Convex and Concave, Part I: Images of Emptiness in Women1

The experience of emptiness is endemic to the human condition; Kristeva (1986) posits it as “at the root of the human psyche” (p. 242). Our patients often speak to us of their subjective experiences of emptiness, and yet there is a paucity of literature that specifically focuses on this topic. When it is discussed, it is most often presented in negative terms, as an escape from real engagement with objects who have been experienced as inevitably disappointing (cf. Kernberg, 1975). However, this characterization ignores more positive representations, such as those depicted in Eastern philosophies, of emptiness as providing an opportunity for growth, incorporation, and integration. Milner (1987), for example, points to the dual nature of emptiness, in which the absence of any thing contains within it the potential for growth. Milner (1987) depicts a ‘pregnant emptiness,’ in which the acceptance of void provides the opportunity for what M. Balint (1979) has described as a ‘new beginning.’ Winnicott (1963, 1974) notes the essential aloneness and isolation of the self, suggesting that emptiness is foundational for real existence and for the ability to take in anything in any constructive fashion.

One aspect of emptiness that has not been explored is whether it might be experienced differently by men and women, for whom physiology and life trajectories vary in profound ways. Bonaparte (1953) has distinguished between the female and male functions as convex versus concave; the woman's genital organization is largely concave, whereas the man's is primarily convex, intruding into the world, rather than being intruded into. Conceptually, convex and concave become a Jacob's ladder in which container and contained elusively move from one domain into the other. For example, the womb might be seen as an empty, waiting space, or may be conceptualized in terms of the space itself, containing untold possibilities. The vaginal opening circumscribes its own internal space; within the w