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The authors' case concerns a young woman with presenting symptoms of depression, frigidity, promiscuity, and nymphomania. Her sexuality was intensely cannibalistic in character. Relations with men represented a repetition of the longed-for, but frustrated relation with her mother. Each loss repeated the original catastrophic loss of the breast. Intense rage against the breast was transferred to the penis with strong destructive fantasies toward this organ. Each sexual act, especially those of incest with her father, was followed by guilt and depression. In fear of destroying good objects or herself, hostility was projected, and she identified herself with men. There was an overcompensation for the maternal frustration through relations with her father. The patient sought feminine objects disguised as passive men or male homosexuals.
The authors believe that consummation of incest in this case diminished the possibility of psychosis, and have observed manic-depressive traits and dipsomania in other cases with strong incestuous attachments but without consummation.
They state that in the presence of intense anxiety, the ego develops a greater capacity for sublimation which is favored by partial satisfaction in incest. The typical situation is basic depression, incest, fundamentally cannibalistic oral satisfaction, penis envy and masculine identification, reinforcement of homosexuality, nymphomania, with the search for a male homosexual partner as a disguise.