Breakthroughs and Phallacies: Commentary on Paper by Dianne Elise

Elise, in her own erudite and engaging way, addresses the question, “Why won't he really talk to me?” Underpinning her core argument, Elise posits that a “masculine sense of self is felt to be dependent on an impermeable psychic boundary that is not to be penetrated.” In coining male impenetrability as the “citadel complex,” however, Elise introduces a lexicon of battle, polarization, and defense. And it is around this arena of her argument that Wrye raises most of her questions. First, Wrye questions if Elise's conceptualization of a penetrating nipple forcing “Unlawful Entry” into the vulnerable young male psyche reflects the lived, body-based experience of nursing mothers and babies. She also raises the question of whether Elise is describing normal “good-enough” or pathological mothering and fathering? Is she talking about a psychoanalytic model that emphasizes the biological differences between the sexes as opposed to the particular dynamics of the nursing couple? Does Elise's model privilege more binary gender-identity models than models of gender pluralities? Wrye suggests that the paper might actually have been developed as three smaller theoretical papers with more clinical “flesh” on each of the three strands: (a) the forces of bodily development on the male psyche; (b) its role in the establishment of gender identity; and (c) the “law of the father” in the course of separation-individuation.