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

Dr. Winnicott's paper did not reach me unprepared; I am used to the strength of his originality in elaboration of psychoanalytic thinking. At the London Institute of Psychoanalysis he helped me on my way to becoming a child analyst. So many of his findings—such as the need to take the patient into deep regression, the transitional object, the emphasis on time, the existential break in the first weeks of life and the environmental setting, the mending-mother—are some of his discoveries we have to face and accept.

I do not think that the present paper is one of his best. First we feel a certain unintegration of the theme. Second, the research is based on the doubtful theory of bisexuality.

I am uncertain about Dr. Winnicott's main interpretation. It seems to me that it was his belief in the theory of bisexuality that brought him to see the girl when the patient talked about penis envy. Had he not accepted this theory, the evidence would have taken him to see the homosexual part of the patient and maybe nothing beyond that. It is my experience that feelings of penis envy are not exclusive to women. According to the feelings of inferiority a man attaches to his own penis, he may feel a true penis envy. This has nothing to do with negation of gender identity, but it may increase homosexual needs. Melanie Klein taught us about the bad penis inside and about the envy of the good penis put into someone else.

The individual's split (fantasy versus reality) into male and female may happen any time there is negation of the individual's gender identity. When this doesn't occur—as in Winnicott's case (“He knows himself to be a man, and never doubts that he is a man”)—it would be a mistake to confuse homosexuality with the fantasy of belonging to the opposite sex.

I believe homosexuality has to be seen not as Freud saw it, in terms of biological bisexuality, but in terms of object relations. There is a universal potentiality in man and any other animal (as proved by ethological obser