Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/34

26 a logical revenge upon the man in that they keep him waiting on all occasions in daily life.

There is another condition related to the above mentioned 'If I were the most beautiful woman'. In some women we find readiness to admit the male activity and their own passivity connected with the idea that the most manly (greatest, most important) man should come and desire them. We have no difficulty in recognising here the infantile desire for the father. I have previously mentioned an example of a phantastic form of this idea from one of my psycho-analyses. I was able to follow the development of a similar phantasy through different stages in the psycho-analysis of another patient. The original desire ran: 'I should like to be a man'. When this was given up, the patient wished to be 'the only woman' (at first 'the only woman of the father' was meant). When also this wish had to give way to reality; the idea appeared: 'As a woman I should like to be unique'.

Certain compromise formations are of far greater practical importance, and though well-known to psycho-analysts nevertheless merit special consideration in this connection. They concern the acknowledgement of the man, or to be more correct, his activity and the organ serving it, combined with definite limitations. Sexual relations with the man are endured, even wished-for, so long as the woman's own genital organ is avoided, or is, so to speak, considered to be non-existent. A displacement of libido to other erotogenic zones (mouth, anus) takes place, and a mitigation of feelings of discomfort originating in the castration complex is associated with this turning away of sexual interest from the genital organ. The body openings which are now at the disposal of the libido are not specifically female organs! Further determinants are found in the analysis of each of this kind of cases; one only need be mentioned, namely, the possibility of active castration through biting by means of the mouth. Oral and anal perversions in women are therefore to a considerable extent explicable in the light of the castration complex.

Among our patients we certainly have to deal more frequently with the negative counterpart of the perversions, i.e. with conversion symptoms which occur in relation to the specific erotogenic zones, than with the perversions themselves. Examples of this kind have already been mentioned above. I referred among other cases to that of a young girl who had the phobia of having to