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The first part of this study is devoted to bisexuality. Not only Freud but biologists like Gregorio Maranon have insisted on bisexuality and on the fact that women present a more regressive type of sexuality than men.
The most important phase of differentiation, according to Marie Bonaparte, is at the age of two. During this anal-sadistic stage the boy cathects his muscular system while the girl invests her libido in the passive anal mucosa. Thus takes place what Marie Bonaparte calls the 'premasculine' and the 'prefeminine' stages. However, the girl may develop an excessive erotization of her muscular system or the boy an overerotization of the passive mucosa, and this, too, reenforces bisexuality.
On the other hand, Marie Bonaparte follows the classical descriptions of Freud and Abraham on the development of the libido. She insists on the positive phallic phase that Abraham has omitted, and on many points she adds interesting details to speculations on the erotization of the different zones.
The author then discusses Karen Horney's and Melanie Klein's theories in which they claim that vaginal sensitivity appears much earlier than puberty, a contention which Marie Bonaparte disputes. Attempting to outline her own theory, Marie Bonaparte states that it would be better to call the anal-sadistic period, sado-cloacal. At this stage the vagina is only perceived as an appendage of the anus; it is the cloacal hole which dominates this libidinal organization. In that sense the feminine hole precedes, biologically, the protruding penis. A phase of exclusion of cloacal erotism would open the phallic phase. The exclusion of the phallus initiates the period of latency.
According to Marie Bonaparte, the girl gains her first knowledge of the vagina during the second period of masturbation only to repress it later. The passive phallus corresponds to a phase when the sensitivity of the mucosa is aroused without erection or without the desire for penetration. In the adult,