Individuation of Women

There is no doubt that culture has fostered dependency in women more than in men, which generates the paradoxical question of which came first. Did women's internal psychosexual development create a culture where women are more dependent, or, conversely, did the culture in which women have been raised so affect their psychosexual development as to render them more dependent?

This is a question which I feel is as yet unanswerable. However, it seems clear that a girl's psychosexual development does, indeed, foster prolonged dependency. For this reason I speculate that the ages between 30 and 40 may be the normal period for women to resolve their individuation. I distinguish this individuation somewhat from the maturational and developmental processes which, as described by Margaret Mahler5 occur from the latter half of the first year of life, through the third year of life, and in which the intrapsychic representatives of the self and the love object (the mother) are gradually differentiated. I will instead define individuation in women in adulthood is the completion of separation-individuation from the mother, culminating in the ability to positively identify with the mother or positive mothering person and, hence, the ability to accept their femininity thereby resolving the Oedipus complex. It is at this point that a woman will desire her father and men, without desiring to be men or to possess a penis, and will finally complete the detachment from her mother and become a wholly autonomous woman.

Virtually all authors agree that psychosexual development in women is more complex and difficult than in men. Freud4 rightly asserted that he did not fully understand the Oedipus complex in women, feeling that it did not terminate abruptly and even suggesting that perhaps it was never fully resolved. He felt the women's lack of a penis, and hence diminished castration anxiety, prevented the