been good enough to prepare them for life
—M. G.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi
ABOUT THE AUTHORS xiii
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction 1
CHAPTER TWO
Latency 7
2.1 On social identity 9
2.2 On culture 13
2.2.1 Freud 13
2.2.2 Current psychoanalytic authors 14
CHAPTER THREE
Central concepts for understanding
the latency period 17
3.1 Oedipus complex 17
3.1.1 The classical theory (Freud) 18
vii
viii CONTENTS
3.1.2 Object theory (Klein) 19

3.1.3 Wilfred Bion 20
3.2 Identification 21
3.3 Narcissism 24
3.3.1 Melanie Klein 26
3.3.2 Herbert Rosenfeld 27
3.3.3 Wilfred Bion review terminology 27
3.3.4 Heinz Kohut 28
3.3.5 André Green 28
3.4 Ego ideal and superego 28
3.4.1 In Freud’s work 29
3.4.2 New interpretations of Freud’s work 31
CHAPTER FOUR
On group psychology and on culture 37
4.1 Group psychology and culture: Cultural ideal,
ego ideal, narcissism, superego 37
4.2 Group psychology in the field of therapeutic work
and culture 42
CHAPTER FIVE
Research 45
5.1 Aims 46
5.2 Questions 46
5.3 Hypotheses 47
5.4 Methodology 50
5.4.1 Samples 50
5.4.2 The approach to measurement in the study 50
5.4.3 Assessment of parents 51
5.4.3.1 First part: Child’s daily activities 51
5.4.3.2 Second part: Attitudes and feelings 52
5.4.4 Assessment of children 53
5.4.4.1 Definition and aim of MSSB 54
5.4.4.2 Content of the MacArthur Story
Stem Battery 54
5.4.4.3 Directions for administering
the MacArthur Story Stem Battery 57
5.4.4.4 Coding system 58
5.4.4.5 Reliability of coders 59
5.4.4.6 The scales 60
5.4.5 Work environment 60
CONTENTS ix
5.4.5.1 Contact with the schools to build the groups 60

5.4.5.2 Procedure with the parents 60
5.4.5.3 Procedure with the children—setting 61
5.5 Statistical analyses 61
5.5.1 Categorical variables 61
5.5.2 Continuous variables 61
5.6 Results 61
5.6.1 Factor analysis of FOPEI variables 61
5.6.2 Factor analysis of MSSB variables 62
5.6.3 The existence of two different cultural patterns 62
5.6.3.1 Daring self 63
5.6.3.2 Descriptive and comparative analyses 64
5.6.3.3 Multiple linear regression analyses 65
5.6.4 The differences in the mother role between the groups 66
5.6.5 Cultural transmission 68
5.6.6 Examination of hypotheses 70
5.7 Conclusion 71
CHAPTER SIX
Discussion 73
6.1 Answering the questions 73
6.2 Limitations of the study and open questions for further research 88
6.3 Conclusion 90
CHAPTER SEVEN
Summary 95
REFERENCES 97
IPA editions 104
APPENDIX 1 105
APPENDIX 2 109
APPENDIX 3 111
APPENDIX 4 113
APPENDIX 5 117
APPENDIX 6 119
INDEX 121
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank the International Psychoanalytical Associa-

tion for funding this research.
Thank you Harriet Hasenclever for smoothing out our English.
We wish to express our deep gratitude to Roosevelt Cassorla for
his helpful remarks, constructive criticisms and above all for his
friendship.
xi
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
M. Leticia C.F. Franieck grew up in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil, and

studied psychology at the University of Sao Paulo. She practiced
as Clinical Psychologist in Brazil for many years before moving to
Germany in 2000. There she carried out research into cultural dif-
ferences in latency children’s representations of family relationships
under the supervision of Michael Günter, leading to the award of
her PhD in 2005. Since then she has lived in Brazil and Germany con-
tinuing her research into children’s representations at the University
of Tubingen. She is currently researching Brazilian street children
in order to understand their strengths and their vulnerabilities. Her
clinical practice is in a specialist treatment unit for offenders with
drug and alcohol problems. She learnt a lot about latency from her
twin sons and now is learning from them about adolescence!
Michael Günter, Dr. med., is Professor for Child and Adolescent

Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and Head of the Department for
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the
University of Tübingen, Germany. Psychoanalyst and Training
analyst for children, adolescents and adults (DPV/IPA), Specialist
for Psychosomatic Medicine. Studies in medicine, art history and
xiii
xiv A B O U T T H E AU T H O R S
empirical cultural science. Editor-in-chief of the scientific journal

Kinderanalyse (Child analysis). He has numerous publications on
child psychotherapy, forensic child psychiatry, emotional adapta-
tion of children with severe somatic disorders, early onset psycho-
sis. Most recent monograph in English: “Playing the Unconscious.
Psychoanalytic interviews with children using Winnicott’s Squiggle
technique.” London: Karnac 2007 He is Director of the professional
training curriculum in Psychodynamic Psychotherapy at the Univer-
sity of Tübingen and of the South-West-German professional train-
ing curriculum in Forensic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
L
atency is a developmental period that plays a transitional role,
like ‘a bridge’, between early childhood and adolescence (the
beginning of early adulthood) and although it is of interest in
being a point in child development with both a previous reference—
to early childhood, and a later reference—to adolescence, the latency
period is a subject that has not received sufficient attention in psycho-
analysis in recent years. Most of the psychoanalytic frameworks that
have built on and extended Freud’s work have focused their atten-
tion on understanding the early development of the child, the early
dyadic and triadic relationship of the infant, the early organization
of the mind (as a way to reach an understanding of psychotic states
and the Oedipus complex), or on an understanding of adolescent
development when sexuality explodes accompanied by all uncon-
scious libidinal elements from the early organization (Etchegoyen,
1993) which were repressed in latency—thus the interest in the
latency period has been put in the shade: left dormant, as its defi-
nition would imply. There are a number of definitions of ‘latency’,
1
2 O N L AT E N C Y
however the word is rarely used with any identifying qualifications

(Sarnoff, 1971). Two of the definitions commonly used are:
• An age period: representing the time period from 6 to 12 years of

age which is characterized by new cognitive acquisitions.
• A psychological state: describing a period of dynamic defences dur-
ing which the child experiences a complex re-organization of the
defensive structure of the ego. The equilibrium between defences
and drives will result in a ‘state of good behaviour, flexibility and
educability’ (Sarnoff, 1971: 387; Freud, 1974: 114).
In psychoanalytical terms latency is defined as a developmental

period in which psychosexual maturation marks time—it occurs
after the Oedipal phase and ends with the beginning of puberty,
and is a period of emotional abeyance between the confusion and
dramas of childhood and adolescence. Its meaning has always been
connected to the building of defences and repression of the drives
that, allied to each other, bring about cognitive development. This
does not sound like a ‘lively’ emotional period, nor does it sound
‘colourful’, but just a ‘black and white emotional period’. Another
point about the definition of latency which has still not been properly
discussed or answered, refers to Freud’s question (Freud, 1925: 37n)
as to whether the latency period is an innate universal phenomenon
connected to the prolonging of biological immaturity that character-
izes human development or whether it is restricted to repressive cul-
tures in which infantile and immature sexual behaviour is subjected
in order to be kept under control.
Not accepting this period as a ‘black and white emotional
period’ and eager to find out the answer to this late question from
Freud1 we decided to carry out an empirical study of children
aged 6–11 years,2 exploring socio-cultural identity, emotional organ-
ization, social adaptation, the quality of children’s identification
with parental figures, and the children’s representations of their
1
It is interesting that Freud brought up this question at the end of his life and work,
by adding it in a footnote.
2
A period named ‘latency’ (Freud, 1908: 171); ‘moral stage’ (Piaget, 1928: 276–301;
1973: 261); and ‘psychosocial moratorium’ (Erikson 1956: 66–67).
INTRODUCTION 3
family relationships—with particular interest in identity formation,

including the culturally shaped quality of identification with paren-
tal figures, both maternal and paternal.
This period between 6 and 11 years of age is a crucial and
demanding time in child development. Two things are expected
simultaneously: a sense of independence from parents and the abil-
ity to become literate, or, in other words, some emotional maturity
combined with some cognitive maturity. At school, separated from
parents and from the holding environment of the family, the child
needs to trust in his or her own capacities—to have established most
of their own identity—in an effort to cope with the new quality of
experiences that they will meet through the learning process. In
addition, school requires of the child an ability to establish group
identification and to adapt socially.
With the above in mind, we explored empirically through stand-
ardized doll play assessments—the MacArthur Story Stem Battery
(MSSB)—whether German and Brazilian middle latency children
differ in their play in the ways in which they portray the libidinal
representations of family relationships as well as their relationship
with their parental objects and whether these differences are paral-
leled in the attitudes of parents.3 Our hypotheses regarding cultural
differences and the transmission of cultural values during the mid-
dle latency period were supported by the cross-cultural research that
we read. The most important results of the study showed clearly
that parents and children in Brazil organize themselves according
to a ‘Group/Family Idealization Model’ and have a more positive
view of family life than German parents and children, who give
more emphasis to an ‘individual competence model’. Therefore, the
aim of this essay is to raise a number of relevant questions—ones
which have not made much of an appearance in psychoanalysis to
this point—and through doing relate the empirical findings to a con-
ceptual elaboration for advances in knowledge. We are convinced
that this kind of work can contribute to a better understanding of
3
Parents were assessed completing the Family Organization and Parents’ Expecta-
tions Inventory (FOPEI) (Franieck and Günter, 2002). The FOPEI was designed to
assess what parents think about their child’s attitudes and feelings and what they
would expect from the child in order to be equipped for the ‘struggle for life’.
4 O N L AT E N C Y
cultural pattern influences on the child’s emotional development

process in latency, in particular contributing to an elaboration of psy-
choanalytic concepts for this period. Our remaining questions are:
1. How could the two different cultural organizations/models be

described from a psychoanalytical point of view?
2. How could the existence of two different organizations/models
(Brazil and Germany) and the transmission of unconscious and
conscious identifications be theoretically understood?
a. Could we develop a theoretical understanding of the funda-
mental psychodynamic function of the two different models?
b. Could the latency period be defined, in view of these results, as a
period of dynamic defences during which the child experiences
a complex re-organization of the defensive structure of the ego?
What about the existence and necessity of cultural transmission
in latency? How could this cultural transmission be connected
to the Oedipus complex?
c. What about the relationship between conscious and uncon-
scious transmissions of identifications?
3. What do these results mean for psychoanalytical concepts of
latency?
a. Will we have to conceptualize latency in dynamic terms of
identification and defence between Oedipus complex and
adolescence?
b. What is the influence of the cultural ideal on the building and
transformation of the ego ideal?
c. What is the role of the cultural ideal in the latency? In what way
can our considerations throw light on Freud’s fundamental
question on the relationship between latency as a physiological
phenomenon and as being produced by cultural influences
(Freud, 1925: 37n)?
4. What is the connection between cultural ideal, ego ideal, and
narcissism in latency development?
In order to search for answers to these questions, we will focus

this work on the study of personal and group identity build-
ing, its importance in child development at the middle of latency
INTRODUCTION 5
(6–8 years), its features in cultural pattern formation, and further

understanding of variability in social adaptation. To this end, in
Chapter 2 we will provide an overall definition of the latency period
including a) its importance for social identity development; and b) its
relationship to cultural preservation—in the meaning of being a nec-
essary period in human development. In Chapter 3, we will present
some classical and central concepts (namely, ‘Oedipus complex’,
‘identification’, ‘narcissism’, ‘ideal ego’, ‘ego ideal’, and ‘superego’),
which are not only closely allied to one another but also have a great
role in the psychological inner world development of the child at
the latency period; we will also go chronologically through Freud’s
theory and understanding; and discuss some psychoanalytic frame-
works that have taken Freud’s work further (for example, Klein,
1927, 1932, 1946, 1948, 1952, 1955; Bion, 1963, 1991; Rosenfeld, 1987;
Sandler, 1962, 1963; and others) with the purpose of highlighting the
points of agreement with Freud’s theory, despite their differences.
Then, in Chapter 4, we will introduce group psychology and its key
point to explore—how the concepts of ‘ideal ego’, ‘ego ideal’, ‘nar-
cissism’, ‘superego’, and ‘cultural ideal’ are intrinsically connected
to one another and, above all, how they relate to cultural identity.
Chapter 5, in contrast to the previous chapters, is less theoretical
and more empirical: we explain briefly the academic research study
including methodology, results, and hypotheses, and show how
this empirical data can be interpreted in order to produce explana-
tions for our questions. In Chapter 6, based on the link between our
empirical data and the different perspectives (theoretical concepts)
elaborated on in the previous chapters, we present our ideas and
new understanding of some aspects of latency—in response to the
remaining questions, as well as Freud’s question (Freud, 1925: 37n).
We propose a new understanding of the Oedipus complex resolution,
and, moreover, introduce two new concepts: cultural ideal, defined as
an agency that replaces the ego ideal, and narcissistic impulse reminis-
cence, an unconscious reminiscence of the ‘dual orientation of narcis-
sism’ (primitive ego function)—one orientation towards achieving
individuality and the other towards fusion. We finish by addressing
the limitations of the study and providing a conclusion.
CHAPTER TWO
Latency
F
reud was the first to distinguish a psychodynamic develop-
mental period in the child’s life, between the ages of 7 and 10,
naming it ‘latency’. His original definition was:
[T]he latency period … is characterised by the dissolution of the

Oedipus Complex, the creation and consolidation of the super-
ego and the erection of ethical and aesthetic barriers in the ego.
(Freud, 1926b: 114)
The latency period starts with the decline of the Oedipus complex.
The consolidation of superego and the development of some defence
mechanisms (negation, repression, and sublimation) are the most sig-
nificant features of this period. Consequently, the alliance between
superego and defence mechanisms provides the basis for further
developmental tasks, such as character formation, social integration,
and learning abilities. Thus the re-organization of the defences per se
is responsible for giving some degree of stability to latency. Through
them the reactive formation of morality, shame, and revulsion are
structured. In this case, the repression of the sexual libido—under
7
8 O N L AT E N C Y
the domain of the superego—will provide the child with the means
to develop his or her conscious and pre-conscious abilities to deal
with the external world. Sublimation will be the basis of the sociali-
zation process, since the sexual instincts are drawn from the sexual
target and projected towards social objects, which, in turn, increase
in their social value. It is not by chance that children usually begin
to be literate around the age of six years. The latency period has
a correspondence with the concrete operations—a crucial stage in
Piagetian theory of cognitive development (Piaget, 1947, 1954, 2008),
in which there is a huge development in cognitive abilities. Accord-
ing to Piaget (1947, 1954, 2008), at early latency the child begins with
a progressive decentralization: the reasoning changes from the spe-
cific (in psychoanalytic terminology—with a certain experience of
the narcissistic type of object choice—dyadic narcissist relationship)
to the broad (in psychoanalytic terminology—role of triangulation).
According to Freud (1966a: 164–165), not only are interpersonal
and social developments of fundamental importance over this
period, but also are cognitive activities. Nonetheless, in Freud’s
(1950) view cognitive development is a by-product of personality
and social development, and not the other way round. The primary
developmental tasks in this period are the integration of the Oedipal
identifications, the consolidation of sexual identity, and the gender
roles. This is followed by the relative tranquillity and control of the
instinctual impulses which allow the development of the structural
ego as well as the discovery and mastering of new abilities. Elements
of further identification can be added to the Oedipal components,
based on contacts with other important figures outside of the family,
such as teachers, trainers, and other adults. Sarnoff (1976) referred
to sublimation, reaction formation, regression, phantasizing, and
repression as features of what he named the structure of latency
and, according to him, phantasizing is essential as a stabilizing fac-
tor for the discharge of the drives. Anna Freud (1973) asserted that
in latency the child does not suffer the superior forces of the infan-
tile instinctual motions due to his or her original egoism restriction,
which is emotionally experienced through the Oedipus complex.
Consequently, the child does not become exhausted looking for con-
stant satisfaction, but instead develops their abilities in the social
situation. According to Anna Freud, in latency there is a widening
scope of the ego and superego. The features of this dynamic relation
L AT E N C Y 9
and the further superego consolidation is widely discussed among

other authors.
Etchegoyen (1993) asserted that not only is the superego consoli-
dated at latency, but, through gradual work of the Oedipus complex,
there is also a development of the ego, since, in latency, the ego must
simultaneously deal with impulses (which must be repressed) and
with the superego demands, forcing it to find ways to cope with
both. For Klein (1932), the progress of the libidinal organization
and the successful adjustments of the ego and superego are closely
linked to the modification of persecutory and depressive anxieties
towards internalized parents, thereby providing a greater security
in the child’s inner world. According to her, at the beginning of the
latency period anxiety vicissitudes are lessened as the relationship
between the child and the child’s parents becomes calmer. This is
thought to result from the integration of the child’s mental represen-
tation of their parents (in the ‘fantasy’) with the actual experience
of their parents (in reality), enabling the child to grasp the patterns
of reprimands and prohibitions from their parents, which is help-
ful not only for the repression of Oedipal impulses but also for the
child’s social adaptation. Consequently the most important charac-
teristic of this phase is the integration of the superego into social
development.
All things considered, there is an agreement among the psycho-
analytical authors concerning the importance of psychodynamic
mechanisms that are established between drives and superego, aid-
ing in their turn an ego development towards socialization and cul-
tural adaptation in the course of the latency period.
2.1 On social identity

In the field of social psychology, social identity is connected to defin-
ing oneself as a part (element) of a group, that is to say, ‘social iden-
tity’ implies the subordination of individual needs and interests
to the group (Gouveia et al., 2002). Thus the concept of identity is
based on an interchange between psychological structure and social
environment.
Triandis (1989), a cultural researcher, asserted that social identity
is connected to the self and according to him the self is defined as one
element of subjective culture that can be distinguished as private,
10 O N L AT E N C Y
public, and collective, and the complexity of the self depends on

cultural variables such as language, technology, economics, politics,
educational systems, religions, aesthetic patterns, and social struc-
tures. In his view, social identity is defined on the basis of different
elements in different cultures, and the qualities that are most impor-
tant in forming an identity can vary greatly.
In his research, Triandis made one particularly interesting obser-
vation: according to him, when the culture tends to emphasize ele-
ments of identity that reflect possessions and place worth on being
logical, rational, and balanced, then the identity will be character-
ized by individualistic qualities, whereas, in contrast, when the cul-
ture tends to emphasize elements that reflect relationships, personal
style, sincere self-expression, and emotional expression, the identity
will be characterized by collectivist qualities.
The concepts of ‘individualism’ and ‘collectivism’ were first used
in the eighteenth century; individualism was then characterized by
ideas such as freedom of the individual from the state, freedom of
association with others, and freedom of speech, and was contrasted
with authoritarianism, which was characterized by ideas such as
submission to an authority, such as the king, and denial of the free-
dom to have an individual way of life. However, Triandis states that
this contrast between ideas of doing what an in-group specifies, as
opposed to personal freedom to decide how to behave, goes back
to a time before the eighteenth century. In psychology, these terms
were introduced with Hofstede’s book (1980).
In the course of the latency period, specific maturational cognitive
events help the child to change cultural demands into an organized
set of internalized memory elements which enable them to regulate
their impulses as well as organize their social behaviour. That is to
say, it enables the child to achieve the moral rules and the triangu-
lar object relationship stability that will enable them to grasp the
rules of a particular social interaction and be able also to assimilate
complex ethical concepts and adapt them to be applied in other, dif-
ferent, situations, making use of their own sense of discrimination.
Finally, moral behaviour and the triangular object relationship sta-
bility support social development.
Erikson (1950) described the child’s affective development taking
into account not only the psychosexual stages (as Freud did), but
also adding a psychosocial interpretation, in which the focus is more
L AT E N C Y 11
on the ego, or on the conscious being. According to him, the identity

is dynamic and is developed in a series of psychosocial stages, which
are characterized by cultural demands and expectations. In fact,
identity formation is a reconstruction of all previous identifications,
each of which is dependent on the one before it. Erikson asserted
that identity needs to connect past and future, and because of this
the latency and genital stages represent crucial moments in identity
development. Both stages ‘build’ the bridge that makes the connec-
tion between childhood and adulthood in the life cycle. According to
Erikson (1982: 75), during latency, a period that he named ‘industry x
inferiority’, there is a certain numbing of the infantile sexuality and a
postponement of mature sexuality. This enables the future adult (now
still a child) to submit himself or herself to school methods, offered
by their society, and to learn the technical and social rudiments of
a labour situation. In other words, sexual impulses are replaced by
knowledge interests. He concluded that the child is dominated by
‘psychosexual moratorium’ (or a period of libido repression), which
is a transition phase on the road to the achievement of future sexual
maturity. During this phase the child’s cognitive development is
focused on the learning of the technical and social rudiments of a
labour situation, and on interaction with and adaptation to cultural
institutions, beyond the family organization. This learning creates
for the child a new identification model with his or her parents as
workers and supporters of learning and these developments are
shared with similar-age peers in school, geographically separated
from home with its infantile memories of mother and father. There-
fore the aim of learning supports the suppression of infantile instinc-
tual aims, offering in its turn a constructive activity with actual tools
and materials in a communal reality. So that, at this stage, the ego’s
activity is linked to the inner need for activity, practice, and work
completion, preparing in this way the child to meet the correspond-
ing demands and opportunities in the wider society.
With the beginning of literacy the child seeks approval through
his or her capacity, competence, and industry. According to Erikson
(1982), industry can be understood as a basic feeling of competent
activity adapted to social and cultural demands and rules. These
demands and rules are of two kinds. First, there are those that are
made explicit and which are acquired passively—in particular moral
statements. Second, there are those that are acquired actively through
12 O N L AT E N C Y
interactions with others. The effective development of these abilities

