ABSTRACT
The penis can be experienced as an organ that feeds, and so it is available to be used—or abused—by the needy or greedy female: the identification of the penis with the milk-giving nipple has been pointed out by Melanie Klein. If the penis really represents the bridge, then it may be experienced as that organ whose possession gives one the courage to venture out of one’s essential isolation and move instead towards the making of relationships and more real and trusting intimate contacts. The author has tried to find some references to the penis-bridge association in the psychoanalytic literature. Man’s attitude to the bridge contains a sense of danger because bridging is felt as a venturing out of that which is known and familiar into that which is strange, which is the ‘other’. The concept of the bridge involves both awareness of separateness and the possibility of communication across the boundaries of separateness.
