ABSTRACT
In the analysis of women the people became familiar with the masculinity- complex before they learned much about the “femininity” which emerges from the conflicts accompanying development. In this chapter, the author want to examine genesis of “femininity,” by which she mean the feminine, passive-masochistic disposition in the mental life of women. In the author view a turning in direction of masochism is part of the woman’s “anatomical destiny,” marked out for her by biological and constitutional factors, and lays the first foundation of the ultimate development of femininity, independent as yet of masochistic reactions to sense of guilt. In the deepest experience of the relation of mother to child it is masochism in its strongest form which finds gratification in the bliss of motherhood. At the opposite end of the pole, yet drawing upon the same source, the people have the mater dolorosa, the whole of whose masochism has come to reside in the relation of mother to child.
