ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic research discovered at the very outset that the development of the infantile libido to the normal heterosexual object-choice is in women rendered difficult by certain peculiar circumstances. The woman has to discover new sexual organ in her own person, a discovery which she makes through being masochistically subjugated by the penis, the latter thus becoming the guide to this fresh source of pleasure. The mysterious, heterosexual part of the little girl’s libido finds its first explanation already in the earliest phase of development. In the sadistic-anal phase the penis loses its significance (for fantasy life) as an organ of suckling and becomes an organ of mastering. The difficulty lies in the fact that the bisexual character of development interposes between anus and vagina the masculine clitoris as an erotogenic zone. The ambivalent tendencies of later phases of development, which have already manifested themselves in coitus, become stronger during pregnancy.
