THE EFFECTS OF EARLY ANXIETY-SITUATIONS ON THE SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GIRL

PSYCHO-ANALYTIC investigation has thrown much less light on the psychology of women than on that of men. Since the fear of castration was the first thing that was discovered as an underlying motive force in the formation of neurosis in men, analysts naturally began by studying aetiological factors of the same kind in women. The results obtained in this way held good in so far as the psychology of the two sexes was similar but not in so far as it differed. Freud has well expressed this point in a passage in which he says: ‘…Furthermore, is it absolutely certain that fear of castration is the only motive force of repression (or defence)? If we think of neurosis in women we are bound to doubt it. For though we can with certainty establish in them the presence of a castration complex, we can hardly speak of a castration anxiety where castration has already taken place.”

   When we consider how important every advance in our knowledge of castration anxiety has been both for understanding the psychology of the man and for effecting a cure of his neurosis, we shall expect that a knowledge of whatever anxiety is its equivalent in the female child will enable us to perfect our therapeutic treatment of her, and help us to get a clearer idea of the lines along which her sexual development moves forward.

The Anxiety-Situation of the Girl

In my “Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict” I have made a contribution to this still unsolved problem and have put forward the view that the girl’s deepest fear is of having the inside of her body robbed and destroyed. As a result of the oral frustration she experiences from her mother, the girl turns away from her and takes her father’s penis as her object of satisfaction. This desire urges her to make further important steps in her development. She evolves phantasies of her mother introducing her father’s penis into her body and giving him the breast; and these phantasies form the nucleus of early sexual theories which arouse feelings of envy and hatred in her at being frustrated by both parents. At this stage of development children of both sexes believe that it is the mother, the source of nourishment, whose body contains all that is desirable, including their father’s penis. This sexual theory increases the small girl’s hatred of her mother on account of the frustration she has suffered from her, and contributes to the production of sadistic phantasies of attacking and destroying her mother’s inside and depriving it of its contents. Owing to her fear of retaliation, such phantasies form the basis of the girl’s deepest anxiety-situation.

    In his paper on “The Early Development of Female Sexuality (1927),” Ernest Jones gives the name aphanisis to the complete and lasting destruction of the capacity to obtain libidinal satisfaction which he considers and early and dominant anxiety-situation for children of both sexes. This assumption is close to my own view. It seems to me that the destruction of the capacity to obtain libidinal gratification implies a destruction of those organs which are necessary for the purpose. And the girl expects to have those organs destroyed in the course of the attacks that will be made, principally by her mother, upon her body and its contents. Her fears concerning her genitals are especially intense, partly because her own sadistic impulses are very strongly directed towards her mother’s genitals and the erotic pleasures she (the mother) gets from them, and partly because her fear of being incapable of enjoying sexual satisfaction serves in its turn to increase her fear of having had her won genitals damaged.