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FROM THE EARLIEST DAYS OF ANALYSIS, work has been recognized as one of the most important aspects of human life. Although occasional articles have been addressed to the theory of work or to disturbances in performance (Hendrick, 1943); (Menninger, 1942); (Obendorf, 1951), and learning inhibition in the normal or even superiorly endowed child has been the subject of a number of papers (Halpern, 1964); (Hellman, 1954); (Mahler, 1942), the subject of work inhibition in women has been neglected. This neglect might be expected during the years when psychoanalysis was young, inasmuch as the number of women in the professions and in business, the group from which most analytic patients are drawn, was then relatively small. Nonetheless, as the numbers of women in these occupations have increased, analytic observations have laged. Social preconceptions and parts of analytic theory undoubtedly play an important role in this finding: Because it has been regarded as less natural for women to seek careers, the wish to do so may be interpreted as pathological, representing too strong an identification with the father, or pathological penis envy — in short, a representation of misplaced masculine strivings.
It would seem appropriate, therefore, to focus on these disturbances in women, both because the subject has been neglected and because such problems are appearing in some profusion. This profusion may be accounted for by the fact