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If one studies closely the many important contributions made in the past ten years, particularly by women analysts, to the admittedly obscure problems relating to the early development of female sexuality one perceives an unmistakable disharmony among the various writers, and this is beginning to shew also in the field of male sexuality. Most of these writers have been laudably concerned to lay stress on the points of agreement with their colleagues, so that the tendency to divergence of opinion has not always come to full expression. It is my purpose here to investigate it unreservedly in the hope of crystallizing it. If there is confusion it is desirable to clear it up; if there is a divergence of opinion we should, by defining it, be able to set ourselves interesting questions for further research.
For this purpose I will select the theme of the phallic phase. It is fairly circumscribed, but we shall see that it ramifies into most of the deeper and unsolved problems. In a paper read before the Innsbruck Congress in 1927, 2 I put forward the suggestion that the phallic phase in the development of female sexuality represented a secondary solution of psychical conflict, of a defensive nature, rather than a simple and direct developmental process; last year Professor Freud3