From 1920 to 1980, more than 20 women analysts published in psychoanalytic journals original ideas about female development and sexuality. Their writings, summarized in this paper, were not followed up. The analytic community clung to Freud's original notions about women. Why this happen? This paper proposes that the persistence of original ideas was due to the formation of a scientific thought community and a journal science. Other significant factors were the impact of preliminary training, and the importance of identity and place within a professional community. Until the women's movement of the 1970s and even after, the boundaries of the thought community and its thought style held tight. This paper examines the endurance of psychoanalytic thought about female development.