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

Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict

According to my experience, the girl’s Oedipus tendencies are ushered in by her oral desires for her father’s penis. These desires are already accompanied by genital impulses. Her wish to rob her mother of her father’s penis and incorporate it in herself, I have found, is a fundamental factor in the development of her sexual life. The resentment her mother has aroused in her by withdrawing the nourishing breast from her is intensified by the further wrong she has done her in not granting her her father’s penis as an object of satisfaction; and this double grievance is the deepest source of the hatred the female child feels towards her mother as a result of her Oedipus trends.

These assumptions differ in some respects from accepted psycho-analytical theory. Freud has come to the conclusion that it is the castration complex that introduces the girl’s Oedipus complex, and that what makes her turn away from her mother is the grudge she bears her for having denied her a penis of her own. The divergence between Freud’s view and the one put forward here, however, becomes less great if we reflect that they agree on two important points—namely, that the girl wants to have a penis and that she hates her mother for not giving her one. But, according to my assumption, what she primarily wants is not to possess a penis of her own as an attribute of masculinity, but to incorporate her father’s penis as an object of oral satisfaction. Furthermore, I think that this desire is not an outcome of her castration complex but the most fundamental expression of her Oedipus trends, and that consequently the female child is brought under the sway of her Oedipus impulses not indirectly, through her masculine tendencies and her penis-envy, but directly, as a result of her dominant feminine instinctual components.

When the girl turns to her father’s penis as the wished-for object, several factors determine the intensity of her desire. The demands of her oral-sucking impulses, heightened by the frustration she has suffered from her mother’s breast, create in her a phantasy picture of her father’s penis as an organ which, unlike the breast, can provide her with tremendous and never-ending oral gratification. To this phantasy her urethral-sadistic impulses add their contribution. For children of both sexes attribute far greater urethral capacities to the penis—where, indeed, they are more visible—than to the female urinary organ. The girl’s phantasies about the urethral capacity and power of the penis become allied to her oral phantasies, in virtue of the equation which small children make between all bodily substances; and in her imagination the penis is an object which possesses magical powers of providing oral satisfaction. But since the oral frustration she has suffered from her mother has stimulated all her other erotogenic zones as well and has aroused her genital trends and desires in regard to her father’s penis, the latter becomes the object of her oral, urethral, anal and genital impulses. Another factor which serves to intensify her desires in this direction is her unconscious sexual theory that her mother has incorporated her father’s penis, and her consequent envy of her mother.

It is the combination of all these factors, I think, which endows her father’s penis with such enormous powers in the eyes of the small girl and makes it the object of her most ardent admiration and desire. If she retains a predominantly feminine position, this attitude towards her father’s penis will often lead her to assume a humble and submissive attitude towards the male sex. But it can also cause her to have intense feelings of hatred for having been denied the things which she has so passionately adored and longed for; and if she takes up a masculine position it can give rise to all the signs and symptoms of penis-envy in her.

But since the small girl’s phantasies about the enormous powers and huge size and strength of her father’s penis arise from her own oral-, urethral- and anal-sadistic impulses, she will also attribute extremely dangerous properties to it. This aspect of it provides the substratum of her terror of the “bad” penis, which sets in as a reaction to the destructive impulses which, in combination with libidinal ones, are directed towards it. If her oral sadism is dominant, she will regard her father’s penis within her mother principally as a thing to be hated, envied and destroyed; and the hate-filled phantasies which she centres upon her father’s penis as something that is giving her mother satisfaction will in some cases be so intense that they will cause her to displace her deepest and most powerful anxiety—her fear of her mother—on to her father’s penis as a hated appendage of her mother. If this happens, the adult woman will suffer severe impairments in her development and will be led into a distorted attitude towards the male sex. She will also have a more or less defective relationship to her objects and be unable to overcome, or overcome completely, the stage of partial love.

In virtue of the omnipotence of thoughts, the [girl’s] oral desire for her father’s penis makes her feel that she has in fact incorporated it; hence her ambivalent feelings towards her father’s penis become extended to this internalized one. As we know, in the stage of partial incorporation the object is represented by a part of itself; so that the father’s penis stands for his whole person. That is why, I think, the child’s earliest father-imagos—the nucleus of the paternal super-ego—are represented by his penis. As I have tried to show, the terrifying and cruel character of the super-ego in children of both sexes is due to the fact that they have begun to introject their objects at a period of development when their sadism is at its height. Hence, their earliest imagos assume the phantastic aspect which their own dominant pre-genital impulses have imparted to them. But this drive to introject the father’s penis, that is, the Oedipus object, and to keep it inside is much stronger in the girl than in the boy. For the genital tendencies which coincide with her oral desires have a receptive character too, so that under normal circumstances the girl’s Oedipus trends are to a far greater extent under the dominance of oral impulses than are those of the boy. It is a matter of decisive importance for the formation of the super-ego and the development of sexual life whether the prevailing phantasies are those of a “good” penis or a “bad” one. But in either case, the girl, being more subordinated to her introjected father, is more at the mercy of his powers for good or evil than the boy is normally in relation to his supper-ego. And her anxiety and sense of guilt in regard to her mother serve to complicate still further her divided feelings about her father’s penis.

