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February 26, 1973. DISTURBANCE IN SEXUAL IDENTITY BEGINNING AT EIGHTEEN MONTHS OF AGE. Eleanor Galenson, M.D. and Herman Roiphe, M.D.
The authors described an eighteen-month-old boy who had begun to show confusion in sexual identity and a peculiar fetishistic use of inanimate objects. The child's mother, who manifested strong maternal ambivalence, had discontinued breast feeding at five days. The period of his symbiotic attachment to his mother was marked by a high degree of bodily intimacy with both parents, including being bathed with them. This resulted in a premature emergence of genital arousal at age five months and considerable delay in the separation-individuation process. At the start of his second year, a series of traumatic events that included injury to the crucial oral area (the lip) and the beginning of his mother's new pregnancy led to a marked increase of aggression and difficulty in his developing self and object differentiation. At seventeen months, with his growing awareness of the genital difference between the sexes came overwhelming fears of genital loss, body disintegration, and object loss, and the peculiar use of a group of inanimate objects—stuffed animals. These objects