Conflict and Conflict Inhibition in Women: Theoretical Considerations and Clinical Applications

Clinical and experimental research, along with everyday observation, illustrates significant differences in the way women and men express aggression (Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974). Until recently, however, psychoanalysts and psychologists have dealt primarily with the reasons for this sex-linked discrepancy. The question has been, “Why do women express aggression less than men?” By contrast, the question, “What does it mean for women that they express aggression less than men?” has seldom been addressed. The absence of attention to women and their relative lack of aggressive expression is all the more striking when one considers the general agreement among professionals that aggression and its derivatives — mastery, achievement and creativity — are necessary for the full and healthy development of males . Not only have similar healthy needs not been ascribed to women, but in fact the opposite position is held: The absence of aggression has been considered a developmental achievement for women. In psychoanalytic theory, for example, even though pre-oedipal aggression is assumed to exist equally for girls and boys, its transformation into passivity and “healthy masochism” is seen as essential for the development of “normal femininity.”