Author's Response

My first reaction to the comments on my paper is of pleasure that the matters that I raised have stimulated discussion. I am grateful to the discussants for their interest.

It is not my intention to attempt to reply to details because it would seem to me that these are matters for the reader to judge. I would, however, like to make the following three sets of comments:

1. Central to my paper is my own clinical experience in this one case that I describe. Originally, I had intended giving several comparable experiences illustrating these matters not only in other patients, but also in patients of the other sex, but it was obvious that too much clinical material would detract from the main thing that I wished to say by making the paper too long.

I am of course aware of the universal acceptance of bisexuality in psychoanalytic theory. I was drawing attention to the high degree of dissociation that may be found with respect to the male and female identifications. This again has nothing new about it. The main point of my communication was the way that it was necessary, as I saw it, to deal with the environmental factor in terms of the transference. It could be said that the patient was in search of the right kind of mad analyst and that in order to meet his needs I had to assume that role. It is this special detail that I considered to be the important part of the paper, a matter of the handling of the transference and the strain on countertransference feelings produced by acceptance of the role allotted.

2. Confusion can certainly result from my passing over from the clinical material to a theoretical discussion. As soon as one enters the field of theory, one is leaving firm ground and starting up a relationship to all those who have written on the same subject, although of course one cannot pretend or hope to be in touch with the whole literature. What is needed, however, is an enumeration of the other mechanisms employed when a patient manifests sexual characteristics oth