Development in the first half of life is marked by two decisive crises, each of which corresponds to a fight with the dragon.  The first crisis is characterized by the encounter with the problem of the First Parents and by the formation of the ego.  It is enacted between the ages of three and five, and psychoanalysis has made us familiar with certain aspects and forms of this parental encounter, under the guise of the Oedipus complex.  The second crisis is puberty, when the dragon fight has to be fought out again on a new level.  Here the form of the ego is finally fixed with the support of what we have called 'heaven.'  That is to say, new archetypal constellations emerge, and with them a new relation of the ego to the self.

• dragon fight
• early childhood development
• ego
• self
• archetypes
• life
• parents
• heaven
• oedipus
• crises