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This paper focuses on the female experience of her own body, the unique anxieties that arise from the nature of the female genitals and the role of the female body in female development. Following Freud's theories of the importance of integrating body experiences in the development of psychic structures, the girl's body and her efforts to integrate it are seen as uniquely feminine.
Three anxieties are described—access, penetration and diffusivity. These represent dangers to body integrity comparable to, but different from, boys' experience of castration anxiety. Not only do different genitals give rise to different anxieties, the different body experiences give rise to different modes of mastery (defence) shaping different character structures.