Latency in a Fragmented Culture: Industry, Belonging, and the Construction of the Cultural Ideal
Abstract
In classical psychoanalytic literature, the latency phase is described as a period of drive sublimation and relative quiescence preceding adolescence. This paper proposes that latency is, at its core, a period in which the child builds an answer to two questions – where do I belong, and by what standard am I worthy – and that this process becomes harder to accomplish in contemporary culture when, instead of one coherent cultural ideal, the child receives contradictory standards from family, school, the peer group, and the digital world. The paper links the classical Freudian picture of latency with object relations, ego psychology, and self psychology, systematically threading them through the model of eight basic developmental competencies of personality (OLI IPP), and shows, through the lens of Erikson’s industry-versus-inferiority axis, how three seemingly different processes converge: Kohut’s decathexis of grandiosity, the Kleinian integration of aggression and libido, and the ego-psychological synthetic function – all of which, at bottom, describe the same capacity: to tolerate an encounter with a present limitation (momentary inferiority) without a collapse of sublimation, so that one can keep trying and still see oneself as competent even when something is not going well. From this theoretical framework, the paper draws concrete therapeutic implications for work with adult clients who carry unresolved “schoolyard problems,” illustrated through a composite clinical vignette.
Keywords: latency, industry, cultural ideal, basic developmental competencies, self psychology, ego ideal, OLI integrative psychodynamic psychotherapy
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How to cite
Ivanišević, L. (2026). Latency in a Fragmented Culture: Industry, Belonging, and the Construction of the Cultural Ideal. Insights, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2026), 79–96. https://doi.org/10.67978/INSIGHTS.2026.3.4