The Theory of Genital Primacy in the Light of Ego Psychology

This panel was organized and designed with the intent of re-examining one of the oldest, accepted psychoanalytic concepts. In his introduction to the panel, Nathaniel Ross stated that the concept of genital primacy appears to be one of the most solid bastions in the structure of psychoanalytic theory, yet very little appears in the literature which represents an attempt to revise, reappraise, or reinvestigate it, let alone challenge it. It has long been taken for granted that the optimal kind of sexual experience should be inevitably linked to the optimal kind of human relationship, the abiding, steadfast capacity for postambivalent relationships between the sexes. Thus, the attainment of mature object relations and of genital primacy have traditionally been considered dependent variables.

More often the reverse aspect of genital primacy is familiar to psychoanaysts in their work with patients, viz., that neurotic men and women are incapable of satisfactory experiences in the sexual act. Wilhelm Reich claimed that this was true in all cases of neurosis.

As Ross pointed out, throughout the literature the beneficent effects of orgastic experiences are spelled out—freedom from guilt, freedom to sublimate, strengthening of the ego, optimal relief of tension, regression in the service of the ego, optimal distribution of cathexes, strengthening of mutuality between the sexes, strengthening of personal integrations, favorable influences upon the offspring, relief of pregenital tensions in subserving the genital function, etc. In addition, it has been stated that very possibly the height of human joy is attained in a mutual orgastic experience by a man and woman who feel tenderness and unambivalent love for each other.

The essence of problematic correlations which became the keynote for subsequent panel presentations and discussions was contained in Ross's statement that if the theory does not also state that the attainment of truly