is thought to be important to identity development as it enters the
next psychosocial phase of ‘identity versus identity diffusion’, or,
in Freudian terminology, ‘the genital phase’. However limitations
in the development of these abilities, at this moment, are likely to
contribute to a basic sense of inferiority, with implications in iden-
tity development in adolescence. There are two kinds of identity to
be achieved over the ‘identity versus identity diffusion’ phase. The
first is ‘sexual identity’, which has its roots in the integration of the
Oedipal complex identifications that were in a ‘psychosocial morato-
rium’ during the previous latency period. The second is ‘social iden-
tity’. According to Erikson this entails not only defining oneself as
part of a group (Gouveia et al., 2002) but also requires reconciliation
between the young person’s concept of himself or herself and the
community’s recognition of them. At this point, the Erikson theoreti-
cal framework has a different perspective from the social one with
respect to the assertion that social identity has to do with defining
oneself as a part of a group (Gouveia et al., 2002). In conclusion, the
idea of the re-integrated ego in adolescence refers to both the sexual
role and the social role. When there is confusion resulting from a
profusion of roles, the adolescent experiences identity diffusion.
Bohleber (1999) asserted that identity is not a qualitative fact; for
instance, it cannot be clearly defined through particular character-
istics. Instead, identity is a dynamic, dialectic psychological con-
struction that is under the influence of reality (social values, social
expectations, and social behaviours) and simultaneously under the
influence of the child’s inner world (mental representation, inner
objects, and unconscious fantasies).
In the course of latency wider cultural patterns are strongly trans-
mitted to the child, first through the family. Over time the influence
of the home environment and the parents’ relationship are accom-
panied by influences from out-of-home social experiences. In this
way, the absorption of cultural patterns is more extensive than in the
pre-latency period, as a result of the enlargement of social contacts
the child experiences, at school and with their peers. To whatever
extent, it does not mean that the holding environment of the family
becomes less important; it may provide a crucial support to the cul-
tural adaptation of the child to the new learning environment that
they need to deal with, and the parents’ rules and their expectations
L AT E N C Y 13
still remain at the root of the child’s concerns. In some areas, such
as self-esteem, superego contents, and sexual identity, the parental
influence can be seen (Sarnoff, 1987). Franieck (2005) suggests that
the cultural patterns and social principles are successfully absorbed
by children aged six to eight years in the relationship with their par-
ents—the features of this relationship are based on expected behav-
iours and moral rules from the parents’ side.
Unquestionably, the latency period plays a transitional role, like
‘a bridge’ between early childhood and adolescence, and definitely
has a central role in a child’s development of identity. The simulta-
neous acquisitions of social, cultural, and cognitive values are not
only necessary for a further period of development (adolescence)
but are also intrinsically connected to the emotional development of
the ego. More than just a ‘latent’ period characterized by the build-
ing of defences and repression of the drives, latency is ‘alive’ as a
period since parental identifications and group identifications allied
to each other display a fundamental role in the social and cultural
adaptation—a reference period for the identity development.
2.2 On culture
2.2.1 Freud
From 1908 to 1923 the concept of latency is described in Freud’s
work either as a developmental period arising from phylogenetic
historical—physiological heredity, or as a developmental period
seen in sociological and psychological terms, in which the ego
defences respond to psychological needs under the pressure of
social demands. So far, these two definitions might seem contradic-
tory. It was only later (1925) that latency was considered as a step in
the child developmental process in which defences are brought to
bear on the drive, although the timing of latency was determined
by heredity. According to Freud (1925) repression triggers latency
whilst the reaction-formations of morality, shame, and disgust are
built up during latency. Nevertheless the ego that produces latency
is, in turn, a product of phylogenesis.
In 1935, after the publication of The Future of an Illusion (1927)
and Civilization and its Discontents (1930), where Freud returned to
his concern with cultural demands and their influences on human
14 O N L AT E N C Y
development, an important footnote was added by him in An Auto-

biographical Study.1 In this footnote, Freud assigned more importance
to the environment on the bringing about of latency as well as on the
effects of castration anxiety. He asserted:
The period of latency is a physiological phenomenon. It can

however, only give rise to a complete interruption of sexual life
in cultural organizations which have made the suppression of
infantile sexuality a part of their system. This is not the case
with the majority of primitive peoples.
(Freud, 1925: 37n)
More simply, at some time in the phylogenesis of man, an ego func-

tion originated—probably from mutation and adaptation (Sarnoff,
1971)—and this ego function would allow and support latency as
we know it. Namely the individual lives in a culture that demands
the latency period, besides their parents, grandparents, and great-
grandparents (for generations) did not only accept the ‘suppression
of infantile sexuality’ (Freud, 1925: 37n) but also conformed to these
cultural demands, creating in this way a cultural ideal.
It was the first time that cultural demands were pointed out as the
basic factor in the formation and further development of the latency
period. At this point, Freud shifted his emphasis from biological to
cultural determinism where the biological element is subsumed in
what we infer as a cultural ‘creation of an ideal’—an idea that needs
further exploration.
2.2.2 Current psychoanalytic authors

Most psychoanalytical authors have adopted the opposing point
of view where culture is supported by latency. To illustrate, Sarnoff
(1971: 409) asserted:
From the standpoint of culture, latency is necessary for the for-

mation of civilization. Latency provides the period of time in
1
In the revision of ‘An Autobiographical Study’ in 1935, Freud pursued a discussion
based on the premises developed by him in Totem and Taboo (1913).
L AT E N C Y 15
which children can learn the complicated skills needed in soci-

ety. The child learns to accommodate him/herself to the world.
There is an agreement among the authors Hagelin (1980), Etchegoyen

(1993), Erikson (1950), Anna Freud (1966b), and others, on the point
that one of the most important features in the latency period is the
socialization process, which is also accompanied by the internaliza-
tion of cultural values. Needless to say, we are in complete agree-
ment over this; however our key question is to discover whether
the latency period produces and maintains culture or whether cul-
ture produces and maintains the latency period. Berberich (2005),
for instance, introduces the role of society in latency, asserting that
societies make use of the latency period to transmit cultural values
and moral standards. According to her, skills, which are absorbed
from each particular culture, arise at this time. The child absorbs
these skills not only through the acquisition of reading and writing
knowledge, but also through making use of abilities such as dream-
ing up and sublimating, which will be developed further in adoles-
cence and in the adult phase. Equally importantly, Kernberg (1989)
examines the regressive processes in the recipients of mass culture
and the striking correspondence between the conventional aspects
of mass culture and the psychological features of latency years and
proposes that mass culture induces temporary, regressive, large-
group processes in its recipients, reactivating latency-age ego and
superego features. Starting at the end and working backwards on
Kernberg’s conclusions, they should be seen as reinforcing the Freud
footnote with respect to the importance and influence of cultural
demands as the basic feature in the formation and further develop-
ment of the latency period. The key point here is the understand-
ing of mass culture as an appeal, which makes use of some cultural
demands in order to achieve its aims. After all, since the cultural
demands produce and maintain latency, it is to be expected that
mass culture will evoke the latency age ego and superego features in
order to achieve its aims. Nonetheless our question remains. It is still
not clear whether cultural demands produce the latency period or
whether the latency period is a culturalization process? More simply,
does culture support latency or does latency maintain culture? As to
this approach there is not much to be found in the literature to date
and in an effort to understand some of the psychological disorders
16 O N L AT E N C Y
in clinical work, the literature of latency is always focused either

on the understanding of ego defence mechanisms or on the conse-
quences of failures in the Oedipus complex constellation—together
with further lapses in the ego and superego formation. By contrast
in this essay, we propose to look into the interchanges between the
latency and cultural demands making use of empirical data. To this
end, we need, first, to have a look at some fundamental theoretical
concepts, namely: ‘Oedipus complex’, ‘identification’, ‘narcissism’,
‘ego ideal’, ‘superego’, and ‘cultural ideal’ that are not only intrisi-
cally connected to one another but are also the basis of identity for-
mation in the course of the latency period. This is true and in equal
measure for cultural and individual identity. Second, to provide the
empirical data and finally to answer Freud’s late question (Freud,
1925: 37n), we need to introduce two new concepts.
CHAPTER THREE
Central concepts for understanding

the latency period
T
he aim of this chapter is not to discuss well-known psycho-
analytic concepts in detail, or bring up anything new, but
rather to offer an overview of Freud’s theory and his view of
latency and to follow that by discussing psychoanalytic frameworks
that have built on and extended Freud’s work. The key point is to
provide an overview of key concepts and beyond that to point out
where the authors agree in spite of their different views.
3.1 Oedipus complex

On this matter, the major concern is to examine Instinct Theory
and Object Theory, specifically concerning the beginning of the
triangular relationship. The agreement concerning the Oedipus
complex resolution is the key point here, since its resolution not
only marks the start of the latency period but also marks the fact
that social adaptation means leaving the triangular relationship
behind.
17
18 O N L AT E N C Y
3.1.1 The classical theory (Freud)

The Oedipus complex in Freud’s work constitutes the principal
subject matter of psycho-analysis and the foundations of its theory
(Freud, 1923). Although the concept and relevance of the nuclear
complex were present from the beginning of Freud’s work (discov-
ered through Freud’s own self-analysis) the term ‘Oedipus complex’
does not appear until 1910—‘a special type of choice of object made
by men’. According to Freud, the Oedipus complex is a univer-
sal phenomenon that emerges between the ages of three and five
(named by him as the Oedipal phase of libidinal and ego develop-
ment or also phallic phase) and its resolution marks the beginning
of the latency period. The Oedipus complex can be defined as the
organized set of loving and hostile desires (group of mostly uncon-
scious ideas and feelings centering on the wish to possess the parent
of the opposite sex and eliminate that of the same sex), which the
child feels in his or her relationship with their parents (Laplance and
Pontallis, 1967) and which is closely related to the castration com-
plex, especially with its prohibitive and normative function, which
will contribute to superego formation. For the boy, the castration
threat terminates the Oedipal conflict and the boy is forced, out of
fear, to abandon the wish for the possession of his mother in rivalry
with his father. For the girl, the awareness of castration (or the lack
of a penis) confirms the threat of castration and initiates the Oedipus
complex. She is forced to give up the wish for a penis in relation to
the first love object and turns to the father as her love object, wishing
for babies instead of the penis. According to Freud, the resolution
of the Oedipus complex consists in giving up the desire to possess
the parent of the opposite sex under the pressure of repression in
identifying with the parent of the same sex (Etchegoyen, 2002). In
the Freudian framework the concept of the Oedipus complex is the
central element and has a basic role in the building of the personality
structure as well as in the orientation of human desires. Although
this concept has been revised and elaborated in current psychoa-
nalysis, it is as relevant as in the beginning, especially in relation
to ideas about the role displayed by triangulation in mental health
and social adaptation. The role of the father and the relation to the
Oedipal father is at the centre of Freud’s anthropological writings as
well as in the development of the ego ideal concept.
C E N T R A L C O N C E P T S F O R U N D E R S TA N D I N G T H E L AT E N C Y P E R I O D 19
The role of triangulation involves the addition of a father repre-

sentation (the third) to the dyadic relation in the child’s psychological
development. The presence of the third (the father) not only breaks up
the primary relationship of the child to the mother—the ‘oceanic feel-
ing’ of primary narcissism referred to in Civilization and its Discontents
(Freud, 1930: 54–55), but is also bound up with the concept of reality.
Through this process, the child is removed from his or her narcis-
sist world—where there is the belief in the possession of the primary
object—and introduced to the real one, where he or she needs to deal
with a new kind of relationship—the triangular relationship. That
is to say, the child is introduced to a wider world where stabilizing
new relationships are demanded—he or she is introduced to society.
The rupture of the dyadic-narcissistic relationship is replaced by the
child’s identification with the fatherly function, which supplies the
social rules that the child must absorb. This identification process
is thought to provide the basis of moral development, social adap-
tation, sexual roles, and affective relationships. On the other hand,
the castration complex, through the threat of loss, brings up also
the death concept in the child’s mind and, in consequence, it gives
an amplitude to the child’s thought, introducing, for example, the
temporal concept (present/past/future), which will help the child to
work on his or her impulses, postponing their satisfaction. Precisely
at the decline of the Oedipus complex, the latency period begins. For
Freud the superego is the heir to the Oedipus complex.
This study pinpoints exactly this moment in development—when
the child starts to learn to read.
3.1.2 Object theory (Klein)

Klein’s (1948) theory is called an Object Theory; more simply it is
focused on the child’s primary relationship with the mother’s body or
womb (Etchegoyen, 2002), and the resolution of ambivalent feelings
(paranoid anxiety and depressive anxiety) held towards the mother is
seen as the most important subject in understanding development of the
ego and superego. Therefore Object Theory differs from Instinct Theory
with respect to the beginning of the Oedipus complex—the triangular
relationship—and superego formation. According to Klein there is not
only a dyadic relationship between the infant and the mother in the
20 O N L AT E N C Y
first months of life but there are also pre-genital impulses suggesting
the presence of the three-person constellation of exclusion, rivalry, and
murder—that is to say, there are also pre-genital phases of the Oedi-
pus complex and of superego formation. Thus the early Oedipal con-
figuration is related to the mother’s body and its fantasized contents,
whereby the Oedipal conflict begins already at weaning which makes
the child’s early relation, primarily to the breast, have a big influence
on the Oedipal conflict. These early fantasies had remarkably differ-
ent features from those of the later ‘mature’ Oedipus complex (from
Instinct Theory)—the Oedipal objects were experienced in primitive
form, archaically ‘good’ or ‘bad’, where the infant’s world is largely
split and relations are mainly to part-objects—paranoid anxiety. At
this point there is already ‘a harsh and cruel superego battling against
the infant’s weak ego, overwhelmed by persecution and guilt’ (Etch-
egoyen, 2002: 25). In Klein’s theory the Oedipal triangular situation
emerges from the infant’s interest turning to the father’s penis—the
infant’s unconscious fantasies about the content of their mother’s body,
namely such projective identifications onto that body as the paternal
penis and the ‘internal babies’—which in its turn is a consequence of
resolution of conflict between paranoid anxiety and depressive anxi-
ety. The capacity to enter the depressive position depends on when
the good and bad versions of the object can be recognized for the first
time as being, in reality, the same figure—marking a transition from
the early Oedipus complex to the mature stage and resulting in an
increasing respect for the reality of external objects. Thus the Oedipal
stage involves working through the paranoid-schizoid position to the
depressive position. In other words the development of the depressive
position is strikingly intertwined with the Oedipus complex. Hence
the resolution of the Oedipus complex, marked by the beginning of
the latency period, will depend not only on the working-through of
the pre-genital phases of the Oedipus complex, but mainly on the
quality of the emotional experience of the early relationship with the
mother as well as the resolution of the depressive position.
3.1.3 Wilfred Bion

Bion, as a follower of Klein, extended the classical concept of the
Oedipus complex, naming it ‘the private Oedipus myth’, and giving it
a new meaning as a precursor of knowledge of psychic reality, which
enables the infant to understand his or her relationship to the parental

couple thus allowing them to adapt to reality (Bion, 1977: 45). Hence,
‘the private Oedipus myth’ is the foundation for psychic truth and
knowledge and, it follows, the lack of an inner model of the Oedipal
couple has a negative influence on the infant’s capacity for thinking and
learning from experience, which is a feature of borderline patients.
Generally speaking, both Klein and Bion focus on the importance
of the parental couple (in terms of a complementary pair) as an
organizer of the child’s perception and thinking.
3.2 Identification
Identification is definitely one of the most important concepts in
psychoanalysis, taking a central position in Freud’s work, and being
reviewed many times. Freud (1914, 1917, 1921, 1923, 1927, 1930) con-
sidered identification a crucial operation in which one establishes the
object within oneself. He saw identification as playing a part in many
areas of psychodynamic psychological development, such as in:
• the building of the psychic apparatus—the ego and superego

• the development and resolution of the Oedipus complex
• the object choice—narcissism
• the historical development of humanity and later evolution of the
individual
• group formation—the choice of a leader and the acceptance of a
cultural ideal
• sublimations
• control of aggression
• symptom-formation—ego defences
• empathy and understanding
• learning processes
• creativity—socialization processes
• the mechanism of dream construction
• fantasies and daydreams.
The classical definition of the term ‘identification’ is:
Psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect,

property or attribute of the other and is transformed, wholly or
22 O N L AT E N C Y
partially, after the model the other provides. It is by means of a

series of identifications that the personality is constituted and
specified.
(Laplanche and Pontalis 1973: 205)
As regards the differentiation between ‘primary identification’ and

‘secondary identification’, there is still confusing disagreement
among current psychoanalytical authors, mainly because of the dif-
ferent interpretations put on the notion of ‘primary identification’. In
fact, the different interpretations depend on the different theoretical
concepts adopted regarding understanding the early stages of indi-
vidual existence. As the key point of this essay is to go into the study
of group identity building, its importance in child development at
the middle of latency, its features in cultural pattern formation, and
further understanding of the variability in social adaptation, in this
context we will apply only Freud’s (1923) definition (since it is nec-
essary for the understanding of his group psychology theory) and
Klein’s (1946, 1955) contribution with respect to introjections and
introjective identifications.
‘Primary identification’ was described by Freud as an identifica-
tion which is stabilized in the prehistory of the individual, when
there is still no differentiation between the ego and the external
world, which is ‘a direct and immediate identification and takes
place earlier than any object-cathexis’ (Freud, 1923: 177). The object is
the model of what one would like to be. The ‘primary identification’
appears as a process that is closely bound up with the ‘oral incorpo-
ration’ process (Klein, 1932: 268) and it would also be connected to
primary narcissism. ‘Secondary identification’, in contrast, is aimed
at the reconstruction of the lost object in the ego that seeks not ‘to
be’ but ‘to be the possessor of’ the object. It enables a movement
towards more mature identifications that involve a clear discrimina-
tion between the images of the ego and the object. However, ‘sec-
ondary identification’ is also a defence, since the hostility between
the self and the object is reduced by denying the experiences of sepa-
ration from the object. Nevertheless, ‘secondary identification’ with
parental figures is considered to be part of normal development.
Like Freud, Klein considered identification as a crucial opera-
tion in which one establishes the object within oneself, however she
introduced the concept of ‘projective identification’—the process,
translated into fantasies, by which one imagines oneself put partially

or totally into the inner world of an external object in order to dam-
age, hold, or exert control over that object. Consequently, this mech-
anism enables the subject to deny their actual powerlessness over
the object. By contrast, ‘introjective identification’ is the mechanism
by which a person imagines the external object as being inside him/
her and a part of himself/herself. This is thought to help the devel-
opment of the ego and sense of self.
Before concluding this part, it is important to briefly differen-
tiate the following analytical terms: ‘internalization’, ‘incorpora-
tion’, and ‘introjection’. According to Hartmann and Loewenstein
(1962: 48) ‘internalization’ is the process ‘when the regulations
that have taken place in the interaction with the outside world are
replaced by inner regulations. The development through which
trial activities in the outside world are slowly replaced by thought
processes is an example of what we have in mind.’ Grinberg (1990:
35) asserted that internalization ‘refers to the transfer of an object
(“portion of the external world”) into the interior of the subject
(“integral part of the internal world”)’. In sum, ‘internalization’ is a
process by which objects in the external world acquire permanent
mental representation. Hartmann and Loewenstein (1962) referred
to ‘incorporation’ as a genetic precursor of identification, and Grin-
berg (1990) described it as being a primal pattern equivalent to the
physical act of oral ingestion, which includes sadism oral and canni-
balistic desires and fantasies. Laplanche and Pontalis (1967) pointed
out that there are three meanings in the concept of ‘incorporation’:
first, to gain pleasure in ‘ingesting’ the object; second, to destroy
this object, and, third, to take in some qualities of the object, keep-
ing them inside the self. Sometimes this term is used synonymously
with ‘internalization’ or ‘introjection’, and the confusion with ‘intro-
jection’ arises from the fact that the structural process of introjection
may be accompanied by the fantasy of incorporation. Most impor-
tant to keep in mind is that ‘incorporation’ properly refers only to
a fantasy and never to the process of assimilating something into a
previously existing structure. Finally, ‘introjection’ refers to a proc-
ess by which the functions of an external object are taken over by
its mental representation; by which the relationship with the object
‘out there’ is replaced by one with an imagined object ‘inside’.
‘Introjection’ is preceded by internalization and may or may not be
24 O N L AT E N C Y
accompanied by the fantasy of incorporation and may be followed

by secondary identification.
In our study, the major concern was to look into identity forma-
tion and its implications in forming cultural patterns (acquisition
and transmission); into social adaptation; and also the relation to
the quality of identification with parental figures and family rela-
tionships. To this end, we made use of standardized doll play
assessments—the MacArthur Story Stem Battery (MSSB)—to assess
whether middle latency children differ in their play in the way they
portray the libidinal representations of family relationships as well
as their relationship with their parental objects. The understanding
of the three concepts defined here, therefore, is fundamental for the
interpretation of our results and further discussion.
3.3 Narcissism
Among the classical psychoanalytical concepts, ‘narcissism’ is with-
out doubt a subject of central concern, and one where its meaning
and importance in psychic development are still being much dis-
cussed: the boundary between the importance of healthy narcissism
and the development of a pathological mental organization based
on narcissistic features is not yet clear; a point that Freud (1914)
stressed. Freud presented narcissism as a ‘prism’ where there is a
pathological face, but also, in parallel, a healthy face, necessary for
human development and having great importance for the under-
standing of group psychology. This image of a ‘prism’ has been
accepted by all psychoanalytical authors (for example, Klein, 1927,
1952; Rosenfeld, 1987; Bion, 1991 and others), but, and above all,
‘most of the time’ the image of this prism is used only to reflect the
spectrum of the pathological face of narcissism, whilst the healthy
face is put in the shade.1
Nowadays, the term ‘narcissism’ is so intrinsically connected to
pathological states that attempts to bring out its healthy face might
not be understood. There is, however, no way to understand group
psychology and cultural transmission unless the healthy face of
1
Incidentally, in the same way as it happens with the latency period in the psycho-
analytical literature.
narcissism is considered—it is important to realize this. So, in an

effort to point out the agreement among psychoanalytical authors
with respect to the existence of a healthy face of narcissism, we
provide an overview of Freud’s Classical Theory followed by the
point of view of other psychoanalytical authors.
Classical theory distinguishes between ‘primary narcissism’ and
‘secondary narcissism’. ‘Primary narcissism’ is defined as the love
of self which precedes loving others. It is an early stage in which
the child invests libido in the self. ‘Secondary narcissism’ is defined
as the love of self which results from introjecting and identifying
with an object. It implies that the libido that was invested in the
objects returns to the ego. However, ‘secondary narcissism’ is either
a defensive activity or attitude, since it enables the subject to deny
that they have lost the introjected object. For Freud, secondary nar-
cissism is not only a defensive activity but also a permanent and
necessary structure in humans, since in the topographic point of
view the ego ideal represents a narcissistic formation that is never
abandoned. In Classical Theory, the definition of ‘secondary narcis-
sism’ is basically clear, but ‘primary narcissism’ is not. From 1914 to
1940 the concept of ‘primary narcissism’ was reviewed many times
by Freud and nowadays many psychoanalyst authors have been
giving increased attention to understanding this concept. Take the
case of Ubinha (2004). Ubinha asserted that it is possible to distin-
guish two different theories of ‘primary narcissism’ in Freud’s work:
the first considers it as an evolutionary stage that emerges from the
partial drives anarchic and self-erotic up to the love-object choice,
passing through ego formation, as it was presented in On Narcis-
sism: An Introduction (1914), and the second admits an original ‘pri-
mary narcissism’, that precedes the object existence, paradigmatic
from the pre-natal period, such as was shown in Group Psychology
and the Analysis of the Ego (1921). According to Ubinha, there is an
ambiguity in narcissism in which, on the one hand, the existence
of an ego structure is supposed, enabling one to invest the libido in
oneself, providing self-love, and, on the other, there is a relation to
a state of identification with the totality—a fusion between the self
and the world still at a time when the perception of the two cannot
be discriminated. For Ubinha ‘narcissism’ can be understood as the
erotic interest in the self that can either detain the libido in the self or
project it into an object, in an indiscriminate way, but with the focus
26 O N L AT E N C Y
always being on self-interest and with its undergoing variations in

its manifestation alongside the individual psychological develop-
ment and the historical development of the culture.
Lou Andreas Salomé (1962: 4) had also pointed out the exist-
ence of two different frameworks of ‘primary narcissism’ named
by her ‘dual orientation of narcissism’: one in the sense of wishing
to achieve individuality and the other, quite the opposite, moving
towards fusion—an indiscriminate state. According to her:
[T]he libido must constitute the connecting link between the

desire for individuality and the contrary movement toward
conjugation and fusion. In this dual orientation of narcissism
the relations of the libido would be expressed in our being
rooted in our original state; we remain embedded in it, for all
our development, as plants remain in the earth, despite their
contrary growth toward the light.
For Lou Andreas Salomé ‘primary narcissism’ is the first and reluc-
tantly abandoned position of the libidinal investment, but is not
limited to a single phase of libido, rather being, ‘a part of our self-
love which accompanies all phases. It is not merely a primitive point
of departure of development but remains as a kind of fundamental
continuity in all the subsequent object-cathexes of the libido.’
* * *
Narcissism as a word is quoted in the work of Klein (1927, 1952),
Rosenfeld (1987), Bion (1991), Kohut (1966), and Green (2001);
nonetheless its conceptualization is completely different among
these authors (Barros, 1989). Therefore, aiming to not reduce the
comprehension of the narcissism concept to a conceptual dilution
by making use of such a simple word, and for the purpose of point-
ing out their awareness of the healthy face of narcissism, we sum-
marize further below each author’s conceptualization and explore
some fundamental differences between them.
3.3.1 Melanie Klein

