Internet Discussion Review ‘Problems Of Female Sexuality: The Defensive Function Of Certain Phantasies About The Body’ By Loredana Micati Squitieri

Micati Squitieri's paper appeared in Part 4, Volume 80, and was placed on the website (ijpa.org) several weeks earlier for discussion. In brief, the author discusses early mental representations of the body that may be chosen by a female child as a defence against developmental difficulties, particularly ‘primitive agonies’. In cases of women in whom representations of a fragile self predominate, the body is not only felt as being a mysterious, receptive cavity, but also as an unreliable organism. Where the self is perceived as fragile, the body also tends to be thought of as being so fragile as to increase the self's fragility. Following this hypothesis, the inner representation of the precariousness of the self tends to take the form of an unreliable anatomy and, in turn, the perception of a delicate, mysterious anatomy sharpens the feeling of the fragility of the self. The female body may be experienced as a wounded body (Argentieri, 1982, 1985), which, through an opening over which there is no control (Bernstein, 1990), may lose its inner contents and let in dangerous aggressors. The vaginal opening may also be seen in a way that triggers persecutory anxieties. A defensive phantasy (Micati, 1992) created as protection against these painful perceptions may be that

of, secretly and guiltily, having some qualities of the male body (robustness, strength, solidity), represented by reassuring male sexual organs.

Micati Squitieri summarises how Freud (1925) links female psychic development to the meaning that the female child is able to give to the discovery of her anatomy. This meaning is one of a lack. When the little girl realises her lack of a penis she replaces the penis wish with the wish to have a child by the father. When she enters the phallic phase the little girl is a ‘little man’, the vagina being ignored by both sexes. Horney by contrast (1926) emphasises the positive aspects of female sexuality and wonders if male envy of pregnancy could underlie