ON THE SENSE OF ABSENCE - A PERSPECTIVE ON WOMANLY ISSUES

Many women express complaints about their mental capacities which are discordant with objective indicators of superior intelligence and func tioning. They find their memories unreliable, for example, despite int ense efforts to retain facts or ideas. Using clinical material, the au thor attempts to elucidate how psychic representation of the vagina ca n contribute to a sense of mental defectiveness, experienced by certai n women as peculiarly feminine. The role of such a psychic representat ion tends to go unrecognized, given that the female genital is usually conceptualized as an ''absence'' rather than a presence in its own ri ght.