ABSTRACT
I n spite of the many and varied criticisms (Horney, 1939; Thompson, 1949; Robbins, 1950) of Freud’s attempts at exploring and explaining the mysterious and complex processes of the female psychosexual development, there is little doubt that as yet we have no other set of hypotheses from any other source that help us clinically towards an understanding of this problem. Therefore, in this chapter I am going to restrict my range of hypotheses to the researches of Freud and his followers. I am not unmindful of the fact that valuable work has been done from other disciplines which throws a great deal of light on some aspects of female development and its role in culture, for example the work of Margaret Mead (1962) and Kinsey et al. (1953) to quote two examples from two very different angles. Similarly, there are some shrewd observations in the later work of Karen Horney and Clara Thompson on the cultural determinants that complicate and structuralize the role and function of femininity in Western cultures. But none of these help us with the therapeutic handling of intrapsychic conflicts or character distortion in our female patients. Since the exclusive aim of this chapter is to discuss a particular form of psychosexual pathology in the female, I shall first briefly and schematically state Freud’s basic contributions to this theme.