Klein’s (1948) theory asserts the existence of an object relationship from
early infancy (from the birth of the child). As a result, the non-object
relationship, which characterizes the self-erotic state, is not recognized

by Kleinians. Based on the same premise, ‘secondary narcissism’ is
interpreted as a love and a relationship with an internalized object.
Klein distinguishes the ‘narcissistic stage’ from the ‘narcissistic
object relationship’. The ‘narcissistic stage’ is understood as the
withdrawal of the libido from the external world and its investment
in the relationship with a good internalized object, which, to a cer-
tain extent, would be healthy and is passing. The ‘narcissistic object
relationship’, on the contrary, would be pathological, also character-
ized by a permanent internalized object and based on the projective
identification mechanism (Barros, 1989).
3.3.2 Herbert Rosenfeld

Rosenfeld asserts that the ‘narcissistic object relationship’ is in fact
a defence against any recognition of difference between the object
and the self and any further separation. The separation would pro-
voke a feeling of dependence on the admired object, causing anxiety
and stimulating envy. Therefore Rosenfeld defines narcissism as a
defence against envy (Barros, 1989). Nevertheless Rosenfeld (1987:
105), like Klein, also distinguishes a healthy face of narcissism,
naming it ‘narcissitic protection’. ‘Narcissistic protection’ is related
to the building of self-esteem and represents not only a positive face
of self-idealization but is also an essential protector of the self. Thus
it is essential to distinguish the boundary between the positive face
of self-idealization (healthy) and the negative one (pathological).
3.3.3 Wilfred Bion review terminology

Bion joins together the concepts of ‘narcissism’, ‘group psychology’,
and ‘common purpose’. According to him, humans are fundamen-
tally cultural creatures (or political animals) and the social dimen-
sion is inherent to their life and the opposite force is represented
by narcissism. The group phenomenon is produced by the oppo-
sition between these two tendencies and the relationship of each
member of the group with the group is mediated by the common
purpose. The common purpose is the price of belonging to a group
and is characterized by ‘feeling with’ and ‘feeling like’ the others.
The common purpose is based on the wish to be loved by the group.
28 O N L AT E N C Y
In the case that a group does not love a member, and rejects this
member, a narcissistic wound is produced. To put it another way, it
may appear that narcissism plays dialectical roles: on the one hand
as an opposite force against socialism (pathological face), and, on the
other, as a basic feeling connected to self-esteem in the acceptance as
a member of the group (healthy face). Once more in agreement with
previous authors, a healthy face of narcissism is identified as being
fundamental for human development.
3.3.4 Heinz Kohut

Kohut is founder of the Self Psychology School. He offers an original
point of view with respect to the narcissism concept; nonetheless
the clinical approach shows some controversies regarding his con-
cept. According to Kohut, narcissism is a ‘normal “fuel” for struc-
ture building’ (cited in Ornstein, 1991: 190)—all humans are born
as narcissists and gradually their infantile narcissism matures into a
healthy adult narcissism. A narcissistic disorder would be the conse-
quence of some disruption in this process. The healthy person learns
to transform his or her infantile narcissism into adult narcissism
through making use of transmuting internalizations.
3.3.5 André Green

Green introduces the dual conception of, on the one hand, ‘positive
narcissism’ or ‘life narcissism’, and, on the other, ‘negative narcis-
sism’, or ‘death narcissism’. ‘Positive narcissism’ is a factor derived
from the ego whose aim is to resolve the conflict in the relationship
between the ego libido and the object libido. This narcissism has a
tendency to seek unity, whereas negative narcissism has a tendency
to reduce to zero the ego libido investments, since it is a factor
derived from the destructive drives.
3.4 Ego ideal and superego

An understanding of the concepts ‘ego ideal’ and ‘superego’ is funda-
mental not only for the continuity of this work but also for an under-
standing generally of group psychology—above all, the connections
between ‘ego ideal’, ‘secondary narcissim’, and ‘superego’, as they
were accurately pointed out by Freud (1914, 1921, 1923, and 1933).
To this end, first we emphasize the evolution of these concepts—from
ego ideal to the first publication of the term ‘superego’ in Freud’s
work—and, second, provide an up-date of the understanding of
these terms by later psychoanalytical authors, in this way showing
how these concepts have been interpreted after Freud.
3.4.1 In Freud’s work

The term ‘superego’ was introduced into psychoanalytic literature
by Freud in 1923, in The Ego and the Id. However, these conceptual-
ized phenomena were actually studied many years before that. Early
elements of the superego concept can be found in the Fliess corre-
spondence (1887–1902), through references to questions posed by
impaired moral functioning together with a recognition of the role
of identification. In 1913, the essay Totem and Taboo, brought up the
question of the social control of instinct drives, particularly incestu-
ous ones. Moreover, Freud asserted that social prohibitions can find
support from powerful internal forces.
The terms ‘ideal ego’ and ‘ego ideal’ were first explicitly presented
by Freud in 1914 in his paper On Narcissism, where they were used
more or less interchangeably:
This ideal ego is now the target of the self-love which was
enjoyed in childhood by the actual ego. The subject’s narcissism
makes its appearance displaced on this new ideal ego, which
like the infantile ego, finds itself possessed of every perfection
that is of value.
(Freud, 1914: 94)
The introduction of the ‘ego ideal’ concept is a crucial milestone

in psychoanalytical theory. Its repercussions widened beyond just
being the basis for the ego psychoanalytic theory which had influ-
ence on the development of the second topographical scheme in
1923; it also changed the psychological conflict theory; differenti-
ated sublimation from idealization; gave an understanding of the
paranoia mechanism; and gave the basis for the understanding of
group psychology.
30 O N L AT E N C Y
The development of the ideal is understood as being in direct

continuity with the original narcissistic state, and consequently the
ego ideal was considered as the heir to lost narcissism. That is to
say, at this point the existence of Freud’s distinction between the
‘narcissistic ego ideal’ and the ‘institution of conscience’ (Sandler
et al., 1963: 141) is quite clear:
It would not surprise us if we were to find a special psychi-

cal agency which performs the task of seeing that narcissistic
satisfaction from the ego ideal is ensured and which, with this
end in view, constantly watches the actual ego and measures it
by that ideal. If such an agency does exist, we cannot possibly
come upon it as a discovery—we can only recognize it; for we
may reflect that what we call our ‘conscience’ has the required
characteristics.
(Freud, 1914: 95; emphasis in original)
The core of this ‘institution of conscience’ or ‘censoring agency’ was

derived from standards of behaviour set by parental criticisms and
reinforced further by criticism from society.
Freud concluded this essay by pointing out the striking correspond-
ence between the ego ideal and the social ideal or cultural one:
The ego ideal opens up an important avenue for the under-

standing of the group psychology. In addition to its individual
side, this ideal has a social side; it is also the common ideal of a
family, class or nation.
(Freud, 1914: 101)
In 1921, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of Ego, the term ‘ideal
ego’ is abandoned and replaced by that of ‘ego ideal’. At this time, the
original differentiation between the ‘ego ideal’ and the ‘conscience’
(‘critical agency’) that showed in the paper On Narcissism became
blurred: ‘The two were condensed in the notion of the ego ideal
under which conscience was now subsumed’ (Holder, 1982: 251).
It was the first roots of the term ‘superego’ as it would be later
defined in The Ego and the Id (1923a). At this point Freud not only
used the terms ‘ego ideal’ and ‘superego’ interchangeably, but also
developed the structural concept of superego as a separate intrapsy-

chical organization. Thereafter, the superego was understood as a
modification of the ego that replaced the ego ideal, exercising the roles
of self-judgement and censorship—the term ‘ego ideal’ became inte-
grated into the term ‘superego’. It was only in 1933, in New Introductory
Lectures, that another and slight differentiation between the superego
and ego ideal was introduced by Freud. This time, the ‘superego’ was
termed the ‘vehicle of the ego ideal’, and the term ‘ideal’ was con-
nected to the Oedipal parents as ‘ideal figures’ to the child:
is no doubt that this ego ideal is the precipitate of the old picture
of the parents, the expression of admiration for the perfection
which the child then attributed to them.
(Freud, 1933: 65)
The introjected parents therefore take on two different roles in the

superego structure, namely as ideal models (connected to the term
‘ideal’), and as internal self-observers (critical agency). The superego
is considered as a ‘function’ in the ego, however as one that is to a
certain extent independent, following its own ends.
Although the term ‘ego ideal’ became integrated into the term
‘superego’, whatever way Freud used the term ‘ego ideal’ it was
always in the meaning of an agency in the mind that remains and
tries to recover the lost narcissistic perfection of childhood, whereas
the ‘superego’ is defined ‘as the heir to Oedipus complex’ (Freud,
1923: 36).
3.4.2 New interpretations of Freud’s work

The discussion about the discrimination between the three terms
‘ideal ego’, ‘ego ideal’, and ‘superego’ dates back to the 1960s. In
Freud’s work these terms were used more or less successively, at
times interchangeably. However several psychoanalytical authors
have tried to understand and explain the nuances, mainly concern-
ing the discrimination2 between ‘ego ideal’ and ‘superego’, where
2
The meaning of the term ‘discrimination’ in this case is related to having the ability
to differentiate.
32 O N L AT E N C Y
the former is considered either as a descriptive term referring to a

partial function of the superego or as a separate mental structure.
The main question for these authors was whether or not the term
‘ego ideal’ had changed its meaning between 1914 and 1923.
Annie Reich (1954: 218) distinguished the superego as being
the representation of ‘the identifications resulting from the break-
down of the Oedipus complex’ whilst the ego ideal was based on
‘identification with parental figures seen in a glorified light’. She also
put forward the idea that the ‘ego ideal expresses what one desires
to be; the superego, what one ought to be’.
Beres (1958) emphasized that the concept of superego, as it is cur-
rently used, is just an abstraction. According to him, the functions of
the superego are not only closely involved with various ego func-
tions but they also pass through recognizable development phases:
from early and primitive identifications to the later experiences and
stable internalizations culminating in the passing of the Oedipus
complex.
Loewald (1962) considered the terms ‘ideal ego’ and ‘ego ideal’ as
terms for successive stages in the development towards a superego
structure. According to him, the ideal ego is a first moment of this
development that portrays the reoccurrence to a narcissistic origi-
nal state of perfection—a perfect ego based on the primitive iden-
tification with omnipotent parent figures. At this time, there is not
a differentiation between id, ego, and environment, so this perfect
ego could be fantasised in the present but not reached in the future.
However, with time, the ego becomes more differentiated from the
id and this state of perfection of the ego turns gradually into some-
thing that could be wished and reached for—the second moment of
the development—ego ideal. Nevertheless, the distinction between
inside and outside as well as between ego and parental object is
still incomplete. Here a future for the ego is foreseen, but it is not a
future of the ego yet. The ego future needs to be integrated with the
external, and that will be achieved just after the share of the Oedipal
objects is renounced and the external relationship is set up in the ego
as an internal one—at the beginning of the latency period. So the
superego is an inner future of the ego and the last step of a number
of successive stages.
Whereas the ego ideal is essentially and originally a need-satisfying
agency, the superego (or conscience) is essentially a restricting and
prohibiting one. According to Lampl-De Groot (1962), they might

be considered as special ego areas with their own functions, which
will be centred around the parental areas just at the onset of the
latency period. ‘Throughout life the ego ideal remains essentially
an agency of wish-fulfilment. The superego becomes a restrict-
ing agency, necessary for living in a given community’ (Lampl-De
Groot, 1962: 105).
Hartmann and Loewenstein (1962: 61) asserted that ‘the ego ideal
can be considered a rescue operation for narcissism’; however, they
didn’t consider the ‘ego ideal’ as a separate agency from the ‘super-
ego’, but rather as one of the functions of the superego. According
to them, although the idealization of the self and idealization of the
objects occur before the superego is set up, the specific character of
the ego ideal which is part of the superego is different from the ear-
lier idealizations.
Sandler et al. (1963) attempted not only to show the different mean-
ings of the ego ideal concept in Freud’s work between 1914 and 1923,
but also pointed out how the different connotations and meanings to
the term ‘ego’3 in Freud’s writings could contribute to blurring the
understanding of the ego ideal concept as a structure distinct from
ego and the superego. According to Sandler et al. (1963: 151–157), the
concept of ego ideal in Freud’s later usage as identical with superego
included in a blurring way ideal object and ideal self-representations,
which have different shapes—the ideal self-representation is not nec-
essarily a mirror image of the ideal object or introject. He suggested
that the term ‘ego ideal’, in the sense as it was formulated by Freud
in 1914, has its content preserved in the understanding of the crea-
tion of the ideals for the self, called by him ‘self ideal’ or ‘ideal self’,
which should be distinguished from the ‘ego ideal’ as a synonym for
‘superego’ or a function of this. In this way, the ‘ideal self’ would be
connected to ‘self—I would like to be’, while the ‘ego ideal’ (as inte-
grated in the superego) is liinked with ‘self—I ought to be’.
Murray (1964: 471) sees ‘ego ideal’ as ‘the transformation of the
more primitive forms of narcissism into valuable ego patterns’.
3
Until 1923, the term ‘ego’ was used predominantly in the sense of ‘self’ rather than
as a psychic structured defined in terms of function as it is described after 1923 with
the introduction of the structural theory.
34 O N L AT E N C Y
Deutsch (1964) focused on the impasse between theoretical and

clinical approaches of ego ideal. On the one hand the theoretical
approaches describe, ‘an oscillation between introjection and projec-
tion processes, identifications with parents, and the interplay between
ego ideal and superego’ resulting in an ego ideal on a ‘high level of cul-
tural values’. The clinical approach by contrast forces us to ‘dilute the
conceptions of “cultural demands” into levels more in agreement with
the vast majority of the population’. She proposes that the solution lies
in viewing ‘cultural background from the more individual standpoint,
as an influence of personal milieu’ (Deutsch 1964: 512). According to
her, the variety of personalities is not only deteremined by instinct
development and defence mechanisms but also by the formation of
the ego ideal that plays an important role in the clinical approach.
Laufer (1964: 200) defined ‘ego ideal’ as one of the functions of
the superego that ‘contains images and attributes the ego strives to
acquire, in order to re-establish narcissistic equilibrium’. According
to him, the manifestation of ideals can be affected by the identifica-
tions after the Oedipal phase, however the contents of ego ideal as
a part of the superego structure are determined at the ‘internaliza-
tion’ stage and persist unaltered thereafter. Depending on how the
pre-Oedipal and Oedipal idealizations of the self or/and the object
operate, the later participation of ego ideal in social adaptation can
take on either normal or pathological forms.
Hammerman (1965: 353) distinguished ‘superego’ from the ‘ego
ideal’. According to him, the ‘superego proper’, as a psychic struc-
ture developed with the resolution of the Oedipus complex, orig-
inates as a product of the fusion of the mature ego ideal, diverse
superego precursors, and secondary identifications4 within the ego.
And the ‘ego ideal’ as an earliest agency with a more narcissistic
component—‘a wished-for state of perfection to be achieved’—is
developed first through a ‘primitive narcissitic ego ideal’ consisting
of primary identifications,5 which, through growing up, become
4
Secondary Identifications are defined by Hammerman (1965: 336) as ‘adaptive ego
mechanisms through which objects can be relinquished … More precisely, they cor-
respond to the introjection of the qualities related to the interactions between self and
objects representations’.
5
Primary Identifications are defined by Hammerman (1965: 329) as ‘those processes
of psychic incorporation of the objects prior to development of object cathexis and
modified by the fusion with the later modification of the ego and
an increasingly realistic representation of the parent–child interac-
tions. There would therefore be a development in the ego ideal as an
agency until it becomes a component of the superego proper.
Chasseguet-Smirgel (1975) made a distinction between ‘ego ideal’
and ‘superego’. According to her, the ‘ego ideal’ is the heir to pri-
mary narcissism whereas the ‘superego’ is derived from the Oedipus
complex. She also added that primary identification remains
closely connected to the ‘ego ideal’ and secondary identification
with the Oedipus complex and consequently with the formation of
superego.
Hanly (1984: 253) argued that the use made of the terms ‘ego
ideal’ and ‘ideal ego’ is not merely an accidental reversal of words,
but rather there are different meanings for the two terms. For him,
‘ideal ego’ refers to a state of being—‘it is a self-image that is dis-
torted by idealization but it may be experienced as more real than
the ego itself’. It is a positive state, even when this state becomes an
illusion when compared to reality. The ‘ego ideal’, on the other hand,
refers to a state of becoming or, in other words, a perfection to be
achieved: ‘the ego ideal establishes purposes, goals and aims for the
ego activity, and particularly for maturation. The ego ideal holds up
to the ego a destiny that it ought to realize whether or not it can.’
For Blum (1985) the ‘superego’ cannot be be seen just as the heir
to the Oedipus, since it continues to change in function and content
throughout life, and radical transformation, mainly in adolescence,
may be reflected.
Currently the term ‘ego ideal’ is most often linked to the idea
of ‘self-esteem’ building and is also understood in the meaning of
‘self-ideal’ (Sandler et al., 1963). However, it seems that there are two
antagonistic theories with respect to the development of the self. One
views infants at birth as lacking any sense of self but as develop-
ing one by introjection of parental objects (Freud, 1913; Klein, 1932);
whereas the other sees infants as being born with a self-nucleus
that goes through a succession of development stages, with the
environment either facilitating or impeding this process (Fairbairn,
which result in actual alteration of developing ego structure … there occurs whole or
part fusion of the self and object representations with no separation’.
36 O N L AT E N C Y
1952; Winnicott, 1958; Stern, 1985). Whatever the case may be, the
relationship between child, caregiver, and family environment is
equally important and basic to ‘self-esteem’ building. To a great
extent, most authors see the ego ideal as being closely connected to
narcissistic components—‘I would like to be’—whereas the superego
is conceptualized as the heir to the Oedipus complex, and as being,
therefore, much closer to social rules and restrictions that have to be
accepted by the individual—‘I ought to be.’
CHAPTER FOUR
On group psychology and on culture
C
ultural identity building and cultural transmission are intrin-
sically connected to the comprehension of group psychology
and its dynamics, particularly in what way the concepts of
‘ego ideal’, ‘cultural ideal’, ‘narcissism’, and ‘superego’ are related
to one another. This chapter, which discusses these ideas, is there-
fore unquestionably central for this essay. First, we provide some
notes on Freud’s understanding of group psychology, followed by
the comprehension of group psychology in the field of therapeutic
work and culture by later authors.
4.1 Group psychology and culture: Cultural ideal,

ego ideal, narcissism, superego
The main elements of Freud’s contributions to social anthropol-
ogy appeared for the first time in Totem and Taboo (1913). Going into
questions of social control, instinct drives (incest, cannibalism, and
lust for killing), and the use of prohibitions and social taboo in the
achievement of this control, Freud turned to the origin of social and
cultural demands.
37
38 O N L AT E N C Y
In 1921, in Group Psychology and Analysis of Ego, Freud emphasized

the positive valuable aspects of the relationship between the ego and
its ideal—when the features of the ego coincide with the standards of
its ideal, resulting in a feeling of release and triumph. Taking into con-
sideration this feeling as a state of primary narcissism1 in the meaning
of union with the parents, towards fusion—an indiscriminate state—
Freud asserted that in joining a group a subject may give up their ego
ideal, replacing it with a group ideal which is symbolized in a leader,
who not only assimilates all the individual ego ideals (individual’s
idealized qualities) but also becomes the substituted object, since the
leader replaces the parents’ representation. This process is reinforced
by each element of the group through the identification of this state
of primary narcissism union with the leader—the narcissistic feeling
of release and triumph now being connected to belonging to a group
with similar individual idealized qualities.
In our view this process of giving up one’s own ego ideal to be
replaced by a group ideal might be termed ‘cultural ideal’. In this
essay we will look into the question of whether the cultural ideal
has the same weight and role as a leader would have in a group,
in different cultures. To this end, we will also examine the inter-
changeable relation between ego ideal and cultural ideal, passing
through the ‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’ (the new concept
introduced in this essay). Broadly speaking, the meaning of the cul-
tural ideal is more extensive than simply a compilation of beliefs
and traditions to be followed. On the contrary, the cultural ideal
is founded on the ‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’, and hence
has a central role in social human development taking place in the
latency period.
From 1927, the understanding of the interrelations between the
individual and the social/cultural group became the major concern
for the remainder of Freud’s work. In The Future of an Illusion (1927)
the notion of basic privations2 was introduced by Freud. According
to him, basic privations are represented by basic instinctual wishes
1
Pointed out by Ubinha (2004) and Lou Andreas Salomé (1921).
2
Freud pointed out the necessity of discriminating among the terms ‘frustration’ (an
instinct that cannot be satisfied); ‘prohibition’ (the regulation of the frustration); and
‘privation’ (the condition produced by the prohibition).
O N G R O U P P S Y C H O L O G Y A N D O N C U LT U R E 39
that have been prohibited from the beginning of civilization and,

