You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
March 26, 1963. A SECRET IN PREPUBERTY (ITS BISEXUAL ASPECTS). Marjorie Harley, Ph.D.
Dr. Harley describes a particular version of a secret, observable in the analysis of two girls in prepuberty, which seemed directly traceable to the special nature of bisexual interplay in this period. She traces the changing content of this secret to the changing texture of the girls' inner life. Analytic writings on the phase specific aspects of prepuberty emphasize a girl's increased phallic strivings but tend to reserve her bisexual conflict for the pubertal and postpubertal periods. Many authors also have emphasized the central and crucial conflict of this period as the girl's endeavor to loosen the preoedipal ties to the mother.
Dr. Harley emphasizes that in prepuberty the meagerness of differentiation between boys and girls in their general body build and configuration may contribute to intense bisexual conflicts and confusion. The girl's supposedly wholly feminine identifications (breast size, high heels, hairdos) are frequently endowed unconsciously with bisexual attributes. As puberty draws nearer, the close intermingling of bisexual strivings begins to give way to the girl's efforts to delineate her own sexual identity.
Dr. Harley's clinical example concerns a girl who suffered a series of traumata during the preoedipal and Oedipal stages. These included a disturbed mother-infant relationship, severe somatic illnesses, early and forceful weaning and bowel training, and traumatic primal-scene observations.
The patient's 'secrets' expressed the desire for the father's phallus, and later a bisexual procreative role. Her first fantasy was of wresting 'infinity' from God. The second fantasy was of being endowed with creative talent by God, where she is chosen as the 'special one' and 'sprinkled with magic fire'. She also told of a secret fear that her feces would 'start to come out and get stuck'. The most obviously bisexual secret was, first, her wish to be the Virgi