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Abstract:
Theories of the avant-garde in art aim at discovering new meanings in what appear to be securely established traditions. This approach also plays an important role in psychoanalysis, inquiring as it does into the human capacity for subsequently relating to the past in such a way as to create new traditions with a view to restructuring the present. Erdheim's contention is that this historical capacity is a product of the two-phase nature of human sexual development and comes to fruition in adolescence: "Adolescence is the avant-garde of the individual." With reference to three specific factors--male-female polarity, the meaning of aggression and omnipotence, antagonism between family and culture--the author traces the way in which this past-oriented and future-related structure takes shape in adolescence.