The Psychology of Women in Relation to the Functions of Reproduction1

Psycho-analytic research discovered at the very outset that the development of the infantile libido to the normal heterosexual object-choice is in women rendered difficult by certain peculiar circumstances.

In males the path of this development is straightforward, and the advance from the 'phallic' phase does not take place in consequence of a complicated 'wave of repression', but is based upon a ratification of that which already exists and is accomplished through ready and willing utilization of an already urgent force. The essence of the achievement lies in the mastery of the Oedipus attitude which it connotes, and in overcoming the feelings of guilt bound up with this.

The girl, on the other hand, has in addition to this a two-fold task to perform: (1) she has to renounce the masculinity attaching to the clitoris; (2) in her transition from the 'phallic' to the 'vaginal' phase she has to discover a new genital organ.

The man attains his final stage of development when he discovers the vagina in the world outside himself and possesses himself of it sadistically. In this his guide is his own genital organ, with which he is already familiar and which impels him to the act of possession.

The woman has to discover this new sexual organ in her own person, a discovery which she makes through being masochistically subjugated by the penis, the latter thus becoming the guide to this fresh source of pleasure.

The final phase of attaining to a definitively feminine attitude is not gratification through the sexual act of the infantile desire for a penis, but full realization of the vagina as an organ of pleasure—an exchange of the desire for a penis for the real and equally valuable possession of a vagina. This newly-discovered organ must become for the woman 'the whole ego in miniature', a 'duplication of the ego', as Ferenczi2terms it when speaking of the value of the penis to the man.