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.
April 9, 1984. ON THE NARCISSISTIC AND HOMOSEXUAL COMPONENTS OF FEMALE SEXUALITY. Joyce McDougall, Ed.D.
Dr. McDougall's interest in the homosexual aspects of female sexuality first arose from her analytic work with several homosexual women and then extended to include the homosexual components in heterosexual women and in the analyst as well. First, Dr. McDougall discussed Freud's contributions to the understanding of female sexuality. While Freud should be credited with the revolutionary step of taking the sexuality of his female patients seriously, his formulation on female sexuality cannot be considered his strong suit, a judgment shared by Freud himself and perhaps reflected in the fact that he waited until he was seventy-five to publish his first paper on the subject.
Dr. McDougall organized her paper around a discussion of two of Freud's concepts about female sexuality: 1) the change of zone from clitoris to vagina (or "anatomy is destiny"); and 2) the change in object from mother to father. Regarding anatomy as destiny, Dr. McDougall emphasized that there are three factors besides penis envy which are significant in the little girl's developing sexuality: 1) because the girl's genitals are not as visible as the boy's, she must wait until puberty to gain an equivalent narcissistic confirmation of her unique sexual identity; 2) the vagina as orifice is equated in the unconscious with the mouth, anus, and urethra, an equation that gathers to it the masochistic and sadistic fantasies attending those zones; and 3) just as the little girl has difficulty in visually conceptualizing her genitals, so she has difficulty with the bodily location of her sexual sensations. The confusion about the location of sexual sensations takes on special importance with the advent of parental prohibition against masturbation. The female child fears that in retaliation for the oedipal wishes accompanying masturbation, her mother will attack the inside of her body, a punishment