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Attention is drawn to the significance, for the psychic development of the adult male, of the impossibility of fulfilling the preoedipal wish to be
pregnant and bear children like mother. The obstacles to be overcome are the feelings of rage, jealousy, rivalry, and above all the feelings of impotence and helplessness and the destructive aggression which accompany these experiences. In early childhood, childbearing is experienced as achievement, power, and competition with the mother. It represents being active like mother. It is an identification with the active producing mother.
This problem plays an important role in numerous men, and to elaborate these conflicts without suffering a disturbance in development is one of the greatest tasks in the preoedipal phase of the male.
Further research is necessary to establish to what degree this is generally true, how these problems manifest themselves in women, whether there are characteristic differences in the development of the male and female, or whether their development takes largely the same course or is even identical.
Analytical material demonstrates that conflicts arising from this difficulty may lead to the persistence of the identification with the preoedipal mother, that they may disturb the productive, creative activity and may be a factor in the genesis of perversions.