Koro and schizophrenia in Singapore.

A case of Koro is described in an elderly person with associated inguinal hernia and schizophrenia. Its aetiology and origin are traced in Chinese culture, to the Chin Dynasty. A nosology for the classification of Koro Syndrome is proposed.

Depressive affect, anxiety, and psychic conflict in the phallic-oedipal phase.

The author's recent contributions to affect theory and its relation to psychic conflict are applied to the understanding of the nature, genesis, and consequences of psychic conflict in the phallic-oedipal phase. These contributions lead to a better understanding of 1) the importance of depressive affect in phallic-oedipal conflicts, 2) similarities and differences between such conflicts in boys and girls, 3) depression as a symptom in adult life, and 4) some aspects of narcissism.

"Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye:" toward revision of the theory of male psychosexual development.

"The psychology of women," as it now exists, is a shadowy negative of the psychology of men, and can be successfully formulated only if male psychology is reassessed and considerably revised. Male theorists and practitioners have made virtues of the harsh facts of male socialization. These conditions, which have unhappy repercussions in the male ego and in the culture as a whole, are modifiable only if they are identified and understood.

Oedipal distortions in severe character pathologies. Developmental and theoretical considerations.

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.

Sadism revisited.

Sadism has been for a long time, among psychoanalytic and other writers, the subject of extensive theorizing and controversy. This paper takes a fresh look at the many dimensions (sexual, characterological, neurotic, psychotic, neurological) of this old aberrations.

Case reports the treatment of a child foot fetishist.

The history of a childhood foot fetishist is discussed from a developmental, psychodynamic, and therapeutic point of view. Therapy revealed that the symptom, while initially created in response to parental pathology, later led to specific defense mechanisms which were utilized to avoid developmental tasks, resolve ambivalence, and maintain body integrity.

A cross-cultural test of the Freudian theory of circumcision.

Freud's thesis that circumcision is a symbolic substitute for castration as a result of the Oedipus conflict was tested by examining 111 societies (see the note to Table 1). The results show that circumcision is likely to be found in societies in which (1) the son sleeps in the mother's bed during the nursing period in bodily contact with her, and/or (2) the father sleeps in a different hut, reducing his influence on the son as a superior and competing male. Since these two factors seems to intensify the son's oedipal attachment to the mother, the data are compatible with Freud's theory. Bettelheim's theory of circumcision is less fully formulated, and only when we assume that males significantly reduce their vagina envy after puberty rites is his theory compatible with the data.