THE PHALLIC CASTRATION COMPLEX AND PRIMARY FEMININITY - PAIRED DEVELOPMENTAL LINES TOWARD FEMALE GENDER IDENTITY

I suggest that two developmental lines contribute to the achievement o f female gender identity. One is rooted in the phallic castration comp lex, and the other in primary femininity. Far from being mutually excl usive, the two comprise necessary aspects of every girl's progress tow ard becoming a woman. To that extent, every woman's analysis will incl ude the analysis of compromise formations that emerge from both. In di stinguishing clinical manifestations of each developmental line, I sug gest that it may be useful to conceptualize primary femininity and the phallic castration complex as affect-defense configurations which inc orporate two fundamentally different ideas about danger. In conflicts of primary femininity, danger is anticipated: anxiety is the signal fo r compromise formation, since what is actually possessed (the female g enital) is valued and is therefore imagined as subject to danger. In t he phallic castration complex, danger is imagined already to have occu rred. Depressive affect becomes the primary motive for defense, based on a fantasy that what is valued (the male genital) has already been l ost. This distinction may facilitate our efforts to specify exactly ho w recent revisions in theories of female development have explicit imp lications for practice.