According to psychoanalytic theory, boys' fear of castration is most closely associated witha. an oral fixation. b.free association. c.learned helplessness. d.the Oedipus complex. e.the genital stage.

The correct answer is letter D

In psychoanalysis, the concept of "castration" does not correspond to the usual acceptance of mutilation of male sexual organs, but designates a complete psychic experience, unconsciously lived by the child around 5 years of age, and decisive for the realization of his future sexual identity . The castration complex is not reduced to a simple chronological moment in child sexuality. On the contrary, the unconscious experience of castration is constantly renewed throughout existence and particularly at stake in the analytical cure of the adult patient.

The castration complex makes up, together with the Oedipus complex, the base where the structure of desires that founds and institutes the subject in his relationship with the world operates his subjectivity. Recognizing that the body's limits fall short of its desires is to admit the breaking of a certain feeling of omnipotence that the self insists on sustaining, in our imaginary relationship with the other.

answer; ///he could not explain why the continents drifted;