equally, represent the earliest cultural demands in all civilizations.
They not only affect everyone but could also be understood as the
roots of emerging civilization. According to Freud (1927: 10–11),
cannibalism, incest, and lust for killing are the oldest basic instinc-
tual wishes that must be inhibited and repressed. That, in spite
of the prohibition, only cannibalism has been almost universally
proscribed—incestuous wishes can still be detected and killing is
still practised—these instincts nevertheless still portray the ‘first
internalization level of the culture’. According to Freud (1927: 11–12),
all the other instincts are placed as secondary instincts and they are
characterized by prohibitions which do not affect everyone, or, in
other words, are different in different groups and cultures; they por-
tray the ‘second internalization level of the culture’, which charac-
terizes the difference between cultures as well as the existence of
different cultural ideals.
Freud’s view of human nature is that man is naturally anti-social,
rebellious, and has strong sexual and destructive tendencies. The
destructive nature of humans sets a pre-inclination for disaster
when humans must interact with others in order to create a society.
All these features create a terribly hostile society, one which could
implode if it was not regulated and repressed by civilizing forces
and the development of government. At this point, the superego is
referred to as the ‘vehicle of the civilization’ (Freud 1927: 37) and
the responsible entity in the achievement of cultural ideals, hence
the satisfaction provided by the attainment of the cultural ideal is
essentially a narcissistic one.
[T]he satisfaction which the ideal offers to the participants in

the culture is thus of narcissistic nature; it rests on their pride
in what has already been successfully achieved. To make this
satisfaction complete calls for a comparison with other cultures
which have aimed at different achievements and have devel-
oped different ideals … The narcissistic satisfaction provided
by the cultural ideal is also among the forces which are success-
ful in combating the hostility to culture within the culture unit.
(Freud, 1927: 13)
* * *
40 O N L AT E N C Y
Equally importantly, Freud (1927: 7) connected the religious opinion

and belief to human illusion, which, according to him, is derived
from human wishes that need to be fulfilled. Or, to put it another
way, religions, through the use made of their beliefs, play an impor-
tant role for the human being—a role as an external control agency
over some aggressive and acquisitive human drives. These are
regulated in civilization, not by controlling the material, for exam-
ple through redistribution of wealth, but through a move from ‘the
material to the mental’ whereby religions promise rewards for good
behaviour. Freud (1927: 24) viewed the meaning of a belief in God
as a child-like ‘longing for a father’, mainly due to the belief in a
God who is perceived as an idealized father if, at the same time, a
harsh one. Thus there is a close connection between religion and the
Oedipus complex, as religion is the universal obsessional neurosis
of humanity. Like the obsessional neurosis of children, it arises out
of the relation to the father, out of the Oedipus complex. This con-
nection will be interpreted in this work as a human need to keep
some child-like beliefs that continue through all human develop-
ment. In other words the human being is not able to abandon the
earlier libidinal investments in search of the feelings of release and
triumph.3
* * *
In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) Freud pointed out a destruc-
tive tendency in humans that works against civilization, since to
live in a group means to give up libidinal individual instincts. For
this reason, civilization needs to control manifestations of human
aggressiveness while at the same time recompensing people for
their sacrifices. Such difficult work is based on superego develop-
ment and internalization is pointed out as an essential step in its
development. Thus, the superego often makes severe demands on
the individual:
His aggressiveness is introjected, internalized; it is, in point

of fact, sent back to where it came from—that is, it is directed
towards his own ego. There it is taken over by a portion of
3
This argument will be detailed further in Chapter 6.
ego, which sets itself over against the rest of the ego as super-
ego, and which now, in the form of ‘conscience’, is ready to
put into action against the ego the same harsh aggressiveness
that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other, extrane-
ous individuals. The tension between the harsh super-ego and
the ego that is subject to it, is called by us the sense of guilt; it
expresses itself as a need for punishment. Civilization, there-
fore, obtains mastery over the individual’s dangerous desire
for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting
up an agency within him to watch over it like a garrison in a
conquered city.
(Freud, 1930: 123)
Freud also suggested the existence of a collective superego, embod-

ied in powerful leaders or men of great achievements, which oper-
ates on a large scale within a given culture or society. The relation
between the process of civilization and the path of individual
development is one of the most important contributions of this
essay.
In An Outline of Psychoanalysis (1938)—Freud’s last work—the
‘superego’ is described as a special agency within the ego that
develops out of the child’s relationship to parents, and which con-
tinues to exert an influence long after the disciplinary role of the
actual parents has waned (Freud, 1938). The superego adopts a
kind of intermediate position between the id and external world,
becomes the psychic representation of the external world, which
includes conscious and unconscious parents’ attitudes and social
demands, and unites in itself the influences of the present and
the past:
[T]he super-ego … represents more than anything the cultural

past, which a child has, as it were, to repeat as an after-experience
during the few years of his early life … Some portion of the
cultural acquisitions have undoubtedly left a precipitate behind
them in the id; much of what is contributed by the super-ego
will awaken an echo in the id; not a few of a child’s new experi-
ences will be intensified because they are repetitions of some
primeval phylogenetic experience.
42 O N L AT E N C Y
4.2 Group psychology in the field of therapeutic

work and culture
In the field of therapeutic work, Bion was the psychoanalytical
author who contributed most, not only to the understanding of
therapeutic work with groups, but also to creating a new vocabu-
lary. Like Freud, he set the major question: how to make controllable
the irrational and primitive forces in man. Differently from Freud,
however, he did not name them ‘drives’, although Bion assumed
a double aspect in man and mainly focused on man-in-a-group:
the scientific/rational and the primitive/irrational (Gampel, 2001).
According to him, this double aspect is represented by two different
levels of organization in small groups: the first is ‘the work group’,
related to conscious ego, and to reality (able to pursue its aims after
it has analysed its difficulties), and the second is the unconscious
‘basic assumptions’, which paralyze the work group. The latter is
comprised of three basic assumptions: dependence, fight–flight, and
paring coupled with Messianic hope. The three basic assumptions
are nonetheless in agreement with Freud’s psychological groups,
as described in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921),
namely: dependence is the foundation of a church, fight–flight is the
basis of the army, and the couple as the family expresses the erotic
desires and expectations of a child (Anzieu, 2001). Still referring
to therapeutic work, Anzieu suggested that when an unstructured
group is in regression, its elements will keep a kind of relationship
based on fusion, thus the individual instinctual needs are fused with
the idealized group which represents a primitive ego ideal, consid-
ered by Anzieu as the representation of an all-gratifying primary
object—the earliest mother image fantasized by the child (Eizirik,
2001). This group-dynamic observed in therapeutic work—this
movement towards fusion or against it (the individualization)—is
the key point in this essay, and one which we will discuss further
in Chapter 5, connecting it also to cultural ideals and the forming of
cultural identity.
Group formation is a subject that transcends psychology, being
also one of the major concerns of philosophy, in particular for the
existentialists. In illustration, Sartre (1960) asserted that the human
being is already alienated from birth and must continually strug-
gle against alienation, which explains the need for the group—all
members join forces against this common danger. In psychoana-

lytical understanding this means group formation is connected to a
human need to search for the feelings of release and triumph which,
in the group, is replaced by the cultural ideal. Therefore group mas-
sification can be understood as the loss of the individual ego and the
search for an ideal shared by a group ego—cultural ideal (Gampel,
2001).
Kernberg (1989) asserted that in a large group there is a tendency
to project superego functions onto the group as a whole, aiming to
prevent violence while protecting ego identity by making use of a
shared ideology. Here he agrees with Freud. Nonetheless, this level
of regression is the main feature of mass psychology, which reflects
the ideology characteristic of the latency child’s superego (Eizirik,
2001). As was previously pointed out, it is necessary to understand
the mass culture as an appeal which makes use of some cultural
demands in order to achieve its aims. After all, and in agreement
with Freud’s view (Freud, 1925: 37n), since the cultural demands
produce and maintain latency, it can be expected that mass culture
will evoke the latency age ego and superego features in order to
achieve its aims. According to Kernberg, the informal social group
combines the dynamic features of large and small groups in a vari-
able way that is always in mutation. This kind of group forma-
tion begins at the latency period, increases at adolescence (when it
reaches its peak), and persists through adult life (Kernberg, 1980).
Our aim here is to look into why this kind of group formation begins
at latency. What happens at this stage then?
Erdheim (2006: 72–77), through a re-reading of the essay Civi-
lization and Its Discontents, replaced the concept of ‘discontents’
with that of ‘the strange’, pointing out the existence of two differ-
ent culture theories developed by Freud, namely, ‘Freud’s psycho-
genic cultural concept’ and ‘Freud’s libidinous cultural concept’.4
4
Freud’s ‘psychogenic’ cultural concept is based on the antagonism between sexual-
ity and civilization: sexuality must be repressed when sublimation is not possible.
The determinism of early infancy and the family are considered to be the core of
civilization. Culture and society are seen as a reflection of the family and the primary
objects (Erdheim 2007: 53); whereas ‘Freud’s libidinous cultural concept’ derives from
the antagonistic interrelation between civilization and family, thus the family tends
to keep cellular union in contrast to civilization, which tends to offer socialization.
44 O N L AT E N C Y
He analysed the meaning of ‘the strange’ in each one. According

to Erdheim, ‘Freud’s psychogenic cultural concept’ is based on
impulse renunciation and for this reason ‘the strange’ can be felt
as a threat that is either outside or inside of the self regardless of
whether it is familiar or not. Whatever the case may be, ‘the strange’
is experienced as a threat and needs to be avoided. Conversely,
‘Freud’s libidinous cultural concept’ is based on the libido, or, in
other words, is based on the tension between libidinal individual
instincts and repressive civilizing forces seeking realization, which,
in its turn, is more dynamic. According to Erdheim, culture could
just as easily be maintained on the basis of the impulse for realiza-
tion, instead of the impulse of renunciation; in this, ‘the strange’
displays a fundamental role—key role—for cultural transmission,
since dealing with ‘what is the strange’ simultaneously presents a
cultural challenge.
Adolescence is currently considered the central period when this antagonistic inter-
relation is deeply experienced, but, as has been shown in this essay, this experience
begins earlier—in the latency period.
CHAPTER FIVE
Research
Mental Representations of Parents and Family Structure of First

Grade Elementary School Children from Two Countries—Brazil
and Germany: Similarities and Differences
(Franieck, 2005)
The study explored differences between German and Brazilian

latency children (with a mean age of 7.4) in their socio-cultural iden-
tity, emotional organization, and the quality of their identification
with parental figures, using a standardized semi-projective play
assessment—MacArthur Story Stem Battery (MSSB). The main ques-
tions were whether German and Brazilian children differ in the way
that they portray family processes in their play and whether these
differences are paralleled in the attitudes of parents from the two
countries. We hypothesized that there would be cultural differences
in the attitudes of Brazilian children and their parents, compared
with German children and their parents. The possible role of par-
ents as a cultural filter in explaining cross-cultural differences was
also examined. The aim of the design was to recruit children at the
45
46 O N L AT E N C Y
middle of the latency period from similar social backgrounds but

from contrasting cultures.
Until the time that this study was conducted, it was the first in
which the MSSB was used to compare children from two differ-
ent countries. The MSSB appeared to be well suited for this task
because it can be rated reliably, and there was preliminary evidence
that it was sufficiently sensitive to detect cross-cultural variations.
The MSSB offers a way of examining directly how children in dif-
ferent cultural settings represent physical punishment (Robinson
et al., 2000). Furthermore, children’s representations of inter-paren-
tal conflict and violence were studied by Grych et al. (2002) using
story-stems based on the MSSB. They created new story-stems
depicting family conflict, and developed codings to assess the chil-
dren’s responses. The results suggested that witnessing violence
in the family affects the children’s developing beliefs about close
relationships. This could provide a way of understanding the well-
established associations between children’s behaviour problems,
their inner concepts, and inter-parental conflict (Moffitt and Caspi,
1998; Hill, 2002).
5.1 Aims
The aims were:
1. To identify cultural patterns and related mental representations

of children.
2. To assess parents’ expectations of their child as well as the parents’
cultural filter role.
3. To assess possible cultural differences in defensive processes in
the latency period. These may be important in stabilizing the
child internally and in promoting their integration into the social
environment.
4. To understand better important aspects of the child’s identity
development in latency.
5.2 Questions
In order to understand better the processes involved in the building
of the child’s mental representations, and taking into account latency
RESEARCH 47
as not only a period characterized by the acquisitions of new cogni-

tive structures (an adaptation process towards the environment—
assimilation and accommodation) but also as a psychological state
characterized by the ego’s defence mechanisms, superego develop-
ment, and Oedipus complex resolution, we considered it equally
important to assess not only the introjected parents’ roles (through
the MSSB), but also the parents’ participation in the child’s daily
activities and extending that to their expectations of their child, in
particular at this stage. Thus we could characterize crucial aspects
of the environment to which the child needed to adapt himself or
herself. In other words, it seemed necessary to have a close look at
the features of the relationship between the parents and their child
in order to understand the way the child builds mental representa-
tions, and to understand the parents’ actions as cultural transmis-
sion when they filter back (their expectations) to their children—we
called this ‘cultural ideal transmission’. Therefore the questions in
the study are:
• Do Brazilian and German parents report different levels of par-

ticipation in their children’s daily activities?
• How do Brazilian and German parents organize themselves for
the daily care of their child’s school life?
• Do Brazilian and German parents have different expectations
regarding the qualities in their children that are important for
healthy development?
• Do Brazilian and German parents differ in recognition of their
child’s actual emotional maturity?
• Do Brazilian and German children differ in the family processes
that they portray in their play, implying different representations
of family relationships?
• Do the differences between the participation and expectations of
Brazilian and German parents explain differences in their chil-
dren’s representations of family relationships?
5.3 Hypotheses
The underlying theoretical framework of this study was mainly a
psychoanalytic one, although a number of other perspectives have
also been included, such as ‘Genetic Epistemology’, ‘Cultural-Historic
48 O N L AT E N C Y
School’, and ‘Social Psychology’. Having outlined the overarching

questions for the study in the previous section, here we develop more
specific hypotheses based on the psychoanalytic concepts discussed
earlier, and in particular the superego and the ego ideal. In doing this
it is essential to attempt to spell out mechanisms that may be expected
to be common across cultures and ones that may be different.
As has been pointed out previously, the superego is a dynamic
and progressive psychological agency, and, according to Freud, its
stabilization is achieved when the elaboration of the Oedipus com-
plex in the sense of its solution and integration reached a prelimi-
nary end, at the middle of the latency period (6–8 years old), when
the child needs to deal with triadic conflict, due to the introduction
of the father function.1 In Lacan’s (1949) view the introduction of
the father’s symbolic function at this phase represents the break up
of the collusion between child and mother, and the introduction of
the child into a wider world (society), characterized by rules and
the necessity of other relationships. Or in other words: ‘The resolu-
tion of the Oedipal conflict is essential to free intrapsychic energy
to embark on an engagement with life, creativity, relationships,
learning’ (Trowell, 2002: 17).
According to Grinberg (1990: 22): ‘the effects of the Oedipus
Complex in the structuring of the subject are described in terms of
identification. The father and the mother are at the same time the
objects of love and of rivalry. It is probable that this ambivalence is
essential to the construction of any identification.’ That is, the iden-
tity feeling is a product of the continuous interrelation between the
spatial, time-based, and social child links in the relationship with
the parents, who have a role as a cultural transmission agency. This
psychoanalytic developmental concept is fairly similar to other con-
cepts based on different theoretical backgrounds. It is compatible,
for example, with more sociologically oriented role concepts or with
learning theory concepts.
1
It is true that there are different theoretical postulates in psychoanalysis concerning
the exact time when the representation of the role of the father is introduced into
the child’s mind—mainly in comparison with Instinct Theory; the Object Theory
asserts an earlier existence of a primitive Oedipus complex. Still, the authors agree
on the precise time when the integration of the superego into the social development
happens—at the middle of the latency period.
RESEARCH 49
Costa (2001) emphasizes the importance of the couple relation-

ship role in the structure of male and female identity. According to
him, the child needs to understand clearly the differences between
the mother and father roles, as well as knowing the complementary
character of both, in order to achieve his or her sexual identity and
consequently his or her social role in society. In this understand-
ing, the child can come to accept his or her own exclusion from the
parental couple, thus resolving the Oedipus complex, and will be
able to achieve a more social identity. As outlined earlier, the child’s
representation of the father is central to the resolution of the Oedipus
complex, and hence to the development of the superego. However
the role of the father is currently changing, due to the increase in
marital breakdown and single-parent families, and socio-economic
changes and influences, such as mass production, the fragmentation
of labour, and the dramatic change in women’s position in society
(Mitscherlich,1963; Costa, 2001; Obholzer, 2002). These changes may
reduce the significance of fathers not only in society but also in the
child’s mental representation. Concerning these new configurations,
it is important to look at the ways in which those changes intervene
or have implications for the significance of the father in the child’s
mental representations. Some of these changes are found across cul-
tures. For example what is the implication of a child’s representa-
tion of a father absent or weak, and the representation of mother
(Hypothesis 2). Given that as well as—and this was the core of this
study—to look at the different associations around the significance
of mother and father roles across cultures (Hypotheses 1 and 3). The
hypotheses of this study were made taking into account these ques-
tions, along with the differences in the social environment between
the two countries (Hypotheses 4 and 5).
The main hypotheses derived from these considerations are:
1. Fathers in the German sample will be represented as more puni-

tive than fathers in the Brazilian sample.
2. There will be an association between the portrayal of fathers as
weak and mothers as strong and harsh in the narratives of the
children. This will be equally the case in the Brazilian and German
groups.
3. When the parental figures are strong and harsh it will be
expected that the child will display more mistrust towards the
50 O N L AT E N C Y
environment. This will be equally the case in the Brazilian and

German groups.
4. There will be more representations of violence in society resulting
in mistrust towards the environment, which is perceived as more
dangerous/aggressive in the Brazilian sample than in the German
one.
5. If the child is engaged with these themes, then it is expected that
they will have a lower Narrative Coherence.
Summarizing, most of the hypotheses—with the exception of 4

and 5—were built bearing in mind the father role as the core object
in the elaboration of the Oedipus complex at the middle of the
latency period, as well as assuming that most of the stabilization of
the superego would already have been achieved by the children of
our samples.
5.4 Methodology
5.4.1 Samples
Two groups, one from Brazil and the other from Germany, were
recruited in schools in each country. Letters were sent to all par-
ents of first grade children and achieved an overall participation
rate of 65%. The participation was of the parents’ own free will and
included written informed consent. Ethical approval was obtained
from the Medical Faculty of Tübingen University. Each group was
composed of 41 non-clinical children (23 boys and 18 girls) aged 6
to 8 (mean age 7.4) from the first elementary school grade and 41
parental couples.
5.4.2 The approach to measurement in the study

As outlined earlier, a key aim of the study was to examine whether
there are cultural differences in the focus of the ego ideal and if so
what might be the mechanisms of cultural transmission. We are talk-
ing here about ego ideal as described by Sandler et al. (1963: 153):
[T]hose ideals which are held up to the child by his parents or

introjects in the form of the ideal (‘good’ ‘well behaved’) child.
RESEARCH 51
Addressing this is not straightforward, however, because, as

Sandler et al. go on to comment:
This ideal, conveyed to the child by his parents, need not be

identical with the ideals or behaviour of the parents themselves.
It represents the parents’ ideal of a desirable and loved child, as
perceived by the child.
So, it seems, the ideal may be generated by the child, or by the par-
ents, or both, and the implication for measurement is that assess-
ments both of the child’s and the parent’s ideal are needed. The
measure described in the next section, the Family Organization and
Parents’ Expectations Inventory (FOPEI), was designed to assess
parental ideals regarding child behaviours and values, while the
MacArthur Story Stem Battery (MSSB) was used to assess children’s
ideals regarding family relationships.
5.4.3 Assessment of parents

Questionnaire: Family Organization and Parents’ Expectations Inventory—FOPEI
(Franieck and Günter, 2002).
This inventory was developed specially for this study, aiming
to obtain some information about the family dynamics, without
intruding into parents’ feelings of privacy. The tool is divided into
two parts:2
5.4.3.1 First part: Child’s daily activities

This was designed to assess the dynamic relationships between
the members of the family focusing on a particular moment of
the child’s daily activity—the school demands. The main inten-
tion here was to get a picture of family support for the child at
an important socialization phase in the child’s life—beginning of
elementary school. Through this picture it would be possible to
2
An exemplar of the FOPEI is attached, see Appendix 1.
52 O N L AT E N C Y
get a view of the family organization in each culture alongside

their values and attitudes concerning how to deal with a new
developmental step in their child’s life—the wider socialization
process.
It included 11 questions describing a range of activities in the
daily care of the child’s school life (for example, ‘Who wakes the
child?’; ‘Who takes the child to school?’; ‘Who has lunch with the
child?’; ‘Who helps the child do his or her homework?’; ‘Who puts
the child to bed?’). The participation of each member of the family
(mother, father, child by himself/herself, and others) in these activi-
ties was measured. The daily participation was rated by parents as:
never (0); sometimes (1); often (2); and always (3). The percentage
of participation of each element in the family was calculated and
analysed statistically to compare differences between the Brazilian
and the German sample.
5.4.3.2 Second part: Attitudes and feelings

This was designed to assess parents’ reports of their children’s quali-
ties, and their expectations regarding qualities that are desirable in
a child for healthy development. Parents responded to the same list
of qualities first in terms what they viewed as desirable or ideal, and
then in terms of their view of their child. The goal here was, first, to
assess the parents’ expectations of their child and, second, to assess
their report of their child—in psychoanalytic terms that is to say, to
compare the parents’ conscious or unconscious3 child ideal (desira-
ble child) with their real child (the one they really have). And finally,
making use of the assessments of expectation and recognition, to be
able to evaluate their satisfaction level, termed here ‘ratio’. The ratio
enabled us to look into whether there is a gap between expectation
and recognition, that is, when the ‘ratio’ is near 1.0 that means good
agreement between parents’ expectations towards and recognition
of their child.
3
At this point we considered also ‘unconscious’, since the word ‘expectation’ implies
that there is a belief that something will happen, and behind this belief there are
also strong feelings partially driven by unconscious wishes—the desirable child is
equally connected to one’s own desirable child inside of them: their own ego ideal
projected.
RESEARCH 53
The main intention in assessing expectations, recognitions, and

satisfaction was to characterize how the parents’ act as a cultural
transmission agency by filtering back (their expectations) to their
children—cultural ideal transmission. Thus the expression of
the parents’ social ideals and beliefs will be termed here ‘cultural
ideals’.
The questionnaire included questions about the features/capaci-
ties of the child. The first question aimed to assess the parents’
expectation of their child as regards successful development (the
ideal parameter), whereas the second aimed to assess recognition
of their actual child’s behaviour (real parameter), namely: 1) ‘How
deep (important) is each of these attitudes/feelings for a child’s pos-
itive growth and development?’ and 2) ‘How deep is each of these
attitudes/feelings in your child?’
A list of 25 attitudes/feelings were presented to be filled out
by the parents involved in the study.4 The ratings were as follows:
no (0); little (1); enough (2); and a lot (3). The expected attitudes/feel-
ings (Question 1), recognized attitudes/feelings (Question 2), and
the ratio (RM = expected/recognized) which assesses the parents’
satisfaction level were calculated5 and analysed statistically through
factor analyses and mean scores of the two groups were compared
using two sided independent groups t-tests.
5.4.4 Assessment of children

