The absence of the paternal penis.
Elise D.
Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, USA. Elised@verio.com
Comment in:
* J Am Psychoanal Assoc. 1998;46(2):357-60.
* J Am Psychoanal Assoc. 1998;46(2):361-3.
Abstract
Girls’ experiences of object loss, in conjunction with female anatomical structure, may lend themselves to a particular genital anxiety regarding openness and emptiness. The relational void in giving up the mother as love object may lead to an internal self-representation of a “hole” to be filled, much as the mouth sucks the pacifier in the absence of the nipple. This image may then be extended to the genital representation.
In turning to the father, a girl may find that she lacks a relationship with him in the relational space opened up by the loss of the mother; the penis is symbolically withheld from her in the father’s relational distance. This lack of sexual and relational gratification, it is proposed, may be schematized by a female as her body being empty of something.
The father’s absence–the absence of the paternal penis–may lead to an absence of the mental representation of the vagina and to an inhibition of the role the vagina then plays for a woman in sexual desire. Vaginal repression may serve to disguise object hunger that might otherwise be experienced as vaginal longing. An abbreviated clinical vignette, revolving around a masturbatory fantasy, is offered in partial illustration of the thesis.
I am indebted to these guys for bringing this to my attention.
Whilst, on first reading, it all seems rather confusing, careful perusal seems to turn it into a possible explanation for Cuntphobia if a girl is abandoned by her mother and continues to live with her father.
Losing her mother as a ‘love object’ leaves the child feeling as if she has a hole to fill and the lack of a close relationship with her father may lead her to have inhibitions about the role the vagina plays in sexual desire.
Maybe I’m just twisting the words to fit my own situation.
How do you guys interpret the research?
Heh, what a load of silly psychobabble! Girls feel empty because the penis is symbolically withheld from them! I bet most girls would rather go to the circus than be given a penis to play with.
It was the most peculiar piece of ‘science’ wasn’t it! Because if the father had given her the penis for real, he’d be on charges and she’d be left with all sorts of other psychological issues to deal with!
Clearly the adolescent pre-pubescent female is projecting repressed pseudo anatomical accouterments generally associated with paternal etiology which inhibits commodious psycho-motor capacity and the ability to cogently integrate emotive methodologies in multi-gender homogeneity. That is to say, in my expert opinion, it’s Bullshit.
LMAO! Hello Robert! If you’re not a scientific researcher, then you should be ;P