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The oedipus complex is presented as a universal, developmentally determined mental organization that incorporates pregenital factors in a new hierarchic structure. Psychoanalysis with adults who have a variety of disorders, including severe character pathology, demonstrates the role of the oedipus complex and its variants as a dominant theme in these disorders. Recent trends in psychoanalytic theory are reviewed to facilitate our understanding of the newer metapsychological formulations that tend to de-emphasize oedipal constellations. Specific issues of changing emphasis in drive theory, ego organization, developmental levels of anxiety, and the separation-individuation process are considered.

This article examines methodological problems and unacknowledged moral judgements in Freud's theory of homosexuality. Freud raises the issue of bisexuality in connection with the origins of homosexuality. When critically examined, the theory of bisexuality reduces to a theory of the capacity to be attracted to either females or males, and in that sense explains little about the origin of exclusive homosexual orientation. Freud's further investigations into the origin of homosexuality, strictly speaking, do not provide a clear explanation of sexual exclusivity. Finally, it is argued that Freud's moral assumptions color the nature of his conclusions. At the very least, without morally justifying his procedure, he transforms the course of psychosexual development as determined by psychoanalysis into a moral imperative against which homosexuality is judged a fixated and immature state.

The etiological significance of the actually observed primal scene in fetishism and other perversions is discussed. The impact of the primal scene on the pathology of part object relationships, self and object image, and on the development of superego structures in perversion is stressed.

Exhibitionism can be regarded as a cultural, social and psychological phenomenon. It is given a view of the theories in the literature. Once exhibitionism is a normal human phenomen, otherwise it is pathological, par example also a neurotic symptom. The early psychoanalytic theories describe exhibitionism as a "Psychoneurose" as a result of "Odiopussituation", "Kastrationskomplex" and "Inzestwunsch". Psychodynamically this is not satisfying. With the development of psychoanalytic theory, especially the importance of the pregenital phases, changes the classification of perversions. In this article, exhibitionism-- as a neurotic symptom -- is defined as a "schizoide Perversion" (Riemann), which causes can be find in a preoral, intentional phase. Naturally the treatment must be adapted to it.