A follow up to my comments on the Oedipus complex. Nothing illustrates so
well that Freud's 'findings' on infantile sexuality were predominantly
ideas out of his own extraordinary imagination, rather than genuine
clinical observations, as his claims in regard to female sexuality. For the
first thirty years that he practised psychoanalysis he contended that his
findings showed that infant girls experienced a version of the Oedipus
complex that was completely "analogous" to that of infant boys; e.g., in
1900 he wrote that analysis shows that "a girl's first affection is for her
father" (SE 4, p. 257). Then, when he started writing his first accounts of
female sexuality in the mid-1920s, he suddenly 'discovered' that there is a
"pre-Oedipus phase" in girls, "a preliminary stage of attachment to the
mother... during [which] the girl's father is only a troublesome rival".
("New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis", 1933, SE. 22, p. 119) And,
along with other surprising discoveries: "And now [sic!] we find the
phantasy of seduction once more in the pre-Oedipus prehistory of girls; but
the seducer is regularly the mother." ("New Introductory Lectures", 1933,
SE 22, p. 120)
Well, well, well. Freud suddenly 'discovers' that there is a pre-Oedipal
attachment of infant girls to their mother, and, lo and behold, he "finds"
[unconscious] phantasies of seduction *by the mother*, never mentioned in
the previous 30 years of analysis of predominantly female patients! Freud
writes on his fresh discoveries: "Our insight into this early pre-Oedipus,
phase in girls comes to us as a surprise", explained as follows:
"Everything in the sphere of this first attachment to the mother seemed to
me so difficult to grasp in analysis - so grey with age and shadowy and
almost impossible to revivify - that it was as if it had succumbed to an
especially inexorable repression." ("Female Sexuality", 1931, SE 21, p.
226) But not so inexorable as to stop the new findings coming thick and
fast! A few pages later he reports that his "investigations" have brought
to light "surprising detailed findings". Among these are the discovery of
"the fear of being poisoned... in relation to the mother", and such
"grievances" as that the mother "failed to provide the little girl with the
only proper genital, that she did not feed her sufficiently, that she
compelled her to share her mother's love with others, that she never
fulfilled the girl's expectation of love, and, finally, that she first
aroused her sexual activity and then forbade it." (SE 21, p. 234) The
result is even worse than he had previously stated ("a need [for an infant
girl] to get rid of her mother as superfluous" [1916, SE 16, p. 333]); now
he finds that "the [pre-Oedipal] attachment to the mother ends in hate" (SE
22, p. 121).
Further insights follow in relation to period in which the infant girl's
libidinal attachment turns from her mother to her father: "The wish with
which the girl turns to her father is no doubt originally the wish for a
penis which her mother has refused her and which she now expects from her
father." (p. 128)
Incidentally, in his introductory comments in the chapter on "Femininity"
in "New Introductory Lectures" Freud assures his readers that "It brings
forward nothing but observed facts, almost without any speculative
additions." (SE 22, p. 113) I leave TIPSters to draw their own conclusions
from such a statement.
Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
http://www.esterson.org
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