Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/13

 MANIFESTATIONS OF THE FEMALE CASTRATION COMPLEX 5

the body she painfully misses; for the child's narcissistic confidence still leads her to believe that she could not possibly be permanently defective, and creative 'omnipotence' is readily ascribed to the father who can bestow on the child everything it desires.

But all these dreams crumble after a time. The pleasure principle ceases to dominate psychical processes unconditionally, adaptation to reality commences and with it the criticism of one's own wishes. The girl has now in the course of her psychosexual development to carry out an adaptation which is not demanded of boys in a similar manner; she has to reconcile herself to the fact of her physical 'defect', and to her female sexual r61e. The undisturbed enjoyment of early genital sensations will be a considerable aid in facilitating the renunciation of masculinity, for by this means the female genitals will regain their narcissistic value.

In reality, however, the process is considerably more complicated. Freud has drawn our attention to the close association of certain ideas in the child, namely, that the idea of a proof of love is insq>arable from that of a gift The first proof of love, which creates a lasting impression on the child and is repeated many times, is feeding from the mother. This act brings food to the child and therefore increases its material property, and at the same time acts as an agreeable stimulus to its erotogenic zones. It is interesting that in certain districts of Germany (according to my colleague Herr Koerber) the suckling of a child is denoted 'Schenken' (to give, to pour). The child within certain limits repays the mother's 'gift' by a 'gift' in return — it regulates its bodily evacuations according to her wishes. The motions at an early age are the child's material gift par excellence in return for all the proofs of love it receives.

Psycho-analysis, however, has shown that the child in this early psychosexual period of development considers its faeces as a part of its own body. The process of identification further establishes a close relation between the ideas 'motion' and 'penis'. The boy's anxiety regarding the loss of the penis is based on this equating of the two ideas; the penis may be detached from the body in the same way as the motion is. In girls, however, the phantasy occurs of obtaining a penis by way of defaecation— to make one herself — or to receive it as a gift: the father as beatus possidens is usually the giver. The psychical process is thus dominated by the equation: motion — gift - penis.