ABSTRACT
The internal triangle of maternal imago, paternal imago, and self is unique to female development. Girls are “organless,” and because they can neither suckle their mothers nor penetrate their fathers, they gain control by introjecting both parental objects. The introjection of the pre-Oedipal mother is a primitive incorporation, an oral pre-identification in which mother is ingested with her milk. The internalization of the Oedipal father is more highly evolved, a relationship to, as well as a mental representation of, the object. Within the complex endopsychic feminine world, girls freely discharge both libido and aggression toward internalized objects. Sigmund Freud described women as deficient, castrated “little men.” He accused the female sex of having weak superegos and asserted that women are so obsessed with being loved, they have no real capacity to love. Helene Deutsch, another early psychoanalytic writer described the feminine character as passive, narcissistic and masochistic. This chapter uses the theory of the internal triangle to deepen our understanding about some of the negative qualities early psychoanalysts ascribed to the female sex and to reframe them in a more positive light.
