ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the two sexes are marked at the psychic level by the integration of their identifications with their two parents, and identification with a mother, experienced from the beginning as possessing a vagina and a fertile womb, must play a fundamental role in the psychosexuality of men and women. It examines how the femininity of analysts, whether men or women, might affect their professional activity. The idea of "internal life" and "depth psychology" is associated with femininity; witness the universal symbol of the sea with its echoes of the genetrix. Femininity is paradoxical: it would be the woman's aptitude to find primary fusion again through maternity which would protect her against disorders aiming at short-circuiting the evolution. The woman's "maternal aptitude" accounts, at any rate partly, for the fact that she makes fewer appearances in the field of crime and likewise in that of perversion.
