pre-oedipal phase

pre-oed·i·pal phase

in psychoanalysis, the collective phases of psychosexual development preceding the oedipal phase.

References in periodicals archive ?

As Kristeva elaborates on, abject, in its simplest sense, is associated with the pre-Oedipal phase, therefore is marked by the absence of the Law since passage from the Imaginary to the Symbolic is characterized by the Oedipal complex.

The burst of the real and the law in Philip Ridley's Mercury Fur

Similarly, Julia Kristeva identifies the disruptive power of the remnants of the pre-Oedipal phase in "semiotic" language play (62), attributing to such play the possibility of undermining the symbolic order, associated with the Law of the Father (62-67).

The motherless child in Pauline Hopkins's Of One Blood

Cixous views the pre-Oedipal phase as a repressed yet vital stage in which feminine language and desire are given free reign.

Dora's link to the pre-Oedipal phase can be understood as the re-igniting of repressed memories of a corporeal union with the mother.

Re-imagining the female hysteric: Helene Cixous' Portrait of Dora

In her recent writing, Kristeva connects the constitution of subjectivity to the imaginary tribulations of the pre-Oedipal phase rather than to the Oedipal, symbolic process alone.

Laplanche suggests that an elementary form of subjectivity is constituted when the small infant enters into an identification with certain "enigmatic signifiers" in the pre-Oedipal phase, a phase which initiates the binding of unconscious drives through primal repression.

The affirmation of primary repression rethought: reflections on the state of the self in its unconscious relational world

She talks to friends on the telephone, to her analyst, even to an aspiring angel in heaven, who has clearance to return to earth as an infant in order to research the mystery of the pre-Oedipal phase.