Sophie de Mijolla-Mellor : the seducer as ferryman

Within the interplay of sexes and generations, the seducer is above all a “ ferryman ” enabling the adolescent girl who embarks with him to find again both the multiple harmonies of her polymorphic infantile sexuality and an incestuous dream. This passage is a re-crossing of time and of a socially regulated evolution towards the status of woman and mother ; it will make a little girl of her again. It is passage also in the sense of a fantasy transgression which is possible only if it has not already happened earlier in reality. For incest is not the Œdipus complex but rather crushing of it, as dream and reality collide.