You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
One of the best established sets of constructs in psychoanalysis is that large body of work in which the genital phase, along with its appropriate dynamic content, is delineated. It is my purpose in this paper to reconsider some aspects of these constructs against the background of a body of clinical experience, with the aim of suggesting some extensions of our understanding of genital development.
The most generally accepted theory of the development of sexuality is that the two sexes develop in much the same way until the onset of the phallic phase at about three years of age. At this time children of both sexes would seem to be little boys (Freud, 1933). The child's observation of the anatomical differences between the sexes (Freud, 1925) and the consequent castration complex have a fateful impact on the by now divergent lines of male and female sexual development (Abraham, 1920); (Freud, 1931), (1933); (Lampl-de Groot, 1927). This genital sexual current is from the beginning crucially involved with the familiar oedipal triangle.
Thus far the conceptual lines are direct and clear and have served to organize and elucidate a bewildering array of phenomena of normal and pathological development. Freud himself began to disturb this conceptual clarity when, in 1931 and 1933, he concerned himself with the preoedipal development of the girl, emphasizing that the early attachment to the mother did not terminate as early or as decisively as had been thought, but rather continued on into