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4th July 1956.
Dear Dr. Casuso:
I was very glad indeed to get your little note about your son.1 This note is very interesting indeed and shows what a lot there is for us to learn about small children.
I am sure I have no very important comment to make, except to state the obvious. It is interesting that this intellectual interest in the penis turns up in your healthy child at about a year. I think it rather important to separate out the mind here from the psychesoma. It is not possible to deduce from this very clear observation that the child has no previous trace in the psyche of something which eventually becomes joined on to the idea of a penis. In other words, you are talking about the boy's mind, which had got so far at that point as to be able to think about this special part of himself. Previous to this there had undoubtedly been some phallic sensations, and I think you refer to occasional erections.
It seems to me that the idea of what in psychoanalytic terms is called a penis originally turns up in respect of certain qualities in the mother such as rules and regulations, timing, hardness, indestructability. At a variable date these ideas gather together and may be handed over to the father if he happens to be around.
Here is building up the idea of an indestructable element that easily forms a root for eventual appreciation of a paternal phallus. Before this happens there are several side-tracks, one of which is the idea of a maternal phallus. Alongside these things we get the beginnings of the child's phallic experiences which are very feeble, no doubt, and as you have so interestingly pointed out, there is the intellectual appreciation which helps or hinders according to the infant's experiences and the behaviour of the environment.
What a task the infant has, bringing together these ideas of his own genitality, and the concept of the paternal phallus which is formed from another root in the way I have tried to describe! It seems to me that o