Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

October 12, 1954. THE MARRIAGE BOND. Martin H. Stein, M.D.

Dr. Stein discusses a special meaning of marriage for neurotic men. The common fantasy is, 'My wife is my phallus'. In the analysis of married patients it is most important to examine thoroughly all the unconscious meanings of marriage. The patients described were passive men who suffered from feelings of castration. They had varying degrees of fondness for their wives, although none had mature heterosexual relationships. They regarded their wives as 'tools', or appendages to their bodies, and suffered in varying degrees from sadistic fantasies of squeezing or beating 'the wife penis'. Two cases described in detail were brothers of younger sisters, who during the early lives of the patients played the role for them of the girl-phallus. The origin of this fantasy was described in 1928 by Ferenczi in his Gulliver Fantasies, in which the body-phallus equation was considered to be biologically determined. Lewin believed it to be traceable to early oral fantasies in which 'the dominant sexual aim is to be eaten up', an equivalent of castration. In 1936 Fenichel wrote: 'The phallus girl is generally speaking not only a penis, but also a child, feces, content of the mother's body, and milk. It is the introject and one which is again rejected. The penis is thus only the final member of the series of introjects.' From Stein's study of this fantasy among his adult patients, he concludes that it binds the marriage and gives force to the concept of its adhesive character. These men unconsciously were anatomically joined to their wives and tended to treat them sadistically. Fondling as an evident substitute for penis handling was conspicuous in some. All had the ambivalent feelings of dependence on their mates, but could not respect or appreciate them as human beings. Stein believes the fantasy exists universally in men, and perhaps in a converse form in women. Cautioning against broad interpretations