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

The subject of Dr. Winnicott's paper is of great current interest, for in our present cultural situation the distinction between male and female becomes increasingly blurred. Recent studies have demonstrated that the gender identity—the self-related feeling and conviction of being male or to be female—depends to an unexpected degree on the imprinting factors active during the first two years of life. We certainly have anatomical specificities and physiological functions to which we can attribute maleness and femaleness in a biological sense. However, psychologically total or partial feminine self representations in males and total or partial masculine self representations in females can be created through infantile experiences. This is amply demonstrated by the research of gender identity research institutes and is also evident in Dr. Winnicott's case material.

Freud found the criteria “active” for masculinity and “passive” for femininity the only relevant ones. Dr. Winnicott deviates from

this accepted dichotomic differentiation. In its place, he establishes the criterion “being” for feminine and “doing” for masculine. The “being” he leads back to the first physical contact of the infant with the world, not in the sense of a drive-desire but as a more or less complete identity formation with mother breast which thus becomes a subjective object. He seems to consider it the task of the mother to provide what is necessary for this oneness of baby and breast. Unfortunately, he does not tell us what this necessity consists of, through what attitudes and actions the good-enough mother differs from the not-good-enough, and how the good-enough mother makes the baby feel that he is the breast.

It follows from Dr. Winnicott's proposition that there must be more femininity in a boy whose mother was able to establish the baby-breast sameness than in a girl who had not acquired the basic identity because of her not-so-good-mother. One would like to ask Dr. Winnicott to provide