The [girl’s] attitude to the introjected penis is strongly influenced by her attitude to her mother’s breast. To summarize the primary elements: the first objects that she introjects are her “good” mother and her “bad” one, as represented by the breast. Her desire to suck or devour the penis is directly derived from her desire to do the same to her mother’s breast so that the frustration she suffers from the breast prepares the way for the feelings which her renewed frustration in regard to the penis arouses. Not only do the envy and hatred she feels towards her mother colour and intensify her sadistic phantasies against the penis, but her relations to her mother’s breast affect her subsequent attitude towards men in other ways as well. As soon as she begins to be afraid of the “bad” introjected penis she also begins to run back to her mother who, both as a real person and as an interjected figure, should give help to her. If her primary attitude to her mother has been dominated by the oral-sucking position, so that it contains strong positive and hopeful elements, she will be able to take shelter to some extent behind her “good” mother-imago against her “bad” mother-imago and against the “bad” penis; if not, her fear of her introjected mother will increase her fear of the internalized penis and of her terrifying parents united in copulation, too.

  The importance which the girl’s mother-imago has for her as a “helping” figure and the strength of her attachment to her mother are very great, since in her phantasy her mother is the possessor of the nourishing breast and the father’s penis and children and thus has the power to satisfy all her needs. For when the small girl’s early anxiety-situations set in, her ego makes use of her need for nourishment in the widest sense to assist her in overcoming anxiety. The more she is afraid that her body is poisoned and exposed to attack, the more she craves for the “good” milk, “good” penis and children over which, as her phantasy tells her, her mother has unlimited command. She needs these “good” things to protect her against the “bad” ones, and to establish a certain equilibrium inside her. In her phantasy her mother’s body is therefore a kind of store-house which contains the means of satisfying all her desires and of allaying all her fears. It is these phantasies, leading back to her mother’s breast as her earliest source of satisfaction and as the one most fraught with consequences, which are responsible for her immensely strong attachment to her mother. And the frustration she suffers from her mother gives rise, under the pressure of her anxiety, to renewed complaints against her and to strengthened sadistic attacks upon her body.

  At a somewhat later stage of her development, however, at a time when her sense of guilt is making itself felt in every quarter, this very desire to get possession of the “good” contents of her mother’s body, or rather her feeling that she has done so and thus exposed her mother, as it were, to its “bad” contents, arouses a most severe sense of guilt and anxiety in her. The act of having demolished the child [inside her mother] is equated in her phantasy with the complete demolition of that reservoir from which she draws the satisfaction of all her mental and physical needs. This fear, which is of such tremendous importance in the mental life of the small girl, goes to strengthen still further the ties that bind her to her mother back all that she has taken from her—an impulsion which finds expression in numerous sublimations of a specifically feminine kind.

  But this impulsion runs counter to another impulsion, itself strengthened by the same fear, to take away everything her mother has got in order to save her own body. At this stage of her development, therefore, the girl is governed by a compulsion both to take away and to five back, and this compulsion, as has elsewhere been said, is essential for the origin of obsessional neurosis. For instance, we see small girls drawing little stars or crosses, which signify faeces and children, or older ones writing letters and numbers on a sheet of paper that stands for their mother’s body or their own, and taking great care to leave no empty spaces. Or else they will pile up pieces of paper neatly in a box until it is quite full. Very frequently they will draw a house to represent their mother, and then put a three in front of it for their father’s penis and some flowers beside it for children. Older girls will draw or sew or make dolls and dolls’ dresses or books, etc.; and these things typify their mother’s reconstituted body (either as whole or each damaged part individually), their father’s penis and the children inside her, or their father and brothers and sisters in person.

  While they are engaged in these activities or after they have completed them, children will often show rage, depression or disappointment, or even reactions of a destructive kind, which are determined by the fear of not being able to make restitution. Anxiety of this kind, which is an underlying obstacle to all constructive trends, arises from various sources. The girl has in phantasy taken possession of her father’s penis and faeces and children, and then owing to the fear of penis, children and excrements that sets in with her sadistic phantasies, she loses faith in their good qualities. The questions in her mind now are: will the things she gives back to her mother be “good,” and can she give them back correctly as regards quality and quantity and even as regards the order in which they should be arranged inside (for that, too, is a part of the precondition of restitution)? Again, if she does believe that she has well and truly given her mother back the “good” contents of her body she becomes afraid of having endangered her own person by doing so.

  These sources of anxiety give rise, furthermore, to a special distrust in the girl towards her mother. From time to time girls will wrap up their drawings or paper patterns, or whatever is symbolizing the penis or children for them at the time, tie them up and carefully deposit them in their drawer of toys, with every sign of the deepest suspicion towards me. On these occasions I am not allowed to come near the parcel or even the drawer and must move away or not look on while it is being done up. On entering my room many of my girl patients will look suspiciously at the stock of paper and pencils in the drawer reserved for them, in case they should not belong to them or be smaller in size or fewer in number than on the day before; or they will want to make sure that the contents of their drawer have not been disarranged, and that all is in good order and no article is missing or exchanged for something else. Analysis shows that the drawer and the parcels inside represent their own body and that they are afraid not only that their mother will attack and despoil it but will put “bad” things inside it in exchange for the “good” ones.

  In addition to these many sources of anxiety a further element is added which aggravates the feminine position and the relationship of the girl to her mother—the anatomy of her body. Compared to the boy who enjoys the support of the male position and who has the possibility of reality-testing thanks to his possession of a penis, the girl child cannot get any support against anxiety from her feminine position since her possession of children which would be a complete confirmation and fulfillment of that position, is, after all, only a prospective one. Nor does the structure of her body afford her any possibility of knowing what the actual state of affairs inside her is. It is this inability to know anything about her condition which aggravates what, in my opinion, is the girl’s deepest fear—namely that the inside of her body has been injured or destroyed and that she has no children or only damaged ones.