ABSTRACT
It is generally agreed that the psychoanalytic theory on femininity is an essential part of the general theory on psychosexual development to the extent that they stand or fall together. A consequence of this state of affairs, as anyone investigating the theme soon realizes, is that there is a difference between the theory on women and women as they really are. The patients who have led people to reflect on these issues are women who, although they have reached important maturational stages and a good organization of the self, reveal in different ways a mixture of guilt feelings and of illegitimacy when carrying out projects of their own outside of traditional patterns. In order to develop, the ego ideal needs an environment that welcomes the child’s accomplishments by offering her satisfactory narcissistic confirmation, while at the same time imposing on her sufficient frustrations so that the character of ideality as driving force and promise is not lost.
