Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/10

 KARL ABRAHAM

■women. If we incline to this view then we place ourselves under the obligation of examining both thoroughly and without prejudice the facts to which we attribute such a general significance.

Many women are often quite conscious of the fact that certain phenomena of their mental life arise from an intense dislike ot being a woman ; but, on the other hand, many of them are quite in the dark as regards the motives of such an aversion. Certain arguments are again and again brought forward to explain this attitude : for instance, it is said that girls even in childhood are at a disadvantage to boys because boys are allowed greater freedom; or, in later life, men are permitted to choose their profession and can extend their sphere of activity in many directions, and especially that they are Subjected to far fewer restrictions in their sexual life. Psycho-analysis, however, shows that conscious arguments of this sort are of limited value, and are the result of rationalisation— a process which veils the motives lying deeper. Direct observation of young girls shows unequivocally that at a certain stage of their development they feel at a dis- advantage as regards the male sex by their poverty in external genitals. The results of the psycho-analysis of adults fully agree with this observation. We find that a large proportion of women have not overcome this disadvantage; or, expressed psycho- analytically, they have not successfully repressed and sublimated it. Ideas belonging to it often impinge with great force, arising in their strong charge of libido, against the barriers which oppose their entry into consciousness. This struggle of repressed material widi the censorship can be demonstrated in a great variety of neurotic symptoms, dreams, etc.

The observation that the non-possession of a male organ produces such a serious and lasting effect in the woman's mental life would justify us in denoting all the mental derivatives relating to it by the coUective name 'genital complex'. We prefer, however, to make use of an expression taken from the psychology of male neurotics, and to speak of the 'castration complex' also in the female sex ; we have good reasons for this.

The child's high estimation of its own body is closely connected with its narcissism. A girl has primarily no feeling of inferiority in regard to her own body, and does not recognise that it ex- hibits a defect in comparison with a boy's. A girl, inc^able of recognising a primary defect in her body, forms then the following