Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

September 25, 1951. RESPIRATORY INCORPORATION AND THE PHALLIC PHASE. Phyllis Greenacre, M.D.

The influence of the phallic phase on ego development is assessed with special reference to respiratory fantasies. The confluence of oral and anal phases of development are reflected in fantasies in which the attributes of both phases occur. To ideas of death associated with defecation are added new influences deriving from phallic and clitoral sources which contribute to earlier preoccupations with questions of life and death. The attributes of motion and movement, associated with the erecting phallus, are assigned to life. Similarly, the distinction between what is dead and what is alive is made in terms of movement. Movement of trees, flowers, clouds, leads to an awareness of wind as a vital agent, and this to anal-respiratory fantasies relating to the passage of air during inspiration and expiration. Air drawn in makes one feel light, buoyant; air thrown out is abandoned and lost. Magical power over life and death comes to be related to inspiration and expiration. Similarly influenced by an increased sense of power stemming from genital sensations, jumping and skipping replace crawling and walking, and time and space become appreciable factors in experience. Through the medium of invisible air, contact through speech and looking is established. Past events can be recalled, and there is a definite awareness of memory and thought. The representation of the object is distinguished from the object itself, and speculations follow about the thing and its airy representations. The passage of flatus, for example, is distinguished from defecation, giving new meanings to idea representations especially with respect to the establishment of ideals and the formation of the superego. Under ordinary conditions, the phallic phase represents a forestage for the formation of ideals essential for the solution of the Oedipal disappointment. Under unusual conditions (trauma),