MSSB—MacArthur Story Stem Battery s Narrative Conding Manual:
Tübingen-Basel Version (Günter et al., 2001): Revision and Attachment
Parental Representations (Franieck et al., 2003).
The original MSSB was developed through a basic framework
made from three studies: Emde and Buchsbaum and collaborators
4
See Appendix 1.
5
The values of the ratio are the average of the expected/recognized scores from
each parent, referred to as the ratio mean (RM). A RM < 0.90 means that the parents
can recognize more their actual child’s behaviours regarding attitudes/feelings than
they expect for emotional maturity. If RM ~ 1.0 (ranging from 0.90 < RM < 1.10), it
means that there is good agreement between expectation and recognition. RM > 1.10
means that the parents expect from their children more of the attitudes they regard
as important to emotional maturity than they can recognize in their child’s actual
behaviours.
54 O N L AT E N C Y
(1990), Bretherton and Ridgeway and collaborators (1990), and

Oppenheim (1997). For this cross-cultural study a German version
of the MacArthur Story Stem coding system (Robinson et al., 1992)
was used. This included additional scales reflecting the parental
couple relationship. Details of the additional scales are provided
in two manuals, the Tübingen-Basel Manual (Günter et al., 2000)
and the Revised Parental Representations Manual (Franieck and
Koch, 2003).
5.4.4.1 Definition and aim of MSSB

The MSSB is a video-based semi-projective doll-play technique,
where stories with moral and/or interpersonal conflicts are pre-
sented to the child. Each story stem was created with a particu-
lar theme or dilemma in mind, for which a coherent solution can
readily be found, but leaving it open to the child to find their own
distinctive way of achieving this. The stories are presented by an
examiner, who must demonstrate some playfulness, an ability to
actively engage with the child, and an ability to enforce boundaries
when necessary. The examiner engages the child with an interest-
ing story-beginning, making use of small family dolls as characters
(mum, dad, and two children), until the narrative reaches a ‘climax’.
At this moment, the child is requested by the examiner to show and
tell what happens next. The child is asked to provide a ‘resolution’
in play and words, using the feelings that are aroused in them, as
well as also using their imagination and creativity to tell what hap-
pens next. In this way, the story-stems enables the child to reveal
subjective attitudes, feelings, and emotions. They also provide an
insight into the extent to which the child organizes their feelings
into coherent thoughts through words, and draws on the scripted
inner representations of their world, individual experiences, and
cultural background—thereby assessing the ego activity of thinking
(Sandler, et al., 1962: 133).
5.4.4.2 Content of the MacArthur Story Stem Battery

The story-stems were developed to elicit children’s narratives about
specific themes, although the children were free to add new themes
according to their response and creativity. The original Battery was
RESEARCH 55
constructed by Bretherton, Oppenheim, Buchseaum, Emde, and the

MacArthur Narrative Group (1990), which reflected a wide variety
of interests; several types of family relations (parent–child, marital,
and peer conflict, parent–child attachment, the Oedipal, and other
triads); moral rules (do’s or/and dont’s); moral emotions (guilt,
shame, empathy); and competence (pride). Other investigators who
made use of the MSSB in their study have added some special pur-
pose stems of their own, as well as having created new stems accord-
ing to their specific scientific interests. Günter, Di Gallo, and Stohrer
(2000), in order to be able to make reassessments within a short
period of time, created a parallel set of ten story-stems, which had
slight changes concerning the contents but were designed as closely
as possible to follow the original stories. The goal of the MacArthur
Story Stem Battery Tübingen-Basel-Wien Version is not only to open
up the possibility of developing a longitudinal process of investiga-
tion using this tool twice within a relatively short period of time,
but also to provide an alternative to the MSSB when administered
to children ranging from eight to twelve years (Aurnhammer and
Koch, 2001).
In this study, one warm-up story was used followed by eight
stories6 which were chosen according to their content—aiming to
‘mobilize’ the children in a specific, emotional way—basically with
respect to family and parental representations (in all the stories the
parental couple was presented, except in Lost Dog). The stories were
grouped and sequenced based on the hypothesis that the order of
the stories could have implications for the assessment and child‘s
performance. Since each theme evokes an emotional reaction, it is
important to respect the child’s emotional reactions and give them
time to recover.
The story-stems used are described further in the summary
(Table 1) in the order of their respective presentation.
6
The Story Stem Battery used in this study was composed of some stories from
the Original MSSB Battery (Bretherton, Oppenheim, Buchsnaum, Emde, and the
MacArthur Narrative Group, 1990) and some others from MacArthur Story Stem
Battery Version Tübingen-Basel-Wien (Günter, Di Gallo, and Stohrer, 2000).
56 O N L AT E N C Y
Table 1. MSSB stories used.

Story stem Brief description Participants Issues
Barbecue After the mother’s Two Attachment/

Transgression advice not to get close siblings, parental
story-stems to the fire, the child mother, Sympathy
tries to get a sausage father versus
for him/herself to eat authority
and burns him/herself
Lost Keys The mother accuses Mother, Child response

Emotional the father of having father, and to parental
conflict the lost keys, and an one child conflict
story-stems argument ensues
Gift for Mum The child, who has Child, Does the child
and Dad made a beautiful mother, favour the
Emotional drawing at his or her father same sex or
conflict school, shows it to the opposite sex
story-stems parents on coming parent? How
home. The interviewer does child deal
asks who the child with triadic
gives the picture to: conflict?
mum or dad
Monster in The child is playing Child, Appendix/

the Dark alone in his or her mother, parental
Attachment/ bedroom in the father sympathy
Emotional evening, while the versus
conflict parents are in the authority
story-stems living room, when Parents’
suddenly the lights go response to
out and he/she hears child anxieties
a noise. The child
becomes scared and
runs to the parents
asking for help
(continued)
RESEARCH 57
Table 1. (continued )
Injured Child The child is wearing its Two Community,

Emotional foot in plaster. It is siblings, exclusion,
conflict story- Sunday and the mother, physical injury
stems parents suggest and father
making an outing and
ask the children what
they would like to do.
The brother/sister
answers that he/she
wants to ride a bike (in
summer) or ski (in
winter)
Lost Dog Part I—When going Child, Concern or

Attachment outside to play, a child mother, sadness over a
story-stems discovers the family and dog lost animal,
dog has gone. (in Part II) joyful, angry,
Part II—The dog or avoidant
returns reunion
response
Departure The parents go on an Mother, Separation

Attachment overnight trip while father, two anxiety
story-stems the grandmother siblings,
baby-sits and
grandmother
Reunion The parents return Mother, Reunion

Attachment from their trip father, two quality
story-stems siblings,
and
grandmother
5.4.4.3 Directions for administering the MacArthur

Story Stem Battery
Rapport: It is very important that the examiner, before starting the
application of this tool, establishes a good rapport with the child
through playful interaction. Proper training of the examiner is
crucial.
58 O N L AT E N C Y
Material: Doll families are used. The precise appearance of the

family figure is not important; however it is absolutely necessary
that the characters are able to stand up and that each character’s
identity in the family is well described: mother, father, grandmother,
siblings (two children), additional children (to serve as friends), and
the family dog. It is also important to follow the layout of the props
and positioning/orientation of the characters recommended in the
manual.
Special attention needs to be paid to the position of the camera in
relation to the child and the examiner. It needs to be close enough so
that the detail of the play can be seen, but also wide enough so that
the gestures of the child can be observed. Good sound is essential, as
the rating often depends on the detail of what the child says.
Warm-up story: The task is carried out at a table with the child and
examiner sitting at an angle. To begin, the examiner introduces and
names the family members one by one. Although this story is close
to the other stories of the Stem Battery, it is not considered part of
it. The warm-up story content does not have any moral or interper-
sonal conflict, but rather can be characterized as a descriptive story
that introduces both the family characters to the child and the nar-
rative setting, thus providing an opportunity to convey to the child
what is expected from them throughout the following stories.
5.4.4.4 Coding system

There are several scoring systems for the MacArthur Story Stem
Battery, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, as reviewed
by Bretherton and Oppenheim (2003). The original MSSB Coding
System was developed by Robinson and colleagues (1992). Robin-
son created a list of common themes related to the issues probed by
various stems, intended to serve as a mapping or survey function for
scoring each of the children’s story-stem responses. The rating man-
ual includes content themes, relationship themes, and performance
feature themes (specific affects and narrative coherence). Some of
these are expressed in an ordinal conception but most of the themes
are rated in a dichotomized way. Each story-stem response is rated
in terms of the presence or absence of the content themes, relation-
ship themes, and performance features. Each item is rated no more
than once per story. Item codes are then added over the story set of
RESEARCH 59
eight stories (in this study) and then grouped together into scales. A
German version of the narrative-coding manual, Narrative-Coding
Manual of the MacArthur Story Stem Battery: Tübingen-Basel-Wien
Version, was developed by Günter et al. (2000) adapting the instru-
ment for the assessment of elementary school children. This cross-
cultural study used the adapted version Tübingen-Basel Manual
(Günter et al., 2000)—Revision and Attachment Parental Represen-
tations (Franieck and Koch, 2003). Franieck and Koch (2003) devel-
oped new ratings about parents’ representations as well as some
adaptation on the item–object relationship, which were included
in the MacArthur Story Stem Battery’s Narrative Coding Manual:
Tübingen-Basel Version as an attachment.
The Original Narrative Coding Manual Tübingen-Basel Version
(Günter et al., 2000) contains 58 reliable items divided into content
items, narrative emotional codes, and specific affects/behaviour
codes. After the revision and with the Parental Representations
Attachment (Franieck and Koch, 2003) 65 more items—such as the
parents’ representation (mother–child interaction, father–child inter-
action, marital interaction, parents/child characteristics), as well as
items for specific story-stems (content codes for parents’ conflict
story-stem and content codes for separation/reunion story-stems)—
were included in the Narrative Coding Manual Tübingen-Basel Ver-
sion. In sum, there were 123 coding items in the Narrative Coding
Manual.
5.4.4.5 Reliability of coders

The coder’s training must be done before the researcher codes the
material. This training comprises a reading and studying of the Cod-
ing Manual, which is related to the coding answer sheet. Observing
the children’s narrative examples, which were video-taped, as well
as the several different narrative styles, the researcher (coder) was
able to learn how to use the Coding Manual correctly. Following
this, each coder must code 15–20 children’s narratives independently
in order to attain reliability. In this study, 19 children’s narratives
from the German sample were coded independently by Franieck
and Delatrée (Franieck, 2005) in order to assess inter-rater reliabil-
ity. In this study, the inter-rater reliability proved to be good with
the majority of intraclass correlation coefficients greater than 0.75.
60 O N L AT E N C Y
Due to the cross-cultural features of this study, such as the neces-

sity to work with samples in Brazil and in Germany, the necessity
to speak and understand both languages (Portuguese and German),
and aiming to keep the same standard procedure, the 82 children’s
narratives in this study were administered and coded by Franieck.
5.4.4.6 The scales

Robinson and co-workers (1992) created some MSSB scales, aiming
to organize the contents themes into domains. Some of these scales
were revised by Robinson et al. (2000). Over the last few years other
investigators have developed new scales; for example, Günter et al.
(2004) developed three new scales to assess the mental representa-
tion of children who underwent bone marrow transplant, although
here only one of his scales is presented. In this study eight scales
were used which were partly drawn from literature and partly
newly constructed (Franieck, 2005). All the scales have good internal
reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha).
I. Social Competence (SC) (α = 0.70)

II. Poor Internal Control (PIC) (α = 0.73)
III. Emotional Coherence Adaptation Capacity (EA) (α = 0.69)
IV. Narrative Coherence (NC) (one item)
V. Moral Themes (MT) (α = 0.77)
VI. Positive Representation of Parents (PRP) (α = 0.79)
VII. Negative Representation of Parents (NRP) (α = 0.74)
VIII. Expression of mistrust towards the environment (α = 0.72)
5.4.5 Work environment

5.4.5.1 Contact with the schools to build the groups
For this study, the Brazilian sample was comprised of children from
three different private Brazilian schools whilst the German sample
contained children from four different German schools.
5.4.5.2 Procedure with the parents

An introductory letter was sent to the parents and immediately after-
wards face-to-face contact was made, where the parents’ questions
RESEARCH 61
were addressed and written consent obtained. Parents were then

given the FOPEI, which was completed by parents at home and then
returned at their child’s play-session.
5.4.5.3 Procedure with the children—setting

Children were assessed in school during school hours. The play-
session was done only with the examiner and the child in an empty
classroom. Each play-session was video-taped and took between 30
and 60 minutes, depending on the length of the child’s responses.
5.5 Statistical analyses

5.5.1 Categorical variables
Categorical variables were displayed in contingency tables and ana-
lysed using Chi-square Tests and Fisher’s Exact Tests where there
were sparse cells.
5.5.2 Continuous variables

Parametric tests were used where distributions were not skewed.
Agreement between raters was assessed using intraclass correla-
tion coefficients (ICC). FOPEI and MSSB varaibles were subjected to
factor analysis and factors were selected where the Eigenvalue was
greater than one. After selection of factors they were subjected to a
varimax orthogonal rotation. Factor scores generated by the factor
analyses were used in independent groups t-tests, and multiple lin-
ear regression analyses. Non-parametric tests were used for varia-
bles that were skewed. The significance level was set at 5% (p < 0.05)
for all statistical analyses.
5.6 Results
5.6.1 Factor analysis of FOPEI variables
Factor analysis of expected attitudes items of the FOPEI was car-
ried out to generate variables reflecting parental ideals regarding
child behaviours and values (Sandler 1963; Manzano, 1999). Two
factors were identified with Eigenvalues greater than one, which
62 O N L AT E N C Y
we termed ‘Competent-Self’ and ‘Self-Assertion and Individuality’.

The Competent-Self factor included a broad set of 14 items reflect-
ing both individual qualities and social competence. The Self-asser-
tion and Individuality scale had 6 items reflecting self-interest and
assertiveness.
Factor analysis of the parents’ reports of their child’s actual char-
acteristics yielded two factors which we termed ‘Daring Self’ and
‘Social Leader Self’. The Daring Self factor included 7 items reflecting
an active approach towards the environment, based on individual
qualities, while the Social Leader Self included 7 items that also sug-
gested an active approach towards the environment, with an orien-
tation towards the group and aiming to promote social adaptation.
Factor analysis of the ratio of parents’ expectations to their per-
ceptions of their children yielded one factor, termed ‘Structural-Self’,
with 9 items reflecting self-assurance, self-help, and trust.
5.6.2 Factor analysis of MSSB variables

Factor analyses yielded four factors with Eigenvalues greater than
one. The first, that we termed ‘representation of threat and anxi-
ety’ had 19 items, many of which reflected a portrayal of danger or
anxiety in the stories. The second, ‘narrative competence and social
empathy’ comprised 14 items, indicative of a coherent or elabo-
rated story, together with a portrayal of affection and compliance.
The third, ‘kind parents’, with 17 items, reflected affectionate and
supportive behaviours shown by parents towards children, and the
fourth, ‘weak parents’, had 6 items portraying parents as lacking
authority. Two further variables were included in analyses, ‘narra-
tive coherence’ and ‘mistrust of the environment’.
5.6.3 The existence of two different cultural patterns

The findings indicate that Brazilian and German parents display dif-
ferent roles towards their children (through their family organiza-
tion), besides having different expectations and values concerning
the important emotional features for a child’s positive growth and
development. Similarily, differences were identified in the way in
which Brazilian and German children portrayed their perception of
their family and showed their pro-social representations in the play
RESEARCH 63
narratives. Despite the different perspectives of the tools, the FOPEI

(questionnaire) and MSSB (play narrative technique), the findings
from both were in close accordance with one another and may be
best understood as an expression of two different cultural patterns
or models, in which each one of the two aforesaid cultures is driven
by different models of emotional organization: an ‘individual com-
petence model’ and a ‘group model’, or ‘family idealization model’.
In the ‘Individual Competence Model’, individuality, self-
sufficiency, self-esteem, and competence are the most important
characteristics, and the achievement of individuality is at the core—
this appears to be more characteristic of the German parents and
their children.
In the ‘Group Model’ or ‘Family Idealization Model’, community
spirit, solidarity, social competence, social empathy/help, and fam-
ily union were the most important characteristics and the identifi-
cation with the family/group followed by the wish to belong to a
group was at the core—this appears to be the model internalized by
Brazilian parents and their children.
This assertion was supported by the Daring Self analyses.
5.6.3.1 Daring self

As described earlier Daring Self (DS) was a factor derived from the
parental questionnaire, the FOPEI. It was entered as one of the explan-
atory variables in the Multiple Linear Regression Analyses to MSSB
Factors7 and, as far as the results showed, the variable DS had differ-
ent implications for the MSSB Factors in each sample. The presence of
the variable DS brought about an increase in the scores for Narrative
Coherence and Social Empathy (R² = 15.29%, p < 0.014) for the Brazilian
sample; for the German one, however, it explained higher scores for
Representation of Threat and Anxiety (R² = 10.26%, p < 0.010). Con-
sequently, since in the Multiple Linear Regression Analyses this vari-
able (DS) could be identified to produce different effects in the mental
representation of the children (each group with its respective repre-
sentations), the assertion regarding the existence of different cultural
patterns between the samples was strongly supported.
7
Appendix 4 (Table 8).
64 O N L AT E N C Y
5.6.3.2 Descriptive and comparative analyses

5.6.3.2.1 MacArthur Story Stem Battery—MSSB
The results showed that there were no group differences in mean
scores8 for capacity and emotional regulation, behavioural distur-
bance, negative representations of parents,9 and narrative coherence
(Hypothesis 5 refuted) in the narratives of the children. However,
Brazilian children had higher mean scores than German children
in the MSSB on scales and extracted factors,10 reflecting pro-social
behaviours (p = 0.028), and idealization of the family (p = 0.011)
(Question 5). Another important difference between the two groups
was a highly significant cultural difference in the avoidance of con-
flict. The children from Brazil showed significantly higher levels of
avoidance. In the Brazilian sample, however, this contrast did not
result directly in a higher level of anxiety, but it could be shown that
this was due to an expression of mistrust in a much more violent
environment (p = 0.001) (Hypothesis 4 not refuted).
5.6.3.2.2 Questionnaire: Family Organization/Parents

Expectations Inventory—FOPEI
Questionnaire Part I11—The most important finding in the assessment
of the parents’ attitudes concerned the family structure in child daily
activities. Whereas in Brazil the parents organized the care for the
child by making use of the support and help offered from others,
for example, maid/siblings of the child/grandparents (p = 0.002)
in order not to leave their child alone by her/himself, in Germany
they organized the care for the child through developing the child’s
individuality, independence, and self-responsibility (p = 0.001)
(Questions 1 and 2).
8
9
In some way, the result for the Negative Parents Representation would be expected
in both groups, considering the features of the latency period. As was previously
pointed out, at the beginning of the latency period, anxiety vicissitudes are lessened
as the relationship between the child and his/her parents becomes calmer. This is
thought to result from an integration of the child’s mental representation of the par-
ents with his/her experience of their real parents.
10
11
RESEARCH 65
Questionnaire Part II12—The extracted Factors showed two types

of expected behaviours from the parents towards their children.
Brazilian parents reported higher expectations regarding pro-social
actions and supportive attitudes/feelings of their children (p < 0.001)
whilst German parents indicated that they valued individual actions
and independence more highly compared to the Brazilian parents
(p < 0.001) (Questions 3 and 4). A higher level of dissatisfaction
regarding the child’s emotional maturity in the Brazilian parents’
group (RM = 1.236) was observed,13 which, in psychoanalytic terms,
could be interpreted as the Brazilian children not having been able
to fulfil their parents’ child ideal—to satisfy their parents’ narcis-
sistic will (Freud, 1914)—to satisfy the parents’ idealized object that
is projected into the child (Klein, 1949; Manzano, 1999). Despite this
level of dissatisfaction, the descriptive and comparative results of
the children’s assessments in both groups matched the descriptive
and comparative results of parents’ assessments in both groups
equally. The results showed that children in Brazil—according to
their parents’ perception—organized themselves according to a
‘Group/Family Idealization Model’ and had a more positive view
of family life than German children, who gave more emphasis to an
‘individual competence model’.
5.6.3.3 Multiple linear regression analyses

We made use of Multiple Linear Regression Analyses for the purpose
of confirming or refuting Hypotheses 1 to 3 of the original study
(Franieck, 2005). It was also our aim to understand better whether the
parents’ views intervened or had implications for the child’s men-
tal representations, as well as whether the parents’ expectations/
recognitions intervened or had implications for family organization.
Interestingly, the results of the Multiple Linear Regression Analy-
ses for the hypotheses14 were complementary to one another and
equally supportive of the assertion of the existence of two different
cultural models—despite their confirmations or refutations.
12
Appendix 3 (Tables 5 and 6).
13
14
66 O N L AT E N C Y
In all Multiple Linear Regression Analyses for the hypoth-

eses the findings indicated personal features—achievement of
individuality—appearing as an important variable in the German
group whereas relationship—identification with the family/group—
appeared as one of the most important features in the Brazilian
group.15 Furthermore, they also brought up the existence of different
cultural patterns in the quality of the relationship that was estab-
lished between the parents and their child in the two groups, which
could be well illustrated by what triggered the child’s mistrust16
(Hypothesis 3). Although this hypothesis was supported equally
in both groups, their features were distinct: in the Brazilian group
the idealization of the interaction with the parents (R² = 35.98%,
p = 0.001) was the main variable or characteristic causing the child’s
mistrust. We interpreted this to be an expression of the building of
a ‘protective bubble’ by the idealized family, leading, in contrast, to
a fundamental mistrust in the social environment (and supposedly
vice versa); in the German group the negative interaction with the
parents (R² = 27.77%, p = 0.001) was the main variable and character-
istic causing the mistrust followed by personal failure (child lower
power/ineffective, R² = 14.09%, p = 0011).
With reference to the results of the Multiple Linear Regression
Analyses for the MSSB and for family organization the findings
also showed the existence of two different cultural models, besides
detailed features in the quality of the relationship that was estab-
lished between the parents and their child in the two groups (or
models), namely, differences in the mother role between the two
groups and in the cultural transmission and its influence on the
child’s mental representation.
5.6.4 The differences in the mother role between the groups

