You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
A brief introduction by the moderator, Sara Zac de Filc, drew attention to the richness of material in the papers to be presented, both in the interesting points of view expressed by the authors and in their being based in different theories, all of which paved the way for the following truly fruitful presentations and subsequent discussion. The first panellist, Castellaro de Pozzi, basically re-examined the theories of Freud, Abraham, Klein and the post-Kleinian writers (Bion and Meltzer in particular), focusing on points that, according to the panellist, might help us to understand impotence and frigidity.
With regard to Freud's views on impotence, Castellaro de Pozzi stressed three points: incest and its repression, castration anxiety and the importance of the link between female identification and male homosexuality, this link originating in the fact that both are related to the castration complex.
Castellaro de Pozzi suggests that Freud relates frigidity in the woman to the characteristics of the Oedipus complex. Lacking a penis, the little girl experiences a narcissistic injury that awakens penis envy; she is unaware of the existence of her vagina and her masturbation is only clitoral. It is oedipal non-renunciation of her father that conditions frigidity in the woman, who is unable to tolerate the fact that her partner is not her father. Again, when the male identifies his female partner with his mother, impotence may appear. With frigidity, we also find aggression towards the male, especially when, not experiencing vaginal pleasure, the woman casts doubt upon the potency of her partner.
As for Abraham's contribution, Castellaro de Pozzi says that this writer relates envy to narcissism, with special emphasis on the latter, as narcissism is the cause of aggressive attitudes and of male denigration of women, jeopardising the transformation of the penis as urinary organ to the penis as the instrument of genital sexuality.
Castellaro de Pozzi, in her discussion