The Pearl and Castration Symbolism

One day a patient during analysis remarked quite spontaneously that she was going to call her vulva 'Moti'. I asked her why she gave it that name. She said, 'Because it is a pearl. "Moti" means a pearl'. As I did not know this word she explained that she had been reading Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills, and the word 'Moti' meaning a pearl occurs in that book. I asked her why her vulva was a pearl. She

said, 'A pearl is a wound in an oyster'. Then correcting herself added, 'A pearl is the result of a wound in an oyster'. I remarked, 'If a pearl is the result of a wound in an oyster and you call your vulva "Moti" or pearl, then it seems to follow that you consider your vulva is the result of a wound.' She agreed with this idea. I next asked her when she got the wound. She said, 'When my father died, he took away his penis.' The patient's father died when she was eighteen months old. If we consider her last remark, 'my father took away his penis', we find that it means deprived her of her love-object, for she calls a penis 'Lalji, ' which means beloved. This word is also from Plain Tales from the Hills. If, on the other hand we substitute 'my penis' for 'his penis' in her remark, and this is legitimate seeing that she has the wound, then we have a definite idea of castration by the father. There seems also to be a self-castration in virtue of identification with the father, thus, his = my, my father = I.

Identification with the father is shown in the following incident. During the next analytical hour she said, 'I feel that I am walking with you holding on to your thumb.' She then added, 'You remember I told you once that I used to catch hold of my father's thumb, and wanted to put it in my mouth'. This she had previously told me as a memory. She next mentioned that the thumb also represents a phallus. It is obvious that I am standing in the place of her father. Suddenly she said, 'I feel I must touch your thumb.' Thereupon she immediately e