Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Samuel Ritvo felt that the evidence for the increased importance of bisexuality conflicts in girls during prepuberty seemed quite convincing. The sense of identity at any age has a large root in the concept of body structure and organization, and certainly the meagerness of body differentiation between the sexes in prepuberty would be expected to have an important phase specific effect. He noted that early menarche in girls with disturbed backgrounds often led to very disturbed and violent acting-out behavior. He inquired about the relative absence of the mother in the case material presented and whether a dread of the mother could have led to the marked degradation of the father as part of a defensive reaction.

Dr. Jacob Arlow commented on this 'delicately told and meticulously documented' case as indicating again the relationship between ego structure and mythology. He felt that the major conflict, however, was not so much the conflict over bisexuality as it was the struggle between emerging womanhood and the particularly intense wish for the father's penis. He also suggested that there was an unusual vicissitude in the manifest structure of the fantasy because it attempted the undoing of the usual pedagogic function of the religious myth (the fantasy usually serving to allow the child to identify with the Virgin Mary, thus strengthening the moral qualities of the girl for motherhood). Here, instead, the girl attempted to attain omnipotence and thus foster her own narcissistic needs. Dr. Arlow related and compared the myths of the Annunciation to the Madonna, and its male counterpart, the Consecration of the Prophet, in both of which the aggressive components are denied. Also an important ego aspect is the denial of aggressive wishes against the father and his phallus. Myths take on deeper meaning when we understand them also as part of a defensive struggle. Finally, he felt that every childhood fantasy has some mythological root.

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