ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some clinical examples that illustrate the difference between the little girl's maternal representations as conscious and unconscious models of the self in contrast to her representations of her mother as an oedipal rival. It suggests that in order to clarify the relations between gender and female sexuality we should take into account contemporary psychoanalytic developments concerning the intersubjective structure of the self and sexuality in both Anglo-Saxon and French literature. A review of the literature shows that quite a number of authors understand that gender identity includes well-differentiated representations of the mother's and the father's body before the child comes to terms with the difference between sexes. Discrimination of the relationship with the mother from the mother as a gender model allows preservation of the internal maternal representations as a secure attachment tie, even though the model of femininity offered by the mother is not reproduced.
