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In the analysis of women we became familiar with the masculinity-complex before we learnt much about the 'femininity' which emerges from the conflicts accompanying development. The reasons for this later recognition were various. First of all, analysis comes to know the human mind in its discords rather than in its harmonies, and, when we turn the microscope of observation upon the woman, we see with special distinctness that the main source of her conflicts is the masculinity which she is destined to subdue. It followed that we were able to recognize the 'masculine' element in women earlier and more clearly than what we may term the nucleus of their 'femininity'. Paradoxical as it may sound, we approached the feminine element with greater interest when it formed part of a pathological structure and, as a foreign body, attracted a closer attention. When we encountered in men that instinctual disposition which we designate feminine and passive-masochistic, we recognized its origin and the weighty consequences it entailed. In the case of women we discovered that, even in the most feminine manifestations of their life—menstruation, conception, pregnancy and parturition—they had a constant struggle with the never wholly effaced evidences of the bisexuality of their nature. Hence, in my earlier writings2 I shewed with what elemental force the masculinity-complex flares up in the female reproductive functions, to be once more subdued.
My aim in this paper is different. I want to examine the genesis of 'femininity', by which I mean the feminine, passive-masochistic disposition in the mental life of women. In particular I shall try to elucidate the relation of the function of feminine instinct to the function of reproduction, in order that we may first of all clarify our ideas