Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 2.djvu/26

 182 AUGUST STARCKE

HI

We have to remember that the castration complex has also a positive side, the content of which is that a penis is imagined in a part of the body where is does not exist. We have therefore to look for an infantile situation of universal occurrence in which a penis-like part of the body is taken from another person, given to the child as his own (a situation with which are associated pleasurable sensations), and then taken away from the child causing "pain" [Vnlusi). This situation can be none other than that of the child at the breast.

Before proceeding further I should like to mention some facts from the analysis of dreams which have given me the idea that the content of the castration thoughts is the withdrawal of the nipple.

Discretion compels me to mention only the following details from the first dream. The dreamer was a woman. Prima; All kinds of wishes from the castration complex; complaints at not having received a penis, instead of it only a "niggardly female organ", a "cypher", a "button-hole without a button"; scorn at the defective penis function in other people, or castration wishes directed on to me and on to the male members of the family. Secundo: Excremental-oral-ero tic pictures; especially wishes to drink or to be allowed to drink urine. Tertio: Drinking from a woman's breast, whereby blood forms the transition between milk and urine. The symbolic equation would read: Urine = menstruation urine = blood = blood of the pelican with which it feeds its young = milk. The dreamer has an aversion to imitation jewellery; this, like her repugnance to the female breast, means that it is repug- nant to her to possess nipples because they are false, that is to say, because they cannot become a proper penis *, any more than the clitoris. There is also a second meaning: the female breast has disappointed her, it has not brought the proper gratification; this she therefore seeks in women, but is always again dis- appointed.

The dreamer often had preconscious phantasies of sucking at a penis; and many of her symptoms were based on the oral im- pregnation theory. Freud has several times pointed out that the

• Also not a proper breast nipple; she wanted a breast nipple in the mouth.