Discussion of D. W. Winnicott's Article, Split-off Male and Female Elements Found Clinically in Men and Women: Theoretical Inferences

Every new paper by Winnicott is a source of insight, challenge, and confusion. The reason for this lies largely in the fact that Winnicott reports only from the red-hot moments of clinical crisis and their resolution, on the one hand, and jumps to metaphorizing of the most abstract and metaphysical kind, on the other. It is not always easy to bridge this gulf for oneself, and perhaps in no other paper of Winnicott's does this gulf between the clinical and the abstract metaphorizing present such a challenge as in this one. The best way I can discuss it is to give an example of its immediate impact on my clinical work after having heard the paper delivered.

I report from the fourth year of the analysis of a female patient, which had been in every respect, up to then, positive and creative both for her and for me. There was, however, one detail she would casually mention from time to time: she could never urinate if she had the slightest suspicion that she could be heard. This had always caused her a certain amount of embarrassment and inconvenience in her social life, but it had never become an issue of any importance in the clinical work; in fact, she tended to disregard it.

I remember very vividly that the first time she mentioned this after I had heard Winnicott's paper, I made an interpretation to her to the effect that she could not urinate in the hearing of others because then it would be found out by the noise that she was a girl and not a boy. I must confess that I had given this interpretation rather lightheartedly in order to try out Winnicott's concept, but what resulted from it was quite astonishing.

Her first response was that this now opened the way for her to talk about this specific difficulty, although we had of course discussed castration anxiety and penis envy in many a context. She

was then able to tell me that what enabled her to urinate even in private was that she had a fantasy that she was urinating through a penis, and though she knew this to