Individuation Crisis and Ego Gendering in Pre-schoolers—Emphasizing the Female Hero in Girls’ Development

This paper offers a new perspective on early individuation, e.g., seeing nightmares of pre-schoolers as an expression of a first individuation crisis and part of the child's separation from the symbiosis with the containing mother/motherly. Focusing on girls, the author suggests that the female hero plays an underexposed yet vital role in girls’ individuation. The female hero is the female counterpart to the male hero, which in a patriarchal culture has been commonly assumed to be the source of support at this stage. It enables girls—supported by father and imagination—to liberate themselves and meet the demands for adjustment to the fatherly world while gendering their ego as feminine with an openness to the other sex where opposites are at play. Based in classical and post-Jungian theory, the author presents empirical material gathered during anthropological fieldwork in a Copenhagen primary school and includes dream, drawing and narrative to show how the female hero emerges and becomes an important element in resolving the developmental and individuation crisis girls may encounter as they enter into the educational system and venture further out into the world. A client case connects un-resolve in preschool to a later mid-life crisis.