The Multiple Linear Analyses Regression for the family organiza-
tion17 reinforced the existence of two different cultural models (cul-
tural ideals) by very different results in the two groups. Whereas
15
16
17
RESEARCH 67
in the Brazilian group there were no variables selected at p < 0.005,

in the German group the Social Leader Self (SLS) appeared as the
unique explanatory variable that not only intervened but also had
‘reverse’ implications for the German family/group organization,
in particular in the percentage of mother’s participation (PERCMO)
and in the percentage of child’s participation (PERCCH).
The Social Leader Self (SLS) was a factor from FOPEI18 (p < 0.001,
α = 0.72) that became one of the explanatory variables in the Multi-
ple Linear Regression Analyses for the family organization. On the
one hand, the inverted joint relation between PERCMO and SLS
(R² = 23.39%, p < 0.002) illustrated that the success in the German
child’s achievement of a more social behaviour was closely con-
nected to a decrease of the German mothers’ participation in the
German family organization; on the other, the joint relation between
PERCCH and SLS (R² = 14.79%, p < 0.016) illustrated that the decrease
in the German mothers’ participation in the family organization was
replaced by an increase in the child’s participation and consequently
in the child’s independence achievement. Thereby, to a great extent,
the findings showed the role of the mother in the German group
as being the core object in providing crucial support to the cultural
adaptation of the child—to the environment that s/he needed to
deal with—and in maintaining the German parents’ cultural ideal of
placing higher value on more independent actions and on successful
individual performance of their child. Thus the mothers’ role at the
latency period in the German group would be connected to a regula-
tory object in the child’s achievement of German cultural patterns.
Drawing on psychoanalytic understanding, and making a connec-
tion between this outcome and features of the Oedipus complex
resolution, we can interpret the decrease in mothers’ participation
as a real break in the dyadic relationship between mother and child
in the German group.
In complete contrast, this kind of joint relation did not appear
in the Multiple Analyses Regressions on the percentage of Family
Participation in Child Daily Activities in the Brazilian group, due
to the lack of variables selected at p > 0.005. A possible reason for
this difference could be found in the roles of the family members in
18
68 O N L AT E N C Y
Brazil that did not seem to be so distinct, since the role of the fam-
ily/group prevailed over the individual roles (of mother and father
respectively).
In conclusion, whereas in the German group the cultural ideal
remained the wish to achieve individuality, in the Brazilian group
identification with the family/group followed by the wish to belong
to a group is the core of their cultural ideal.
5.6.5 Cultural transmission

The results of the Multiple Linear Analyses Regression for the MSSB
Factors19 equally showed the existence of two different cultural
models. Basically the explanatory variables emerged in two types of
groups, characterized exclusively by one of the samples, namely:
1. Successful/Ideal Group represented in the Brazilian group. They

were based on variables that showed higher parental expecta-
tions regarding pro-social actions and group attitudes/feelings
of their children. In other words, emphasized were the variables
that could help to achieve Brazilian parents’ ideal—identification
with the family/group followed by the wish to belong to a
group.
2. Failed Group shown by the German sample: these were based on
variables that showed inverse effects as regarded the German
parents’ higher valuation of more individual actions and
successful individual performance of their child. In other words,
the results highlighted the variables which could possibly retard
the achievement of the German parents’ ideal—the achievement
of individuality.
Most important in our empirical findings was how they were able
to illustrate the process of cultural transmission. Again in the Mul-
tiple Linear Regression Analyses we found very interesting results
for the Narrative Coherence:20 in the German group there were no
variables selected at p < 0.005. In contrast, in the Brazilian group, the
19
20
RESEARCH 69
joint relation between Narrative Coherence (NC) and ‘Percentage

of the participation of others in child daily activities’, PERCOTH
(R² = 26.25%, p = 0.003), showed how the Brazilian parents’ attitudes
and their wider family organization had repercussions in the Bra-
zilian children’s mental representation. To use psychoanalytic ter-
minology, this result illustrated clearly the child’s internalization
process of the ‘ideal of his/her ideal object’ (parents’ patterns and
cultural ideals). Or, in other words, the ideal of Brazilian parents in
offering a successful process of development and individualization
to their child (as they believed) by organizing the family life in order
to not leave their child without parental support and, if necessary,
replacing it with support and help from others (for example, a maid,
siblings, and/or grandparents) if they needed to be absent, was
internalized. The child’s narrative coherence capacity was strongly
influenced by reported roles (in the parents’ assessment) of each
family member in the child’s daily activities, in this case closely con-
nected to the participation of others in those activities.
In the same way, the Multiple Regression Analysis for Kind Par-
ents (MSSB Factor) reinforced and equally illustrated this process
of cultural transmission. In the Brazilian group the joint inverted
relation between Kind Parents (KP) and ‘Percentage of the participa-
tion of the child by him/herself in child daily activities’, PERCCH
(R² = 12.25%, p = 0.005), suggested how the children in the Brazilian
group internalized well and introjected their ‘ideal objects’ as also
the ‘ideal of their objects’. As was reported previously, for the Brazil-
ian parents the model of ‘good’ parents was characterized by par-
ents who do not leave their child alone, by her/himself, when they
have to be absent. The Brazilian parents, on their side, stressed very
much the family/group organization as well as the supportive rela-
tionship among the members of the group, offering a model of ideal
parents and of an ideal family group. They thus strived to give all
the support that their child might need. However, acting in this way
they also contributed to an increase in the idealized introjection—
idealization of the ‘ideal objects’, which, on the other hand, could
become persecutory, as was illustrated in what triggered the child’s
mistrust21 (Hypothesis 3):
21
70 O N L AT E N C Y
The ‘unduly lenient and indulgent father’ is the cause of

children’s forming an over-severe super-ego, because under the
impression of the love that they receive, they have no other outlet
for their aggressiveness but turn it inwards … Apart from a consti-
tutional factor which may be supposed to be present, it can be said,
therefore, that the severe conscience arises from the joint opera-
tion of two factors: the frustration of the instinct, which unleashes
aggressiveness, and the experience of being loved, which turns the
aggressiveness inwards and hands it over to the super-ego. (Freud,
1930: 130n).
This assertion regarding the effect of high idealization upon the
child’s mental representation was also supported in the Brazilian
group (and only in that group) by the joint inverted relation between
Kind Parents (KP) and Competent Self (CS) (R² = 12.32%, p = 0.020).
We understood this finding as a hint, how the high expectations the
Brazilian parents had towards their child could have been inter-
nalized by the Brazilian child as a harsh demand. According to a
psychoanalytic understanding, this result beautifully exemplified
the interchangeable relation between the child’s ego and the rep-
resentation of the idealized object, showing the repercussions from
a demanding parent’s ideal of a desirable and loved child in the
quality of internalization and introjection of the parents as an ideal
object into the child’s representational world. This specific kind of
joint relation did not appear in the Multiple Analyses Regression
for Kind Parents (MSSB Factor) in the German group; there were no
variables selected at p < 0.005.
5.6.6 Examination of hypotheses

Regarding the confirmation or refutation of the hypotheses, the
results from the Descriptive and Comparative Analyses and Multi-
ple Linear Regression Analyses were:
Hypothesis 1—not supported equally in the Brazilian group and

the German one
the German one
Hypothesis 3—supported equally in the Brazilian group and the
German one
RESEARCH 71
Hypothesis 4—supported equally in the Brazilian group and the

German one
the German one
5.7 Conclusion
The hypothesis that there are two different cultural patterns was
supported and reinforced by the results of our study. Not only a
variable—Daring Self—produced different effects on the mental
representation of the children in each of the two samples, but the
results also suggested that the children were, in psychoanalytic
terminolgy, able to assimilate (cognitive process) their parents’
expectations/‘ideals’, portraying them in their play. Thus the chil-
dren’s play assessments could be seen as a key opening the door
to broadening our understanding of the parents’ role as a cultural
transmission agency in the child’s development. Robinson et al.
(2000) has previously discussed the need to examine how children
in different cultural settings represent their social and cultural prac-
tices. The study reported here detected cross-cultural variations in
the children’s mental representations in which the Brazilian and
German groups differed from each other.
Other cross-cultural studies had already been able to show how
the Brazilians had internalized the in-group norms so that conform-
ity to the in-group appeared enjoyable to them (Bontempo et al.,
1990). The best predictors of identification with in-group norms
were ‘belonging’, ‘tradition’, ‘emotion’, ‘power’, ‘social order’,
‘affectivity’, and ‘privacy values’ (Gouveia et al., 2002). These stud-
ies were in good accordance with our results, not only with respect
to the more or less conscious expectations of the Brazilian parents—
the importance of pro-social adaptation (COMPETENT-SELF)—
but also with respect to the mental representations of the Brazilian
children expressed through the MSSB scales: ‘Social Competence’,
‘Emotional Coherence and Adaptation Capacity’, ‘Moral Themes’,
and the MSSB factor: ‘Narrative Competence and Social Empathy’,
which indicated the absorption and the conformity of the in-group
norms. By contrast, the results from the German group indicated the
absorption of self-independence behaviour patterns, and according
to our empirical results (Table 10) the relationship between mother
72 O N L AT E N C Y
and child had an important role in this transmission in the German

sample. The German cultural ideal, which is different from the
Brazilian one, required more performance and individualization
from the child (Parin, 1990). The emphasis on the German child’s
performance (personal feature) and individualization could be well
assessed in our study through the German parents’ attitudes/feel-
ings and expectations—Factor ‘Self-Assertion and Individuality’—
and through the regression analyses of the percentage of family
participation in child daily activities, which expressed more per-
sonal competence and power.
In conclusion, the cultural pattern in Brazil is rather distinct from
that in Germany. Whilst the former is based on the family/group
idealization model—identification with the family/group followed
by the wish to belong to a group—the latter is based on the individ-
ual competence model—achievement of individuality. In addition,
we could show through the assessment of the child’s inner world
(mental representations) and the parents’ conscious/’unconscious’
expectations, that children identify with and respond to the respec-
tive models in the relationship with their parents.
CHAPTER SIX
Discussion
6.1 Answering the questions

The empirical data of this study reveals new aspects for the under-
standing of identity building in the transitional period of middle
latency where the parents display a crucial role as a cultural trans-
mission agency. In this process relevant questions were brought up
(see the Introduction), mainly as regards the interfaces between cul-
tural identity building—group identity—and individual identity,
which includes the integration of individual psychological events,1
cultural ideal,2 and narcissistic impulse reminiscence.3 Before we
look into these questions in detail, it is essential to distinguish four
central points.
First, it must be kept in mind that all of the discussion here is based
on empirical data from non-clinical samples, and thus the core focus
adopted is on cultural identity building and not based on any clinical
1
In particular the Oedipus complex resolution, libidinal impulses, ego formation,
identification process, superego formation, and ego ideal.
2
In the meaning of an agency that replaces the ego ideal.
3
The new concept introduced in this essay.
73
74 O N L AT E N C Y
approach—despite the awareness of the limitation to the application

of the theoretical approach (Deutsch, 1964). We defend the idea that
individual human psychology cannot be separated from group psy-
chology, not only because the mind is needed to establish relation-
ships with objects, but also because the individual’s relationship to
the object is an essential part of the mind itself (Caper, 2001):
[T]he psychology of the groups is the oldest human psychol-

ogy; what we have isolated as individual human psychology, by
neglecting all traces of group, has only since come into promi-
nence out of the old group psychology, by a process which may
still, perhaps, be described as incomplete.
(Freud, 1921: 123)
Second, despite the existence of two different cultural patterns, our

data4 showed that children from both cultures are well adapted
socially. To a great extent, the difference between the cultural patterns
could be understood as an attempt to find what each culture esteems
as the best way to keep a group together, through the presentation of
what will be termed here ‘cultural ideal’. Each culture values certain
qualities and the sharing of these values binds the group together.
We noted how the values differ between the two cultures and how
what we have termed a ‘cultural ideal’ acts to maintain the cohesion
of the group. This means that, for this discussion, no supremacy of
either culture over the other can be asserted, and neither can the
cultural patterns be compared in terms of which might be ‘better’.
What is discussed here is that each group—Brazilian and German—
has found a different way of expressing its own cultural ideal; none-
theless, in spite of their differences, both begin at the same starting
point—‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’.
Third, in order to not dilute the comprehension of some psycho-
analytical concepts (for example, ‘narcissism’, ‘ego ideal’), thereby
forcing artificial integrations among different psychoanalytical
theoretical systems (Barros, 1990), and to be consistent with our
4
The scores from the MSSB reflecting emotional regulation capacity, behavioural dis-
turbance, narrative coherence, and negative representations of parents (Table 2) did
not differ significantly between the Brazilian and German groups.
DISCUSSION 75
interest in finding an answer to Freud’s late question (Freud, 1925:

37n), we decided to base this discussion on one psychoanalytic theo-
retical system only—in this case, the Freudian one. It is true that
our choice may be criticized and interpreted as outdated, but it has
to be acknowledged that Freud was the first to pave the way for
the understanding of man as an individual within the context of the
group—indeed as a social being. He attempted to encompass the
ways in which external reality and internal psychic reality are con-
nected and influenced by one another, synchronically, concomitantly,
and to discover whether this process happens in accordance with
the logic of consciousness or that of the unconscious (Gampel, 2001).
Reinforcing the first point, the understanding of the unconscious of
the individual would be inadequate without taking into account the
mental life of the group to which the individual belongs.
Finally, it is also important to point out here that, just as with
the difference between the cultural patterns, the supremacy of any
of the psychoanalytic theoretical systems cannot be asserted, and
neither can they be compared in terms of one being better than
another. Each one has produced important contributions for the
understanding of individual psychology. As for group psychology,
nowadays the study of groups and group formation has increased
either through insights generated within the frameworks of object
relationship and inter-subjective psychic mechanisms—based on
group clinical approaches (Bion, 1961; Anzieu, 1971; Gampel, 1996;
and others)—or through the increase in the recognition of the impor-
tance of the historical moment and its impact on the group based
on social/mass-culture approaches (Kernberg, 1998; Eizirik, 1997;
and others). Hence this essay proposes a new direction of discus-
sion connecting the study of group psychology to the study of the
psychological development of the child in latency with respect to
cultural transmission and identity building—both cultural and indi-
vidual. Establishing links between our empirical data and this theo-
retical/conceptual elaboration, we examined the following relevant
questions:
1. How could the two different cultural organizations/models be described

from a psychoanalytical point of view?
At a first level of interpretation, each one of the two aforesaid cul-
tures is dominated by different models of preconscious emotional
76 O N L AT E N C Y
organization: an ‘individual competence model’, which is seen in

German parents and their children, and a ‘group model’ or ‘family
idealization model’, seen in Brazilian children and their parents.
In the ‘Individual Competence Model’, individuality, self-
sufficiency, self-esteem, and individual competence are the most
important values to be achieved, and this appears to be more a
characteristic of the German parents and their children.5 The Ger-
man parents’ conscious expectations and recognitions of their
child’s emotional maturity is based more on individual actions and
independence as attitudes/feelings of their child, as well as on the
child’s power and control over the environment. German parents
organize themselves6 more in promoting their children’s individu-
ality and self-responsibility, which helps and supports them in the
achievement of their values. The German children in latency first
internalize, then introject, their parents’ values and are finally identi-
fied with the ‘Individual Competence Model’ through the cognitive
process of adaptation (assimilation and accommodation—features
of the concrete operational stage) and psychological process (adjust-
ments of the ego and superego, based on Oedipus complex resolu-
tion). This process of identification is a result of the integration of the
child’s mental representation of their parents with the experience
of how their parents actually are—preconscious and unconscious
concepts—that regulate the perceptions of interactions with others
and the child’s own behaviour.
In the ‘Group Model’ or ‘Family Idealization Model’, community
spirit, solidarity between the elements of the group, social compe-
tence, social empathy/help, and family unity, are the most impor-
tant values to be achieved. Supportive relationships and social
adaptation appeared to be the core model displayed by Brazilian
parents and their children.7 It is true that to keep the model of ‘per
5
This assertion is empirically supported by the factors Self-Assertion and Individuality
(Table 5) and Daring-Self (Table 6).
6
Supported by the results of the parents’ assessment and the multiple analysis regres-
sion to the percentage of family participation in child’s daily activity (Table 10).
7
This assertion is equally and empirically supported by the factors Competent Self
(Table 5) and Social Leader Self (Table 6) which represent the Brazilian parents’ con-
scious expectations and recognitions regarding their child’s emotional maturity to
more emotional competence and behaviour regulation.
DISCUSSION 77
fect’/’good’/’kind’/’supportive’ parents, the Brazilian parents try

not to demand too much from their child nor show their dissatisfac-
tion. Even so, Brazilian parents transmit their model successfully,
organizing themselves and laying great stress on the family/group
organization as well as on the supportive relationship between the
elements of the group. By using support and help from others (for
example, a maid or grandparents)—in order to not leave their child
alone when they have to be away—the model of supportive rela-
tionships is experienced in reality. The Brazilian children, like the
German ones, first internalize and introject their parents’ values—
via cognitive adaptation and psychological adjustments—and are
thus identified with the ‘Family Idealization Model’.8
2. How could the existence of two different organizations/models (that

of Brazil, and that of Germany) and the transmission of unconscious and
conscious identification be understood theoretically?
As referred to previously, the difference between the cultural pat-
terns can be interpreted as being based on the same attempt to find
what each esteems—the best way to keep the group cohesive. To
achieve this ‘cultural ideal’ must be presented as a model, in which
each individual element will be able to identify themselves within
the group and simultaneously as an element belonging to a group. In
this way this ‘cultural ideal’ (model) will be followed and introjected
as part of each self. Beyond this, this ‘cultural ideal’ needs to assimi-
late and represent the ‘ego ideal’ of each element of the group—as in
the role of a leader—and concomitantly it needs to offer some kind
of satisfaction for the members of the group.
The empirical data showed that each group—Brazilian and
German—was successful not only in finding its own cultural
8
The successful identification with Brazilian parents’ values emphasizing pro-social
actions and close family relationships could be well assessed through the outcomes
from MSSB scales and Factors, namely:
•
‘Social Competence’, ‘Emotional Coherence and Adaptation Capacity’, ‘Moral
Themes’, ‘Positive Parents’ Representation’, ‘Narrative Competence and Social
Empathy’, and ‘Kind Parents’ (Table 3).
•
The Multiple Regression Analyses (Tables 8 and 9) was able to support the child’s
successful cognitive adaptation and identification with more pro-social acts and
close family relationships could be observed.
78 O N L AT E N C Y
ideal, namely, ‘Group/Family Idealization Model’ and ‘Individual

Competence Model’, but were successful also in the transmission of
their values to their children, as mentioned in the previous question.
Equally important at this stage is to connect our results to the cul-
tural/social adaptation which, in its turn, confirms the satisfaction of
the elements in each group. To illustrate this, the scores from MSSB
reflecting emotional regulation capacity, behavioural disturbance,
and narrative coherence, which do not differ significantly between
the groups, can be interpreted as an expression of the satisfaction
offered by cultural ideals, since the social adaptation is successfully
achieved through them.
a. Were we able to we develop a theoretical understanding of the funda-
mental psychodynamic function of the two different models?
The satisfaction which the ‘cultural ideal’ offers is based on the
narcissistic nature (Freud, 1927: 13):
The satisfaction which the ideal offers to the participants in the

culture is thus of a narcissistic nature; it rests on their pride in
what has already been successfully achieved. To make the sat-
isfaction complete calls for a comparison with other cultures
which have aimed at different achievements and have devel-
oped different ideals … The narcissistic satisfaction provided by
the cultural ideal is also among the forces which are successful
in combating the hostility to culture within the cultural unit.
As we understand it, the difference between the cultural ideals

is not just based on ‘what has already been achieved’. Quite the
opposite, the different cultural ideals begin at the same starting
point—narcissistic nature, termed in this study ‘narcissistic impulse
reminiscence’. The ‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’ is not a state
of mind, nor is it a psychopathological state, or even a psychologi-
cal stage; as the name suggests, it is an unconscious reminiscence
of the ‘dual orientation of narcissism’ which remains in the ego. As
was previously pointed out, Freud developed two different theories
of ‘primary narcissism’ (Ubinha 2004) termed ‘dual orientation of
narcissism’ (Lou Andreas Salomé, 1962): one in the sense of achiev-
ing individuality (Freud, 1914) and the other, by contrast, mov-
ing towards fusion (Freud, 1921). In our view, the ‘dual orientation
of narcissism’ is related to regression, to primitive ego functions
DISCUSSION 79
that remain embedded in our psyche throughout our development

like the root of a plant in the earth and the ‘narcissistic impulse
reminiscence’ is an unconscious reminiscence of this primitive ego
function. To put it another way, all cultural ideals are rooted in the
‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’. What each culture esteems as
being the best way to keep the group under control is based on the
choice for just one side of the ‘dual orientation of narcissism’—
either in the achievement of individuality or in a movement towards
fusion. Interestingly, the empirical data showed each one of these
orientations being adopted as the core of their models—the former
being displayed by the German group (‘Individual Competence
Model’) and the latter by the Brazilian group (‘Group/Family Ide-
alization Model’)—as if each country had chosen and taken further
just one side of the dual orientation of narcissism (individuality
v. fusion) to be the matrix of their cultural pattern. This assertion
can be supported not only by the outcome of our empirical study
but also by Social Psychology. The major argument concerning cul-
tural differences presented by Triandis (1989), a social psycholo-
gist and cultural researcher, is that cultures differ in the kinds of
information they select from the environment. Major differences
can be found between cultures that are simple or complex, tight
or loose, and individualist or collectivist. He argued that the peo-
ple in individualist cultures, such as those of North America and
North and Western Europe (including Germany) select, with high
probability, elements of the personal self, which is characterized
by autonomy and independence from the group. People from col-
lectivist cultures, such as those of Asia, Africa, and South America
(including Brazil), tend to select mostly elements of the collective-
self, which is characterized by interdependency between elements
of the group, and has as its main characteristic, group acceptance.
The concepts of individualism and collectivism were first used in
the 18th century and currently can be understood, from the psy-
choanalytical point of view, as expressing one of the ‘dual orienta-
tions of narcissism’.
In conclusion, our empirical data showed the existence of two dif-
ferent organizations/models (that of Brazil, and that of Germany)
and the transmission of unconscious and conscious identifications.
We therefore defend the idea that the cultural ideal is based on the
narcissistic nature (Freud 1927), and that nonetheless narcissistic
satisfaction occurs due to the fact that the cultural ideal is always
80 O N L AT E N C Y
rooted in one side of the dual orientation of narcissism—aiming

either at individuality or towards fusion—and, hence, the matrices
of the cultural ideals are always connected to primitive ego func-
tions, termed by us ‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’.
b. Could the latency period be defined, in view of these results, as a
period of dynamic defences during which the child experiences a complex
re-organization of the defensive structure of the ego? What about the exist-
ence and necessity for a cultural transmission in latency? How might this
cultural transmission be connected with the Oedipus complex?
The latency period begins at the decline of the Oedipus complex.
Needless to say, the two are strongly connected to one another, and
this period in the child’s social development—cognitive, social, and
cultural—is of great importance.
According to Freud and other psychoanalytical authors cultural
transmission is connected to the Oedipus complex through the con-
solidation of the superego and its integration into the child’s social
development. Thus, it is clear that the consolidation of the super-
ego is connected to cultural transmission. However, we propose
looking into the implications that are involved in this. In particu-
lar, by taking into account the core of the Oedipus complex—the
incest prohibition (Freud, 1910) allied to the concept of basic priva-
tions (Freud, 1927)—it is possible to assert that there is a cultural
transmission connected to the Oedipus complex and consequently
to the latency period that is characterized by the first internaliza-
tion level of the culture. This internalization is equally present in
all cultures and would also represent the first level of socialization
and mental/intellectual human development. This assertion is sup-
ported by our empirical data.9 The children from both cultures show
an equal mental intellectual development. Besides the internaliza-
tion of the first level of socialization, equally importantly, the exist-
ence of different cultural patterns between the groups illustrated
well the secondary internalization level of the culture, which is set
up by secondary instincts (Freud, 1927). To return to the previous
point, these secondary instincts are characterized by the ‘narcissistic
9
The scores from the MSSB reflecting emotional regulation capacity, behavioural dis-
turbance, narrative coherence and negative representations of parents (Table 2) did
not differ significantly between the Brazilian and German groups.
DISCUSSION 81
impulse reminiscence’—in other words, the features of the secondary

identification are based on narcissistic nature and rooted in one side
of the dual orientation of narcissism. Based on these two levels of
internalization (Freud, 1927), the Oedipus complex can be under-
stood as having a universal source that is connected to the first
internalization level of the culture, but the features and quality of
its resolution are connected to the second internalization level that
consequently characterizes the Oedipus complex resolution as being
different from one culture to another.10 In conclusion, the Oedipus
complex is connected to the first internalization level of the cul-
ture and its resolution marks the beginning of the latency period;
consequently, the latency period will represent the core of cultural
transmission since the features and quality of the Oedipus complex
resolution are connected to the secondary internalization level.
c. What about the relationship between conscious and unconscious
transmissions of identifications?
In the course of our study we were able to have a close look at
particular features of the relationship between the parents and their
child, in order to understand the relation between the way the child
builds mental representations and the parents’ actions as a cul-
tural transmission agency. Using a standardized play assessment—
the MacArthur Story Stem Battery (MSSB)—and FOPEI, the main
questions—whether German and Brazilian children differ in the
way they portray family processes in their play and whether these
differences are paralleled in the attitudes of parents from the two
countries, could be empirically proved—two different organiza-
tions/models were detected: the family/group idealization model
and the individual competence model. Thereby we were able to
assess successfully the conscious transmission identifications—the
cultural ideals. Besides the conscious transmission identifications,
our empirical data also brought out the unconscious transmission
identifications through the existence of cultural ideals. Starting at
the end and working backwards to cultural ideal, cultural ideal is
10
In our data this assertion was well exemplified through the different role displayed
by the mothers from each group in their child’s daily activities—the German mothers
required more performance and individualization from their child (Table 10) than the
Brazilians.
82 O N L AT E N C Y
always rooted in one side of the dual orientation of narcissism, thus

we were also successful in identifying the unconscious elements in
the cultural transmission—the primitive ego function, in our term,
the ‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’.
3. What do these results mean for psychoanalytical concepts of latency?

