ABSTRACT
Selected aspects of case material in the treatment of a bisexual woman are used to illustrate the theme of penetrability versus impenetrability in the feminine and masculine psyche. The chapter examines the dimensions not of activity and passivity, but of a fixed versus a permeable bodily and psychic boundary—the ability to penetrate as well as the ability to be penetrated. The patient shows shifting gender identifications, depending on the relational context—the geography of the lover’s body and mind—that she described as “expanding her gender repertoire.” Psychic bisexuality is discussed as a creative use of potential space that opens the erotic field. An integration is offered of a clinical and theoretical focus on sexuality with an emphasis on earliest object relations. Along with the metaphors of the primal scene and the combined parent, the metaphor of the nursing couple is identified as the site of bisexual identifications and as the earliest relation of the penetrating to the penetrated. A critique is offered of gendered splitting regarding the ability to penetrate—an ability not inherently male but that comes to be seen as such.
