Although this article was not originally written for this issue on female psychosexual development, I shall try in this short introduction to show how in some respects it may well contribute to our understanding of this question as also to that of male psychosexual development, the two, in my opinion, being correlative. To be more precise, I suggest that this article be considered as focusing on one way of dealing with the dilemma that faces both sexes of how to maintain fusion with the mother without total loss of one's identity or at least with maintaining the illusion of being autonomous.

One fundamental aim of the psyche is to preserve the primary maternal union (of prenatal origin) which becomes the psychobiological root of the Oedipus complex. On the other hand there is an opposite tendency, as we know, which leads to separation and autonomy. (I am not in the habit of working within the framework of Mahler's concepts, but I have nothing against the possibility of reconciling symbiosis and separation-individuation.) Conflict between