a. Will we have to conceptualize latency in dynamic terms of identifica-
tion and defence between the Oedipus complex and adolescence?
The results showed that latency is a more colourful period than
we had considered. More than simply a time for Oedipus complex
resolution (sexual identification) and the acquisition of defence
mechanisms, latency is a crucial period for the transmission of
cultural ideals and further identity formation. Here the boundary
between individual identity and group/cultural identity, which will
be the basis of adolescent identity crises, is established.
b. What is the influence of the cultural ideal on the building and trans-
formation of the ego ideal?
The concept of ‘ego ideal’ appeared for the first time as being ‘the
heir to the lost narcissism’. Then, over the course of Freud’s work,
the ego ideal concept underwent a series of changes until it became a
function of the ‘superego’—an instance integrated into it. In whatever
way that Freud referred to the ego ideal, however, it was always in the
meaning of an agency in the mind that tries continuously to recover
the lost narcissistic perfection of childhood. Currently, in individual
human psychology, the concept of ‘ego ideal’ is replaced by that of
‘self-ideal’ (‘self-esteem’); whereas in group human psychology it is
seen as an agency that still has an important meaning and role.
A primary group of this kind is a number of individuals who

have put one and the same object in the place of their ego ideal
and have consequently identified themselves with one another
in their ego.
(Freud, 1921: 116)
Consequently, the ego ideal will always be connected to cultural

transmission. That is to say, to the ‘cultural ideal’. As was pointed
out above, the ‘cultural ideal’ not only needs to assimilate and
represent all the individual ‘ego ideals’ from each element of the
DISCUSSION 83
group—displaying the same role as a leader—but also, and above

all, needs to offer a satisfaction to the members of the group of a
narcissist nature by being rooted in one side of the dual orienta-
tion of narcissism—that is the basis for the identification with one
another in their ego, among the members of the group. Therefore, in
our view, the ego ideal is partially replaced by the cultural ideal and
the cultural ideal is experienced and introjected as belonging to the
ego ideal. Then the ego ideal identifies with the cultural ideal form-
ing one single instance—so cultural transmission is carried out. In
our case, our empirical data was able to show well how the children
learn from and respond to the respective models in the relationship
with their parents and how the cultural ideals presented were well
introjected (see results in Chapter 4).
The forming of cultural identity cannot only explain the patriot-
ism of each country (Freud, 1927), but can also (and mainly) help
to produce a new understanding of the difficulties that foreigners
experience in adapting to new cultures—an experience shared by
many in these times of ‘globalization’. In particular, if we look at the
empirical data shown here, in general, if a member of the ‘Group/
Family Idealization Model’ had to live in a country with the ‘indi-
vidual competence model’ (or vice versa) this individual would
certainly have difficulties in adapting to the new environment. To
adapt, some values from the previously introjected cultural ideal
have to be given up or altered—the secondary internalization lev-
el—and with this goes the need to re-adapt the ego ideal to demands
of the new environment, with values different from what has been
known up to now. Nonetheless, despite the adaptation, there would
always be a competition between the sets of values, since the roots
of the superego, originating from the Oedipus complex resolution—
secondary internalization level—are settled in the past. In some
cases this concurrence might consequently evoke an identity crisis
followed by social non-adaptation, which in its turn may cause men-
tal health problems (for example, depression, addictiveness, and/
or alcoholism) due to the loss of the cultural values adopted in the
foundation of identity. This is the picture for an adult but the experi-
ence is a greater shock for latency children and adolescents with fur-
ther consequences in their identity building. In the case of migrant
latency children, this shock will give rise to confusion in their emo-
tional life since they will need to cope with two distinct cultural
84 O N L AT E N C Y
models—achievement of individuality versus moving towards

fusion—simultaneously whilst their cultural and individual identity
is still not completed and their secondary internalization level is still
in progress. The contrast between their family values and the values
of the environment (mainly at the school) will be strongly reflected
in their cultural pattern introjection that will be based on a competi-
tion between the two sides of the ‘dual orientation of narcissism’.
This competition between the different sets of values might be
harsher in the adolescence period, when sexuality explodes accom-
panied by all the unconscious libidinal elements from the early
organization. At this time adolescents have an intrinsic need to
break with the family rules in a movement of self-exclusion (moved
by sexual impulses) in search of new identifications (and new libid-
inous objects) that in most cases are represented by the group of
friends (the feeling of belonging to a group and being accepted by
it), but this group of friends would need to share the same cultural
ideal basis, that is to say, they would need to follow the same one
side of the dual narcissistic orientation and mainly follow the same
basis of secondary internalization level—‘Oedipus Resolution’, oth-
erwise the sense of exclusion and further failure in their ideal ego
identification might be real. In this way adolescents will not only
experience a sense of being excluded from their parental constella-
tion but also a sense of being left out of society by people who would
be their main support at this time. As a consequence, they will nei-
ther be able to find the satisfaction provided by the attainment of the
cultural ideal (Freud, 1927), since there is a competition between the
sets of values, nor find recompense for their sacrifice in being an ele-
ment of the social environment (Freud, 1930), since the main feeling
is exclusion and not belonging. This leads to a failure in the control
of manifestations of aggressiveness, moved now by frustration of
libidinous impulses. This situation, in its turn, would cause social
non-adaptation followed by problems in social conduct.
It is not by chance that foreigners from the same culture usually
try to live in the same area, forming special neighbourhood groups;
in most cases it can be understood as an attempt to keep alive their
cultural ideal in which they are or were immersed—their identity for
generations. Hence researchers trick themselves into believing that a
second generation of migrants might be considered well adapted to
the culture, just because they were born there and can also speak the
DISCUSSION 85
language well. Certainly the language is an important cultural element

in the cultural adaptation, but it does not characterize the whole cul-
ture, neither does it drive the values behind the cultural ideals.
The cultural ideals that we have looked into in this essay are
deeply connected to primitive ego functions—‘narcissistic impulse
reminiscence’—to a choice between achieving individuality or mov-
ing towards fusion. Hence cultural adaptation has more emotional
variables than the researchers usually take into account. Although
second and further migrant generations were born in the ‘new’
country, they are certainly still under pressure to cope with fierce
competition between sets of values—on the one hand there are the
demands made by family and neighbours to keep alive the roots
of their cultural ideals and, on the other, there is the environment
where they were born demanding equally distinct values. Unless the
awareness of competition between value systems is taken into con-
sideration, any social reintegration programmes aimed at migrants
will be at best only partially successful.
c. What is the role of the cultural ideal in latency? In which way can our
considerations throw light on Freud’s fundamental question (Freud, 1925:
37n) on the relationship between latency as a physiological phenomenon
and latency as produced by cultural influences?
Since the cultural ideal is connected with the secondary internali-
zation level, it is, therefore, partially the representative of the fea-
tures and quality of the Oedipus complex resolution. This means
that the cultural ideal plays an important role in the foundation of
the latency period. We were able to assess the development of the
first11 and second12 level of internalization as our empirical data
shows and if we combine these findings with the recognition of the
role of the cultural ideal we can assert with certainty that the latency
period is produced by cultural demands. That is to say: our data
allows us to agree with Freud’s assertion.
11
There were no differences between the two groups in the MSSB scales relating to the
reflection of emotional regulation capacity, behavioural disturbance, narrative coher-
ence, and negative representations of parents.
12
Table 8—the existence of a variable that produces different effects on the mental
representation of the children from each group. That is to say, the hypothesis based on
the existence of different cultural patterns could be statistically proved.
86 O N L AT E N C Y
4. What is the connection between cultural ideal, ego ideal, and narcis-
sism in latency development?
In Freud’s work narcissism was presented in several respects as a
positive force, as a phase of psychic development, as a crucial aspect
of a normal love life, and as the origin of the ego ideal—‘the ego
ideal is the heir to the lost narcissism’—and so as a consequence
explains the meaning and role of the ego ideal in mass psychology.
Freud thus focused his attention more on the libido distribution in
the ego and its consequences than on the destructive and aggressive
aspects. On the other hand, Freud also saw narcissism as a root of
psychopathology, and currently, most of the authors of contempo-
rary clinical psychoanalysis also perceive narcissism as pathological
and it is considered as a specific type (or spectrum) of pathological
character based on the aggressive and destructive libido. Indeed, in
psychoanalytical technique, narcissism is connected to a movement
of resistance in the transference (Kernberg, 1991).
Similar to a ‘prism’ with many facets used to separate the white
light into a spectrum of colours, the concept of narcissism developed
by Freud is dense in meaning and much remains still to be seen. It
is true that nowadays the narcissism concept is often considered as
a synonym for pathology. Still we defend the idea that there is also
a healthy facet to it, in the sense described by Rosenfeld (1988)—
‘essential protector of the self’. That is to say, there is a positive effect
of the narcissistic process in the self in terms of self-idealization and
building of self-esteem—narcissism can be seen as an instinctual
component of self-esteem (Yorke, 2004). Otherwise, terms such as
‘narcissistic stage’ (Klein, 1952: 433); ‘narcissistic production’ (Rosen-
feld, 1987: 105); ‘life narcissism’—in contrast to ‘death narcissism’
(Green, 2001), would not have been adopted by authors from differ-
ent psychoanalytical theoretical systems referring to these forms not
only as healthy but also as necessary and basic for development.
So where might the boundary between the healthy and unhealthy
narcissism lie? Certainly the ‘narcissistic object relationship’ (Klein
cited in Rosenfeld, 1987: 105) is extremely pathological but the lack
of the ‘narcissistic stage’, ‘narcissistic production’, ‘life narcissism’,
can also cause a pathological state. In conclusion, there is a facet of
the narcissism impulse which is very important to the development
of the human psyche. It is clear that narcissism cannot be interpreted
as the white light only. In this essay we have been concerned to look
DISCUSSION 87
into the healthy side of the subject ‘narcissism’—to look into one of
the colours of the spectrum—mainly with respect to its relation to
group psychology, cultural identification, and cultural group organi-
zation. After all, the concepts of ‘self-esteem’ and ‘ego ideal’ origi-
nated from narcissism and have been considered and accepted as
having an important role not only in group/mass psychology but
also in normal development. Through a re-reading of the classical
psychoanalytical theoretical framework, and mainly based on our
empirical data, in our point of view the primary narcissism13 can be
understood as the root not only of human self-love14 (self-esteem),
but also of ‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’ (the reminiscence of
the dual orientations of the narcissism: either in the achievement of
individuality or in movement towards fusion)—which in its turn is
connected to the starting point of the cultural ideals. Therefore both
orientations would be related to a regression to primitive ego func-
tions and as a result they would remain embedded in our psyche
throughout our development—that is: human beings are not able
to abandon the earlier libidinal investments in search of the feel-
ing of release and triumph. As we have seen, this assertion can be
supported by our empirical data—the Brazilian group displays the
‘Group/Family Idealization Model’, moving towards fusion orienta-
tion, whilst the German group displays the ‘Individual Competence
Model’, in the sense of individuality achievement and orientation.
There is, however, no difference regarding social adaptation and
cognitive development between the groups. Narcissistic satisfaction
was achieved in both groups in spite of their different models (differ-
ent cultural ideals), due to the fact that their cultural ideals are rooted
in one side of the dual orientation of narcissism and narcissistic
satisfaction, a ‘feeling of release and triumph’, was achieved.
13
It is true that actually the concept of primary narcissism is a major controversy
among the psychoanalytical authors mainly due to the different referential regarding
the starting point of the object relationship. Even so, there is an agreement among
them with respect to the importance of self-esteem as well as its value along the
development phases.
14
It is not clear in the literature whether the term ‘self-love’ (Freud, 1914: 94) was
replaced by the term ‘self-esteem’, or whether there would be a difference between
the terms and in this case, when it had happened. In this essay it will be considered
the former.
88 O N L AT E N C Y
As regards the second narcissism, following Freud, it will be con-

sidered the root of the ego ideal. As a result, the concepts of ‘cultural
ideal’ and ‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’ presented in this essay
are considered by us as a key feature of healthy narcissism; indeed
the cultural ideal is rooted in the narcissistic impulse reminiscence
(primary narcissism), and supported by the ego ideal identification
(second narcissism).
6.2 Limitations of the study and open questions

for further research
The study is the first to compare the representations of family rela-
tionships of children from two contrasting cultures. The groups of
children came from similar social backgrounds and were recruited
in similar ways. New measures were devised for parents’ reports of
family roles and of their expectations regarding development and
this allowed questions to be addressed regarding parental roles and
expectations and children’s representations.
Although the results of the analyses have been interpreted as
representing cross-cultural differences, it is possible that the groups
were dissimilar in ways that have not been recorded. For example,
it is difficult to compare the social class of Brazilian and German
families because the cultures are so different, with differences in
social hierarchy in the two countries. It is therefore possible that
the differences described in this study arose partly from this dif-
ference in social hierarchy. Future studies might compare differ-
ent social classes within countries as well as differences between
countries.
Another point that needs to be observed is the validation by inde-
pendent studies of the new tools (that is, Questionnaire—FOPEI)
and new scales (that is, Negative Representation of Parents, Positive
Representation of Parents, and Mistrust towards the Environment)—
different from the classical MSSB—created and tested in this study.
This, in itself would be a most valuable contribution, as the FOPEI
and the modified version of the MSSB are easy to handle and the new
version of the MSSB has resulted in good inter-rater reliability and
good statistical data. In this way, and making use of these tools, it
would be interesting to look more closely at some of the hypotheses
of this study, such as ‘when the parental figures are strong and harsh
DISCUSSION 89
it will be expected that the child will display more mistrust towards
the environment’ or even if there will ‘be more representations of
violence in society resulting in mistrust towards the environment’
(Hypotheses 5 and 6), which may bring up new questions for research
to investigate in detail. For example, there are probably causes of
violence in children that are common to all cultures, and others that
vary from culture to culture. A greater understanding of the commo-
nalities and differences will contribute to the development of psy-
choanalytically psychotherapeutic approaches across cultures, and
also have variations that reflect the cultural differences.
Taking the above into account it would also be interesting to apply
this approach to clinical samples, such as maltreated/abused chil-
dren, or delinquent children from different countries (that is, Brazil
and Germany). Another possibility of research would be to develop
further studies of commonalities and differences in developmen-
tal processes across cultures, focusing on latency (keeping a close
focus on the identification process with the parents and social rules),
and examining a wider range of contrasting samples, for example,
immigrant children in Germany contrasted with children born in
Germany of German parents. In any case, to increase the number
of children and parents in each group of this study would also be
important in further studies.
Currently we are carrying out a new research project focused on
Brazilian children in latency—keeping a clear focus on the identi-
fication process with the parents and social rules—using the same
methodology, and examining a wider range of contrasting samples,
in particular: a) middle-class children; b) children living with their
families in extreme poverty in shanty towns; c) children removed
from their families by the Juvenile Court and living in group homes
because of child maltreatment; and d) street children. In this case, a
total of 161 children from a planned sample of approximately 200
have been recruited and assessed and 90 parents were interviewed.
The key issues are:
1. To increase the understanding of the particular world built by

the street children—the adaptations that they have made in order
to survive, their family values, their emotional and social mod-
els of organization. This could be done in comparison to other
appropriate comparative groups.
90 O N L AT E N C Y
2. To identify the ways in which street children differ from other

children exposed to extreme poverty, and from children known
to have been maltreated, as also from children from middle-class
backgrounds.
3. To show that a range of coding systems devised in the USA
and Europe can be applied and rated reliably with story-stem
assessments from young Brazilian children exposed to extreme
conditions.
This new study will be of great importance for the understanding

of mental functioning of 6–11 year old children under such unfa-
vourable circumstances, mainly with respect to the link between
parents as a cultural transmission agency and child cultural/social/
individual identity development. On the one hand it is remarkable
to apply psychoanalytical knowledge for those who cannot afford a
treatment. On the other hand, psychoanalysis will be enriched from
the knowledge acquired from individuals who usually do not con-
sult in psychoanalytical settings.
6.3 Conclusion
The main point discussed here was the features of cultural identity
formation during the latency period, in other words the influence of
the group identity and cultural ideal identification on the individual
identity and its implications in forming mental health and in the
development of social adaptation. To this end, we established links
between empirical data (Franieck, 2005) and conceptual elaboration,
trying always to highlight the agreement between the psychoana-
lytical authors, despite their differences, and also to show how there
are concepts that are not only closely allied to one another but which
also definitely play a great role in identity formation in the course
of the latency period—mainly with respect to the integration of so
many forces: Oedipus complex resolution, libidinal impulses, ego
formation, identification process, superego formation, ego ideal, cul-
tural ideal and narcissistic impulse reminiscence.
We are aware that there will probably be critics of what we
have proposed in this essay. The critics might not perceive our
concepts as being psychoanalytical—mainly in the meaning of
clinical work—however, individual human psychology cannot be
DISCUSSION 91
separated from group psychology: we should not neglect all traces

of the group nor ignore the mental life of the group from which
the individual comes (family/parental values). If we do so, there
will be a blind spot in our understanding of the unconsciousness
of the individual. On the other hand, critics might also say that not
only are our arguments outdated but by introducing the concept
of ‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’ and the new interpretation
of the meaning and role of the ‘cultural ideal’, we are creating a
conceptual dilution in the comprehension of some psychoana-
lytical concepts—for example, narcissism and ego ideal (Barros,
1989). However our concepts and further arguments are strongly
and closely supported by our empirical data, by social psychology
(Triandis, 1989; Bontempo, 1990; Parin, 1990; Gouveia et al., 2002)
and by psychoanalysis too (Freud, 1914; Freud, 1921; Freud, 1927;
Lou Andreas Salomé, 1962; Rosenfeld, 1988; Green, 2001; Klein;
Barros,1989; Ubinha, 2004).
Apart from possible criticisms, this essay looked at important
features of the psychological mechanisms involved in the latency
period by introducing the following concepts:
1. Narcissistic impulse reminiscence—an unconscious reminiscence

of the ‘dual orientation of narcissism’—one in the sense of achiev-
ing individuality and the other, on the contrary, aimed towards
fusion, which remains embedded in our psyche throughout our
development, like the root of a plant in the earth. Hence the ‘nar-
cissistic impulse reminiscence’ is an unconscious reminiscence of
the primitive ego functions (see Question 2a).
2. Cultural ideal—it needs to offer a satisfaction for its members
based on narcissist nature (Freud, 1927). It is thereby rooted in the
primitive ego function—one of the two orientations of narcissism,
from narcissistic impulse reminiscence, and supported by the ego
ideal identification (see Question 3b and Question 4).
3. Oedipus complex—it can be understood as having a universal
source that is connected to the first internalization level of the
culture (which will occur equally in all cultures); nonetheless the
features and quality of its resolution are connected to the second
internalization level that consequently characterizes the features
of the Oedipus complex resolution as being different from one
culture to another (Question 2b).
92 O N L AT E N C Y
In our view, these concepts should not be neglected; on the con-

trary they should be reflected on in order to discover how they can
be helpful for practice. After all, first, they enabled us to answer
Freud’s late question (Freud, 1925: 37n)—latency is supported by
cultural ideals. Second, this essay suggests that psychoanalysts need
to be sensitive to differences in values (which support the superego)
and expectations (that support the ego ideal) of their clients as also
to the cultural ideal they have been embedded in. Our findings are
particularly important for a psychoanalytical understanding of the
developmental problems of migrant children. Third, just as there are
differences in the features and qualities of the Oedipus complex res-
olution between cultures, there would also be differences in the fea-
tures and qualities of the transference between analyst and patient
(based on the secondary internalization)—thus analysts should also
be equally sensitive to the features and quality of the transferences
from patients who have been immersed in different cultural ideals.
Fourth, this essay discovered a new facet of the subject of narcis-
sism—the healthy side that had already been perceived by other
psychoanalytical authors (Freud, 1914, 1921, 1927, 1930; Klein, 1952;
Rosenfeld, 1987; Bion, 1991; Green, 2001; Ubinha, 2004) in the past
but has not been much investigated, due to the interest in narcis-
sism’s powerful pathological facets. Finally, and mostly importantly,
we were able to show how the latency period is a more colourful and
dynamic period. There is more to it than the building of defences and
repression of the drives which, allied to each other, bring about cog-
nitive development—latency is a structural period for cultural iden-
tity formation and therefore for the feeling of ‘belonging’—instead
of just ‘being excluded’.
To conclude, we would like to extend the significance of this essay
to applied psychology and the academic area. As we have seen, the
findings are relevant to clinical practice in that they support the use
of children’s play as a means of expression that can yield valuable
information about the way children understand their immediate
family and wider social and cultural contexts. Now that cultural dif-
ferences are commonly found within, as well as between, countries
the findings suggest that clinical psychologists and other therapists
need to be sensitive to differences in the values and expectations
regarding the family life of their clients as also to the difference
in the cultural ideals in which the patients have been immersed.
DISCUSSION 93
Not to mention the effects of these differences in values upon social

conduct problems—mainly related to a lack of feeling of ‘belong-
ing’ (see Question 3b). Speaking of the academic area, we advise
researchers to be careful about what they have termed ‘being cul-
turally adapted’. It is not just the fact of being in the second/third
generation of immigrants, and/or being able to speak the ‘foreign
language’, which characterizes being well adapted to the new cul-
ture; these variables are not strong enough to change the values that
exist within the original cultural ideals nor to control their force—
since we are talking about primitive ego functions.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Summary
T
he aim of this essay was to bring up a number of relevant
questions for a psychoanalytic understanding of some aspects
of latency development which have not been focused on very
much in psychoanalysis up to this point. In particular, to Freud’s
question (Freud, 1925: 37n) as to whether the latency period is an
innate universal phenomenon connected to the prolonging of biologi-
cal immaturity which characterizes human development or whether
it is restricted to repressive cultures in which the infantile and imma-
ture sexual behaviour is subjected in order to be kept under control.
The features of cultural identity formation, alongside the influences
of cultural patterns, at the middle of latency (6–8 years old) were
addressed. Establishing links between empirical data, psychoana-
lytical conceptual elaboration, and social psychology, opened up a
new perspective on latency development. A new understanding of
the Oedipus complex resolution was proposed and two new con-
cepts were introduced: ‘cultural ideal’—defined as an agency that
95
96 O N L AT E N C Y
replaces the ego ideal, and ‘narcissistic impulse reminiscence’—an

unconscious reminiscence of the ‘dual orientation of narcissism’—
one in the sense of achieving individuality, and the other towards
fusion. These perspectives in our view can contribute to a further
elaboration of psychoanalytic concepts for this period.
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APPENDIX 1
Questionnaire—FOPEI (Franieck and Günter)
Date: __/___________/2002
Child’s name:
Birth date: Age: Sex:
Who gave the answers:

Mother ( ) Father ( ) The couple ( ) Others ( ) Who?: ________
1. School: ___________________________________________________
2. Siblings: 1 2 3 4
more, how many: ______________
3. Age of siblings: ________
4. Position of child: only child youngest
middle eldest
5. The families live in: a) Apartment own rented
b) House own rented
District: _________________________________________________
Has the child a bedroom of his/her own?
yes no. Who shares with her?______________
6. Parents’ marital status:
married and living together separated since: ................
not married and living together divorced since: ..................
have never lived together widowed
7. The child lives together with:
Mother: Father: Others:
natural mother natural father Siblings.
How many?: ____
stepmother or stepfather or Grandparents
adoptive mother adoptive father
new partner new partner Other relatives
of the father of the mother
no mother no father Other children in
an orphanage
105
106 APPENDIX 1
Please answer the eleven questions, completing all items.