In order to simplify our survey of the whole situation I will first of all follow the development of the girl’s attitude to her father’s penis and then try to discover how far her relationship to her mother affects her relationship with her father. In favourable circumstances the girl believes in the existence of a dangerous, introjected penis, as well as of a beneficent and helpful one. As a result of this ambivalent attitude, anxiety is generated which drives the very young child as well as the adult to seek sexual experiences. This impetus which strengthens, and is added to her libidinal desires for a penis arises in the following way. Her fear of the introjected “bad” penis arises in the following way. Her fear of the introjected “bad” penis is an incentive to her continually introjecting a “good” one in coitus. Moreover, her sexual acts, whether in the form of fellatio, coitus per anum or normal coitus, help her to ascertain whether the fears which play such a dominant and fundamental role in her mind in connection with copulation are well grounded or not. The reason why copulation has become fraught with so much peril in the imagination of children of both sexes is that their sadistic wish-phantasies have transformed that act, as done between their father and mother, into a very threatening danger-situation.

 I have already gone into the nature of these sadistic masturbation phantasies in some detail, and have found that they fall into two distinct, though interconnected, categories. In those of the first category the child employs various sadistic means to 1) make a direct onslaught upon its parents either combined in coitus or separately; in those of the second, which are derived from a somewhat later period of the phase when sadism is at its height, its belief in its sadistic omnipotence over its parents finds expression in a more indirect fashion. It endows them with instruments of 2) mutual destruction, transforming their teeth, nails, genitals, excrements and so on, into dangerous weapons and animal, etc., and pictures them, according to its won desires, as tormenting and destroying each other in the act of copulation.

Both categories of sadistic phantasies give rise to anxiety from various sources. In connection with the first category the girl is afraid of being counter-attacked by one or both parents, but more particularly by her mother as the more hated one of the two. She expects to be assailed from within as well as from without, since she has introjected her objects at the same time as she has attacked them. Her fears on this score are very closely connected with sexual intercourse, because her primary sadistic actions have to a very great extent been directed against her parents as she imagined them copulating together. But it is more especially in phantasies belonging to the second category that copulation, in which, according to her sadistic desires, her mother is utterly destroyed, becomes an act fraught with immense danger to herself. On the other hand, the sexual act, which her sadistic phantsies and wishes have transformed into a situation of such extreme danger, is for this very reason also the most powerful method of mastering anxiety—the more so because the libidinal gratification that accompanies it affords her the highest attainable pleasure and thus lessens her anxiety on its own score.

This view throws a new light, I think, on the motives which urge the individual to perform the sexual act and on the psychological sources which contribute to the libidinal satisfaction he obtains from that act. As we know, the libidinal satisfaction of all his erotogenic zones implies a satisfaction of his destructive components as well, owing to the fusion of his libidinal and destructive impulses that has taken place in those stages of his development which are dominated by his sadistic trends. Now, in my opinion, his destructive impulses have aroused anxiety in him as early as in the first months of his life. In consequence, his sadistic phantasies become bound up with anxiety, and this tie between the two gives rise to specific anxiety-situations. Since his genital impulses set in while he is still in the phase when sadism is at its height—or so I have found—and copulation represents, in his sadistic phantasies, a vehicle of destruction for his parents, these anxiety-situations which are aroused in the early stages of his development become connected with his genital activities as well. The effect of such a fusion is that, on the one hand, his anxiety intensifies his libidinal needs, and, on the other, the libidinal satisfaction of all erotogenic zones is used in the service of mastering anxiety. Libidinal satisfaction diminishes his aggressiveness and with it his anxiety. In addition, the pleasure he gets from such satisfaction seems in itself to allay his fear of being destroyed by his own destructive impulses and by his objects, and to militate against aphanisis (Jones), i.e. his fear of losing his capacity to achieve libidinal satisfaction. Libidinal satisfaction, as an expression of Eros, reinforces his belief in his helpful imagos and diminishes the dangers which threaten him from his death instinct and his super-ego.

The more anxiety the individual has and the more neurotic he is, the more the energies of his ego and his instinctual forces will be absorbed in the endeavour to overcome anxiety; and then too, the libidinal satisfaction will primarily be employed for the purpose of mastering anxiety. In the normal person, who is further removed from his early anxiety-situations and has modified them more successfully, the effect of those situations upon his sexual activities is, of course, far less; but as I see it, it is never entirely absent. The normal person too, feels an impulsion to test his specific anxiety-situations in his relations to his partner in love, which strengthens and gives colour to his libidinal fixations; thus the sexual act always helps the normal person to master anxiety. The dominant anxiety-situations and the quantities of anxiety present are specific elements of the conditions for love which apply to everyone.

