Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

March 13, 1956. ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF MATERNAL FEELINGS IN EARLY CHIDHOOD: OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS. Judith S. Kestenberg, M.D.

Dr. Kestenberg presupposes the existence of early vaginal tensions or excitations of a vague, fleeting and unlocalized nature; she maintains that very few, if any, little girls have well-defined, conscious and localizable vaginal sensations. These presumptions lead logically to the paper's central hypothesis, which can be summarized as follows: the ego strives for mastery over all bodily excitations to prevent anxiety; such mastery can usually be achieved by exploration of the organ which is the source of the tension with the resulting establishment of organ concepts. This task is unusually difficult in the case of the vagina due to its localization and inaccessibility, and the diffuseness of its excitations. Small quantities of vaginal tension can be discharged by displacement to other parts of the body, but vaginal excitation finds discharge chiefly by being projected to an external and, therefore, explorable object; this object is the baby (and the doll). The wish for a child can thus be traced to a biological need, and maternal strivings are believed to be displacements from primary genital desires. The little girl identifies herself with her mother and chooses a baby as a suitable substitute for a vagina. The following sources of excitations in the vagina in early life are mentioned: deprivation leading to an unspecific totality of discharge through all channels; cleansing of the anal and urethrogenital zones; spontaneous overflow of excitation from the oral to the vaginal zone; pressures on the vaginal walls by a full rectum or bladder, and other external stimulations. The vaginal excitations can be dealt with in two different ways: first, by projection to the baby-doll (probably via transitional objects); second, by fusing them with other inner somatic tensions, and projecting them to orifices with which the girl has