The Penis as Umbilical Cord

The umbilical cord, an important prenatal organ and the tie between mother and child which is severed after birth, has received very little attention in psychoanalytic literature. Three recent clinical reports about the umbilicus, the remnant of the umbilical cord, attempted to explore its dynamic significance. In the first paper, Waltzer (1974) presented a female patient who unconsciously treated her umbilicus as though it were the vagina. She avoided her vagina and used her umbilicus as a substitute. There was little information about the patient's mother and about the nature of the relationship between the two. This patient was a borderline psychotic woman who was treated with psychotherapy. Waltzer's report prompted the report by Heilbrunn (1975) on a borderline schizophrenic man whose fascination with protruding navels impelled him to raise his own depressed navel periodically. Heilbrunn speculated that Kubie's concept of an innate unconscious drive to become both sexes was "the most plausible explanation," although he admitted that the patient's material did not allow "formulation of an unequivocally satisfactory clarification of the perverse activities" (p. 273), in part because the patient terminated therapy prematurely. The patient apparently equated the elevated umbilicus with the penis and the depressed navel with castration. Friedman (1976) presented a brief report on three cases which led him to believe that the interest these females had had in the umbilicus related primarily to the fact that significant males in their environment possessed an umbilicus exactly like theirs and, therefore, the umbilicus was used "as a reassurance against and denial of the painful fantasy that females are actually castrated males" (p. 296). Only one of these three patients was treated analytically.

The present report is on a female patient who was not interested in the umbilicus but in the penis. She experienced