ABSTRACT
In his paper 'The taboo of virginity' Sigmund Freud basing himself on certain rites practised by primitive tribes, throws light on the psychology of the act of defloration. The psychological significance of the taboo has been shown to be that it averts a danger that the primitive fears. Analytic experience has taught us that the act of defloration mobilizes the same never completely overcome traces of infantile feelings that were mobilized by menstruation and that the bloody destruction of an organ revives the psychical wound of the castration complex. In the discussion of the girl's psychical reaction to the first menstruation, the authors saw that her psychical task lay in working through the traumatic experience of disappointment. To the woman defloration, just like the first menstruation, means not only an unmitigated disappointment, since the expected sexual pleasure is not felt, but is also a narcissistic wound.
