ABSTRACT

This chapter highlights what single case studies from the author's clinical and research experience can contribute to the psychoanalytic understanding of the development of a woman's autonomous self. It discusses Freud's challenge to try to understand women beyond their sexual function by addressing key aspects of autonomy: motherhood and womanhood. The concept of the autonomous self is not discretely defined within psychoanalytic theory. Autonomy, one attribute of the self, includes the partially overlapping concepts of sense of identity, separation—individuation, narcissism, attachment, and object relations. Gwen had achieved all external manifestations of separation-individuation, maturity, and autonomy. The development of autonomy is only part of self development. Freud, having described "women in so far as their nature is determined by their sexual function", commented that "an individual woman may be a human being in other respects". Autonomy is both intrapsychic and inter-subjective. As a final note, true autonomy eventually must include reciprocal relationships: the capacity to love in individualized form.