One of the clinical features of women burdened with this problem is over-valuation of sexual intercourse, which to them is an experience of extraordinary intensity. Other features are: low level of self-esteem when absent from the lover, renunciation of the subject's own narcissism and projection of it on to the mate. Masochism, extreme passivity, phantasies of penislessness and childish fixation to the mother are important aspects of the problem. The loved object must always be inflated and over-valued in order to repress the hostile component of the ambivalent relationship. When the strained relationship fails, primitive, aggressive impulses, which were predominant in childhood in relation to the mother, emerge, and there is no longer feeling for and identification with the previously loved object. The 'phallic girl' who has magically incorporated the penis, thus living in a state of satisfied narcissism, has worked out a better solution of her infantile conflicts than the submissive woman who is threatened by her unstable ambivalence and masochism.