0.6 Psychology of women  (Page 4/14)

In agreement with Freud, Bonaparte considers boys and girls to begin their sexual lives equally, in an oral erotic stage focused on the mother’s breast. As they transition into the anal stage, there are the beginnings of a contrast between active and passive forces: the expulsion of feces vs. the retention of feces. The important activity of toilet training begins in this stage, and so social conditioning is also coming into play. Although Bonaparte, like Freud, continued to emphasize biological factors in sexual development, the acknowledgement that sociocultural factors related to toilet training come into play lays the foundation for girls being pushed toward the passive role that strict Freudians believe they must play.

In the transition from the anal stage to the phallic stage, the interplay between active and passive forces that were present during the anal stage takes a different direction in boys and girls. Very simply, since the boys penis actively protrudes, and his love object can continue to be his mother (or, later, other women as substitutes), the boy will develop an active relationship with the world around him. Girls, however, ultimately need to transfer their sexuality from the clitoris (which had been related to a small penis until this point) to the vagina, a passive organ with regard to sexuality. Girls must also transfer their love object to their father (or, later, to other men), and accept the physical penetration that is required for sexual intercourse. In this manner, according to Freud, Bonaparte, and others, boys grow into aggressive men and girls grow into passive women. Provided, of course, that women accept their role.

Adding to the complexity of this process for girls, who need to transfer the libidinal cathexes from both the clitoris and the love object of mother, is the consequence of when the girl first experiences an orgasm. Since this potentially can occur at any time during the dynamic processes of transferring these libidinal cathexes, the first orgasm can have a variety of either positive or negative effects. For boys it is simply easier, since the penis is the one obvious source of sexual pleasure, and the boy never has to transfer his love object away from women (though it should transfer from the mother to another woman). This difference in sexual development is summed up by Bonaparte:

It is on these diverse superimposed courses that the edifice of female sexuality rises. Constitutional factors are its foundation, and life builds thereon. Finally, we see the feminine psychosexual structure in its main varieties, varieties more multiform even than those to which male sexuality is susceptible, centered as it is on the phallus, that highly differentiated organ developed to serve the male erotic function. (pg. 140; Bonaparte, 1953)

As an interesting side note, Bonaparte also discussed some of the research that had been done up to that point in time on female circumcision/mutilation, particularly in primitive cultures. She speculated on how psychoanalytic theories of sexuality might apply to those practices, and how societies today might compare to primitive cultures that have retained such practices. Can we really say that things have changed since Bonaparte wrote the following passage?