If the girl, who tests her anxiety-situations by means of the sexual act which corresponds to a test by reality, is supported by feelings of a confident and hopeful kind, she will be led to take as her object a person who represents the “good” penis. In this case, the relief of anxiety which is achieved by the sexual act will give her a strong enjoyment and considerably add to the purely libidinal satisfaction she experiences; and beyond this, it lays the foundations for lasting and satisfactory love relationships. But if the circumstances are unfavourable and her fear of the introjected “bad” penis predominates, the necessary condition for her ability to love will be that she shall make this reality-test by means of a “bad” penis—i.e. that her partner in love shall be a sadistic person. The test she makes in this case is meant to inform her of what kind of damage her partner will inflict on her through the sexual act. Even her anticipated injuries in this respect serve to allay her anxiety and are of importance in the economy of her mental life. The impulsion to relieve the fear of internal and external dangers by means of proofs in the external world appears to me to be an essential factor in repetition compulsion. The more neurotic the individual is, the more are these proofs bound up with the need for punishment. The stronger the anxiety of the earliest anxiety-situations and the weaker the hopeful currents of feeling, the less favourable are the conditions with which these counterproofs are bound up. In such cases only severe punishment, or rather unhappy experiences (which are taken as punishment), can replace the dreaded punishment which is anticipated in phantasy. Her choice of a sadistic partner is also based upon a drive to incorporate once more a sadistic “bad” penis (for that is how she views the sexual act) which will destroy the dangerous objects within her. Thus the deepest root of feminine masochism would seem to be the woman’s fear of the dangerous objects she has internalized; and her masochism would ultimately be none other than her sadistic instincts turned inwards against those internalized objects.

According to Freud, sadism, although it first becomes apparent in relation to an object, was originally a destructive instinct directed against the organism itself (primal sadism) and was only later diverted from the ego by the narcissistic libido; and erotogenic masochism is that portion of the destructive instinct which has not been able to be turned outward in this way and has remained within the organism and been libidinally bound there. He furthermore thinks that in so far as any part of the destructive instinct which has been directed outward is once more turned inwards and drawn away from its objects, it gives rise to secondary or feminine masochism. As far as I can see, however, when the destructive instinct has reverted in this way it still adheres to its objects; but now they are internalized ones, and in threatening to destroy them, it also threatens to destroy the ego in which they are situated. In this way in feminine masochism the destructive instinct is once more directed against the organism itself. Freud says “…a sense of guilt, too, finds expression in the manifest content of masochistic phantasies; the subject assumes that he has committed some crime (the nature of which is left indefinite) which is to be expiated by these painful and tormenting procedures.” There seem to me to be certain points in common between the self-tormenting behaviour of the masochist and the self-reproaches of the melancholiac, which, as we know, are in fact directed towards his introjected object. It would seem, therefore, that feminine masochism is directed towards the ego as well as towards the introjected objects. Moreover, in destroying his internalized object the individual is acting in the interests of self-preservation; and in extreme cases his ego will no longer be able to turn his death-instinct outwards, for both life and death-instincts have united in a common aim and the former has been withdrawn from its proper function of protecting the ego.

We will now briefly consider one or two other typical forms which may be assumed by the sexual life of women in whom fear of the introjected penis is paramount. Women, who, besides having strong masochistic inclinations, harbour more hopeful currents of feeling, often tend to entrust their affections to a sadistic partner and at the same time to make endeavours of every kind—endeavours which often take up all the energies of their ego—to turn him into a “good” object. Women of this kind, in whom fear of the “bad” penis and belief in the “good” one are evenly balanced, often fluctuate between the choice of a “good” external object and a “bad” one.

Not infrequently the woman’s fear of the internalized penis urges her to test her anxiety-situation again and again, with the result that she will be under a constant compulsion to perform the sexual act with her object, or as a variant to this, to exchange that object for another. In differently constituted cases, again, the same fear will have an opposite outcome and the woman will become frigid. As a child, her hatred of her mother made her change her father’s penis from a desirable and bountiful object into a dangerous and evil one; whilst, in her imagination, she had transformed the vagina into an instrument of death, and the whole of her mother into a source of danger to her father having sexual intercourse with her. Her fear of the sexual act is thus based both on the injuries she will receive from the penis and on the injuries she will herself inflict on her partner. Her fear that she will castrate him is due partly to her identification with her sadistic mother and partly to her own sadistic trends.

As I have already shown, if the girl adopts a masochistic attitude, her sadistic trends are directed towards her internalized objects. But should her fear of the internalized penis impel her to defend herself against its threats from within by projection, she will direct her sadism towards the external object—towards the penis which is being introjected afresh in the act of coitus, and thus towards her sexual partner. In such cases, the ego has once more succeeded in turning the destructive instinct away from itself and now too from the internalized objects, and is again directing it towards an external object. If the girl’s sadistic trends predominate, she will still regard copulation as a test by reality of her anxiety, but in an opposite way. Her phantasies that her vagina and body as a whole are destructive to her partner and that in fellatio she will bite off his penis and tear it to pieces are now the means of overcoming her fear of the penis she has incorporated and of her real object. In employing her sadism against her external object she is in phantasy also waging a war of extermination against her internalized objects.