They are about your child’s day-to-day school life.
1. Who wakes the child? How often?
never sometimes often ever
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• By herself/himself () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
2. Who gives the child breakfast? How often?
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
3. Who prepares the snacks? How often?
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
4. Who takes the child to school? How often?
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
5. Who picks the child up from school? How often?
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
6. Who has lunch with the child? How often?
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
APPENDIX 1 107
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
7. Who helps the child with his or her

homework? How often?
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
8. Who helps the child to organize

the school bag? How often?
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
9. Who puts the child to bed? How often?

• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
10. When the child has a problem at school,

who speaks to the teacher? How often?
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• The couple () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
11. When the child has a problem,

who speaks to him or her? How often?
• Mother () () () ()
• Father () () () ()
• The couple () () () ()
• Others: Who? _____ () () () ()
108 APPENDIX 1
Please fill in the blanks and answer what you really believe.
Feelings of How deep is the How deep is

feeling for a child’s this feeling in
good growth and your child?
development?
no little enough much no little enough much
• Aggressiveness
• Autonomy
• Companionship
• Competitiveness
• Trust
• Courage
• Creativity
• Dependence
• Distrust
• Fear
• Flexibility
• Insolence
• Impulsiveness
• Individuality
• Leadership
• Rationality
• Self-respect
• Self-assertion
• Self-assurance
• Self-control
• Self-discipline
• Self-help
• Self-interest
• Self-sacrifice
• Sociability
APPENDIX 2
Assessment of children
MSSB scales and factors

Table 2. Descriptive and comparative analyses of no difference
between the groups.
Brazilian German *p-value
(N = 41) (N = 41) Mann-
Mean ± SD Mean ± SD Whitney
‘Representation 1.057 ± 0.618 0.918 ± 0.494 p = 0.391

of threat and anxiety’ α = 0.89
‘Weak parents’ α = 0.76 0.423 ± 0.580 0.458 ± 0.507 p = 0.388
Narrative coherence 5.690 ± 1.190 5.630 ± 1.000 p = 0.549
Poor internal control α = 0.73 0.420 ± 0.430 0.320 ± 0.360 p = 0.493
Negative parents 0.550 ± 0.380 0.430 ± 0.270 p = 0.202
representation α = 0.83
α = Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient (α > 0.70). The significance level was set at 5%
(p < 0.05).
Note: Narrative Coherence doesn’t have Cronbach’s Alpha Coefficient due to its
being composed of just 1 item.
109
110 APPENDIX 2
Table 3. Descriptive and comparative analyses of significant

difference between the groups.
(N = 41) (N = 41) Mann-
Mean ± SD Mean ± SD Whitney
‘Narrative competence and 4.298 ± 0.865 3.915 ± 0.699 p = 0.028

social empathy’ α = 0.87
‘Kind parents’ α = 0.91 2.769 ± 0.740 2.354 ± 0.777 p = 0.011
Positive parents 2.810 ± 0.700 2.420 ± 0.800 p = 0.020
representation α = 0.91
Moral themes α = 0.77 0.530 ± 0.460 0.280 ± 0.240 p = 0.008
Social competence α = 0.70 2.050 ± 0.710 1.610 ± 0.520 p = 0.003
Emotional coherence and 4.110 ± 0.580 3.780 ± 0.540 p = 0.008
adaptation capacity α = 0.74
Subjective expression 0.910 ± 0.570 0.510 ± 0.370 p = 0.001
of mistrust towards the
environment α = 0.72
(p < 0.05).
APPENDIX 3
Assessment of parents
FOPEI—Family participation in child’s daily activities

Table 4. Descriptive and comparative analyses of child’s daily
activities scale. (% of participation)
Brazilian Group German Group
Percentage (N = 41) Range; (N = 41) Range;
Participation Mean (SD) Mean (SD) *p-value
Mother (PERCMO) 24.26–69.44; 11.64–78.70; 0.22

47.63 (12.15) 50.86 (15.23)
Father (PERCFA) 0.00–46.11; 0.00–25.29; 0.022
19.46 (11.54) 13.55 (6.68)
Child (PERCCH) 0.00–32.41; 2.78–54.07; 0.001
13.18 (8.49) 25.03 (11.95)
Others (grandparents, 0.00–64.26; 0.00–49.21; 0.002
maid, old 19.74 (14.18) 10.57 (9.76)
siblings) – (PERCOTH)
*p-value for the Mann-Whitney test comparing the scores between the countries.
Note: Variables are the average percentage of participation of each person
(mother, father, child, and other) in children’s life for items.
111
112 APPENDIX 3
FOPEI—Attitudes/Feelings factors
Table 5. Descriptive and comparative analyses of expected attitudes/
feelings factors.
(N = 41) (N = 41) Mann-
Expected Attitudes/Feelings Mean ± SD Mean ± SD Whitney
‘Competent-self’ α = 0.89 2.589 ± 0.267 2.098 ± 0.224 p < 0.001

‘Narcissistic-self’ α = 0.77 0.808 ± 0.371 1.654 ± 0.257 p < 0.001
(p < 0.05).
Table 6. Descriptive and comparative analyses of recognized

attitudes/feelings factors.
Recognized Attitudes/ (N = 41) (N = 41) Mann-
Feelings Mean ± SD Mean ± SD Whitney
‘Daring-self’ α = 0.75 1.226 ± 0.522 1.650 ± 0.418 p < 0.001

‘Social leader self’ α = 0.72 2.243 ± 0.366 1.764 ± 0.365 p < 0.001
(p < 0.05).
Table 7. Descriptive and comparative analyses of ratio attitudes/

feelings factors. (Satisfaction Level)
Ratio–RM (N = 41) (N = 41) Mann-
(expected/recognized) Mean ± SD Mean ± SD Whitney
“Structural-self” α = 0.75 1.236 ± 0.238 1.115 ± 0.148 p = 0.025

(p < 0.05).
Note: A RM < 0.90 means the parents can recognize morein their actual child’s
behaviours regarding attitudes/feelings than they expect for emotional maturity.
If RM ∼ 1.0 (ranging from 0.90 < RM < 1.10), it means there is good agreement
between expectation and recognition. RM > 1.10 means that the parents expect
from their children more of the attitudes they regard as more important to emo-
tional maturity than they can recognize in their child’s actual behaviours.
APPENDIX 4
Analyses regression to MSSB factors

and MSSB scales: Narrative coherence
and mistrust towards the environment
Table 8. Multiple analyses regression—MSSB factors.

Brazil
Selected independent Slope
Dependent variable variables (SE) p-value Partial R2
Representation of No variables – – –
Threat and selected at p < 0.05
Anxiety (RTA)
Narrative Coherence Daring self 0.46 0.014 15,29%
and Social Empathy (0.18)
(NCSE)
Kind Parents (KP) Percentage of the par- –0.52 0.005 12,25%
ticipation of the child (0.17)
by itself in child’s daily
activities (inverted)
Competent self –0.46 0.020 2,32%
(inverted) (0.19)
Weak Parents (WP) No variables – – –
selected at p < 0.05
(continued)
113
114 APPENDIX 4
Table 8. (continued )
Germany
Selected independent Slope Partial
Dependent variable variables (SE) p-value R2
Representation of Daring-self 0.51 0.010 10.26%

Threat and (0.19)
Anxiety (RTA)
Percentage of the par- 0.31 0.044 9.74%
ticipation of the mother (0.15)
in child’s daily
activities
Narrative Coherence No variables selected – – –
and Social Empathy at p < 0.05
(NCSE)
Kind Parents (KP) No variables selected – – –
at p < 0.05
Weak Parents (WP) Structural self 0.49 0.006 19.00%
(0.16)
R2 = coefficient of determination, SE (Standard Error), Stepwise criterion for
variables selection. R2 total RTA to Germany = 20%; R2 total NCSE to Brazil = 15.29%;
R2 total KP to Brazil = 24.57%; R2 total WP to Germany = 19%.
Table 9. Multiple analyses regression—MSSB scales—Narrative coherence and mistrust towards the
environment.
Brazil Germany
Selected
Selected independent Slope Partial independent Slope Partial
Dependent variable variables (SE) p-value R2 variables (SE) p-value R2
Narrative Coherence Percentage of 0.46 0.003 26.25% No variables – – –
scale (NC) the participation (0.15) selected at
of others in child p < 0.05
daily activities
Daring self 0.33 0.047 7.78%
(0.16)
Mistrust towards the Structural self –0.31 0.042 10.71% No variables – – –

environment (MAE) (0.15) selected at
p < 0.05
R2 = coefficient of determination, SE (Standard Error), Stepwise criterion for variables selection. R2 total NC to Brazil = 34.03%.
APPENDIX 4
R2 total MAE to Brazil = 10.71%.

115
APPENDIX 5
Analyses regression to the percentage

of family participation in child’s daily
activities
Table 10. Multiple analyses regression—Percentage of participation

in child’s daily activities.
Brazil
Selected independent Slope Partial
Percentage of mother No variables – – –
participation in child selected at p < 0.05
daily activity
Percentage of father No variables – – –
daily activity
Percentage of child No variables – – –
by him/herself selected at p < 0.05
participation in
child daily activity
Percentage of other No variables – – –
daily activity
(continued)
117
118 APPENDIX 5
Table 10. (continued)

Germany
Selected
independent Slope Partial
Percentage of mother Social leader –0.66 0.002 23.39%

participation in child self (inverted) (0.20)
daily activity
Percentage of father No variables – – –
participation in child selected
daily activity at p < 0.05
Percentage of child Social leader 0.45 0.016 14.79%
by him/herself self (0.18)
participation in
child daily activity
Percentage of other No variables – – –
participation in child selected
daily activity at p < 0.05
variables selection.
R2 total PERCMO to Germany = 23.39%; R2 total PERCFA to Germany = 14.79%.
APPENDIX 6
Analyses regression to hypothesis 3
Table 11. Multiple analyses regression—MSSB specific items—

Hypothesis 5.
Brazil
Selected
Expression of 1. Positive 0.570 0.0001 35.98%

mistrust towards parents—child (0.110)
the environment interaction
2. Youngest 16.588 0.0068 13.74%
(5.780)
3. Negative 0.255 0.0249 06.47%
parents—child (0.110)
interaction
(continued)
119
120 APPENDIX 6
Table 11. (continued)

Germany
Selected
Expression of 1. Negative 0.490 0.0001 27.77%

mistrust towards parents—child (0.110)
the environment interaction
2. Positive 0.388 0.0006 16.30%
parents—child (0.102)
interaction
3. Child lower 0.373 0.0011 14.09%
power/ (0.105)
ineffective
variables selection. R2 Total to Brazil: 55.29% – R2 Total to Germany: 58.16%.
INDEX
Adolescence 44 Civilization and its

Attachment/emotional conflict Discontents 40, 43
story-stems 56 Coders, reliability of 59–60
Attachment story-stems 57 Coding manual 59
Authoritarianism 10 Coding system 58–59
Cognitive maturity 3
Bion, Wilfred 20 Collectivism 10
terminology review 27–28 Competent-self (CS) 62, 70–71
Brazilian Cronbach’s alpha 60
middle latency children 3 Cultural
parents 47 determinism 14
sample 49, 60 historic school 48
Building and group identity 73 identity 73
Cultural ideal 37–41, 74, 82, 91
Cannibalism 39 transmission 47
Castration complex 19 Culturalization process 15
Censoring agency 30 Cultural transmission 68–70, 82
Chasseguet-Smirgel 35 mechanisms of 50
Children assessment 53–60
Children procedure 61 Daring self (DS) 62–66
Chi-square tests 61 Defensive processes 46
121
122 INDEX
Doll-play technique 54 Genetic epistemology 47

Dyadic-narcissistic relationship 19 German
family/group organization 67
Ego 2 middle latency children 3
ideal 5, 18, 28–36, 37–41, 82 parents 47
primitive narcissitic 34 sample 49
Emotional Coherence Adaptation Green, André 28
Capacity (EA) 60, 71 Group formation 42
Emotional Group model 63, 76
conflict story-stems 56 Group/family idealization model 3,
organization 2 65, 78, 83
Erikson 10–11 Group psychology 5, 24, 28
Etchegoyen 9 in field of therapeutic work and
Expression of mistrust towards the culture 42–44
environment 60 on culture 37–44
Group Psychology and the Analysis of
Family/group idealization Ego 30, 38, 42
model 72
Family idealization model 63, 76 Ideal ego 5, 32
Family Organization and Identification 5, 21–24
Parents’ Expectations child’s development of 13
Inventory (FOPEI) 3, 51, primary 22, 34
63, 88 secondary 22, 34
factor analysis of variables Individual
61–62 competence model 3, 63, 76, 78, 87
Family participation in child daily identity 73
activities 67 Individualism 10
Fisher’s exact tests 61 Industry x inferiority 11
Freud, Anna 8, 13–14 Infantile sexuality, suppression of 14
assertion 85 Instinct theory 17
classical theory 18–19, 25 Internalization 23, 85
Group Psychology and Analysis of second 39
Ego 38 Inter-subjective psychic
libidinous cultural concept mechanisms 75
43–44 Intraclass correlation coefficients
new interpretations of 31–36 (ICC) 61
On Narcissism 29 Introjective identification 23
psychogenic cultural concept
43–44 Kind parents (KP) 62, 69–70
Freudian terminology 12 Klein theory 19–20
Freud’s theory and narcissistic object relationship 27
understanding 5 Oedipal triangular situation 20
INDEX 123
Klein, Melanie 26–27 Multiple analyses regressions 67

Kohut, Heinz 28 Multiple linear regression analyses
63, 65, 68
Latency 7–16 descriptive and comparative
age ego and superego features 15 analyses 70–71
central concepts of period 17 refutation of the hypotheses 70–71
on culture 13–16
on social identity 9–13 Narcissism 5, 24–28, 37–41
reaction-formations 13 dual orientation of 26, 78, 91
research 45 negative 28
Latency period, concepts 17 pathological face of 24
ego ideal and superego 28–36 positive 28
Freud’s theory 17 primary 25, 78, 88
identification 21–24 secondary 25, 27–28, 88
narcissism 24–28 Narcissistic
Oedipus complex 17–21 equilibrium 34
Learning theory concepts 48 impulse reminiscence 38, 74, 78,
Libidinal organization 9 82, 87–88, 91
Libido repression 11 object relationship 27
Lost Dog 55 production 86
protection 27
MacArthur Narrative Group 55 satisfaction 87
MacArthur Story Stem Battery Narrative coherence (NC) 50, 60,
(MSSB) 3, 24, 45–47, 51, 55, 62, 68
63–65, 81, 88 Narrative coherence and social
coding system 58 empathy 63
content 54 Narrative competence and social
definition and aim 54 empathy 71
directions for administering Negative Representation of Parents
57–58 (NRP) 60
factor analysis of 62 Non-parametric tests 61
narrative-coding manual of 59
scoring systems 58 Object theory (Klein) 17, 19–20
stories used 56–57 Oedipal
Tübingen-Basel-Wien Version components 8
55, 59 father 18
MacArthur Story Stem coding identifications 8
system 54 Oedipus complex 1, 4–5, 7–8, 17–21,
Mature sexuality 11 32, 34, 40, 49–50, 76, 80–81
Measurement in the study 50–51 constellation 16
Messianic hope 42 resolution 5, 83, 85, 95
Moral Themes (MT) 60 On Narcissism 30
124 INDEX
Parametric tests 61 Revised parental

Parents assessment 51–53 representations manual 54
attitudes and feelings 52–53 Rosenfeld, Herbert 27
child’s daily activities 51–52
Parents procedure 60–61 Salomé, Lou Andreas 26
Percentage of child’s participation Self-assertion and individuality 62
(PERCCH) 67 Self psychology school 28
Percentage of mother’s Self-idealization 27, 86
participation (PERCMO) 67 Sexual
Phylogenesis 14 identity 12, 49
Physiological heredity 13 libido 7
Piagetian theory of cognitive Sexuality 1, 43
development 8 Social
Poor Internal Control (PIC) 60 adaptation 2, 90
Positive Representation of competence 60, 71
Parents (PRP) 60 identity 9–13
Pre-genital phases 20 Social leader self (SLF) 62, 67
Projective identification 22 Socialization process 8, 15
Psychoanalysis 3, 21, 48 Socio-cultural identity 2
Psychoanalytic authors, current 14–16 Stem battery 58
Psychoanalytical theoretical Story-stem response 58
systems 74 Structural theory 33
Psychodynamic Sublimation 8
mechanisms 9 Superego 5, 28–41, 82
psychological development formation 18
areas 21 proper 34
Psychological conflict theory 29
Psychosexual The Future of an Illusion 38
maturation marks time 2 Transgression story-stems 56
moratorium 11 Triangular object relationship
stages 10 stability 10
Psychosocial Tübingen-Basel Manual 54
interpretation 10
moratorium 12 Warm-up story 58
Weak parents 62
Reich, Annie 32
Representation of threat and
anxiety 63

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ON LATENCY

Copyright © 2010 by M. Leticia C.F. Franieck and Michael Günter

The right of M. Leticia C.F. Franieck and Michael Günter to be identified as

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Vikatan Publishing Solutions (P) Ltd., Chennai, India

Printed in Great Britain

To Franziska, Daphne and Florentine hoping that their latency

ABOUT THE AUTHORS xiii

3.1.2 Object theory (Klein) 19

5.4.5.1 Contact with the schools to build the groups 60

We would like to thank the International Psychoanalytical Associa-

M. Leticia C.F. Franieck grew up in Ribeirao Preto, Brazil, and

Michael Günter, Dr. med., is Professor for Child and Adolescent

empirical cultural science. Editor-in-chief of the scientific journal

however the word is rarely used with any identifying qualifications

• An age period: representing the time period from 6 to 12 years of

In psychoanalytical terms latency is defined as a developmental

family relationships—with particular interest in identity formation,

cultural pattern influences on the child’s emotional development

1. How could the two different cultural organizations/models be

In order to search for answers to these questions, we will focus

(6–8 years), its features in cultural pattern formation, and further

[T]he latency period … is characterised by the dissolution of the

(Freud, 1926b: 114)

and the further superego consolidation is widely discussed among

2.1 On social identity

public, and collective, and the complexity of the self depends on

on the ego, or on the conscious being. According to him, the identity

interactions with others. The effective development of these abilities

development, an important footnote was added by him in An Auto-

The period of latency is a physiological phenomenon. It can

(Freud, 1925: 37n)

More simply, at some time in the phylogenesis of man, an ego func-

2.2.2 Current psychoanalytic authors

From the standpoint of culture, latency is necessary for the for-

which children can learn the complicated skills needed in soci-

There is an agreement among the authors Hagelin (1980), Etchegoyen

in clinical work, the literature of latency is always focused either

Central concepts for understanding

3.1 Oedipus complex

3.1.1 The classical theory (Freud)

The role of triangulation involves the addition of a father repre-

3.1.2 Object theory (Klein)

3.1.3 Wilfred Bion

enables the infant to understand his or her relationship to the parental

• the building of the psychic apparatus—the ego and superego

The classical definition of the term ‘identification’ is:

Psychological process whereby the subject assimilates an aspect,

partially, after the model the other provides. It is by means of a

(Laplanche and Pontalis 1973: 205)

As regards the differentiation between ‘primary identification’ and

translated into fantasies, by which one imagines oneself put partially

accompanied by the fantasy of incorporation and may be followed

narcissism is considered—it is important to realize this. So, in an

always being on self-interest and with its undergoing variations in

[T]he libido must constitute the connecting link between the

3.3.1 Melanie Klein

relationship, which characterizes the self-erotic state, is not recognized

3.3.2 Herbert Rosenfeld

3.3.3 Wilfred Bion review terminology

3.3.4 Heinz Kohut