Meeting of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

October 12, 1982. ON THE GENESIS AND STRUCTURE OF PENIS ENVY. E. Scott Nininger, M.D.

Penis envy in its simplest form can be summarized by two statements, one an observation—"You have it and I don't"—and the other an inference—"It is better to have it than not." Dr. Nininger took up the question of why some women are affected so strongly by penis envy that it becomes an organizing factor in their lives while others are affected very little by it. For Freud, the little girl's wish for a penis is a wish for greater organ pleasure; she assumes that the larger, more visible organ provides more pleasure. But how do we account for the different strengths of this wish in different women? Freud accounted for it in three ways, the importance of which would vary depending upon the individual: (1) by constitution; (2) by fixation and regression—by the carrying forward into the castration complex of pregenital experiences and by trauma, "accidental" or "environmental" factors (today, according to Dr. Nininger, we would think of object relations in their totality, but Freud viewed trauma and environment more narrowly, as playing much more directly upon the erogenous zones or upon fantasies derived from them through frustration or overstimulation); (3) by resolution—by resolving the penis envy more or less through the oedipus complex into which it leads the girl. In the oedipal situation she relinquishes the wish for a penis and longs instead for a penis-baby from her father, at the same time transferring libido from the mother to the father and from clitoris to vagina. Today we would have to consider what promotes or distorts the resolution of penis envy and the development of the oedipus complex, which, Dr. Nininger said, brings us back to object relations.

Dr. Nininger then discussed what the phenomena of penis envy look like clinically. The analyst will uncover fantasies about the past during which the supposed act of castration occurred; the patient will have unconsc