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tion of the power trends into harmony with the sexual and reproductive functions of the female.

We may consider for a moment some of the deviations which may arise in the girl owing to a disturbance of normality in the relation of the parents to each other and to the child. As in the case of the boy, so with the girl, where the mother is the dominating parent, ruling by power rather than by love, the castration fantasy is referred to her, the oral and anal disciplines of the earliest phase consequently retaining an emotional over-valuation. Hostility to the mother is then very strongly developed, the sadistic component of the sexual impulse rather than the masochistic becomes accentuated, and the power elements in the ego trends remain untransformed and intractable. A marked identification with the male is apparent, with a persistence of the clitoral attitude. As with the boy similarly situated, the normal differentiation of the sex impulse on the one side and of the sex object on the other fails to occur. In the later analysis of such cases, masculine and feminine symbols appear to be interchangeable and almost fluid. In the case of B., a young woman with a castration-complex so heavy that she is unable to pursue any interest or occupation for more than a short time, this is very clear. In early childhood there had been great difficulty with the control of urination, and the mother had commonly stood over the child with a stick, to make her observe the time and place. In her present fantasies the 'Hound of Heaven' is unmistakeably a mother symbol, and there is a frequent image of B.'s sister "riding on a bull, and a hound pulling her off." Where, in these cases, the normal Oedipus situation does develop the resulting sexual hostility to the mother may then reawaken the over-developed resentment regarding interferences with anal and urethral pleasures, so that the two fuse into an almost inescapable hatred of the mother.

I may perhaps, at this point, be allowed to guard myself against the misunderstanding that I am attempting to explain the castrationcomplex and homosexuality, in terms of the external stimulus of the personality of the parents, only. I am very much aware that the problem is by no means so simple, and that the obscure organic factors and innate psychological predispositions to which I have made no reference here are probably more important. I am not, of course, attempting to give an account of the genesis of the castration-complex and homosexuality, but only to ask what relations can be found between these problems and the question of sex differences. Moreover, the organic determinants and psychological predispositions are not here relevant,

since they appear to be individual rather than sex group differences. I should, however, like to suggest very tentatively, that there is a sex difference as regards the genesis of the castration-complex, viz. that in women it springs primarily from the anal and urethral levels, and is mainly a function of the ego trends, being connected with the incest trends only secondarily; whereas in the male, it is more intimately connected with the incest tendencies, and with genital auto-erotism. If this distinction holds good in any measure, it is, of course, entirely a matter of emphasis and degree and of the immediate point of origin, since all these elements are common to both sexes and to all individuals.

A further word may be added as to the relation between the inner and outer factors. It is clear that in some cases the weight is thrown on the inner conditions, and in others, on the outer. There is no doubt, for instance, that an over-dominant and interfering mother does produce a tendency to the castration-complex, with its ambivalence and failure of differentiation, in both boy and girl. I have had occasion to quote the case of a woman as an example of this, and have known a very similar case in a man. Yet it is equally clear that where the anal interests in a girl, for instance, are natively very strong, a mild and gentle mother may be felt as hostile and interfering to an exaggerated extent. This was strikingly true in the case of A., whose mother was mild to the point of weakness. The matter of defaecation, however, was, I should judge, the point in which she was most tenacious of discipline and persistent in attempts to control the child-doubtless for reasons both conscious and unconscious. And in a child in whom the anal-sadistic tendencies were so strongly developed, this particular recurrent conflict would inevitably count for more than any ease of discipline elsewhere.

III. Summary and Conclusions.

It may now be possible to draw together some of the threads of our discussion; this can, however, only be done in the most tentative and partial manner, for I have not hoped to do more in this note than to suggest how relevant and important to the problem of sex differences psycho-analytic material is.

It is clear that the observable mental differences between men and women are the result of a highly complex interplay of three groups of factors, viz. (a) the organic differences springing directly from the primary fact of maleness and femaleness, (b) the accompanying innate psychological characteristics, which vary in degree and ensemble from one individual to another, and (c) the awareness of the fact of sex; this latter functioning not merely through the subtle operation of tradition

and social pressure, but also, as it has been left for psycho-analysis to show, through the acute awareness, in the mind of the little child of the possession or non-possession of the phallus.

In the case of certain of the mental differences of sex, it is possible to trace a direct relation with psycho-analytic facts, or, at least, to show how some of these differences hang together.

That group of temperamental differences which includes the greater social submissiveness of women, their relative lack of initiative and greater willingness to follow a convention, or to work along lines laid down for them by others, these are clearly connected with a group of physiological and psychological conditions which includes (1) the fundamental organic conditions of the reproductive functions in the female, involving the lesser range of variability and closer approximation to type; (2) the specific nature of the sex impulse in the female, with its passive and masochistic colouring; (3) the fact that the sex impulse and the ego trends diverge in the female, while converging in the male; and (4) the fact that the father is normally at one and the same time the object of the first sex impulse, and the major, more impersonal focus of authority. It would thus appear that the characteristics in question are, at least to a considerable degree, an inevitable accompaniment of normal feminine development; but it is equally clear that they are considerably heightened by an over-development of the fantasy of castration by the father; and that, if social conditions are such as to call for greater freedom of initiative and greater independence on the part of women, the point of educational attack must be the early period when that fantasy is developed.

It is likely that the supposed greater gregariousness of women is a function of the same conditions. There is little evidence that women seek each others' society more than men, either in primitive or civilised communities, and it would seem unnecessary to postulate the presence or absence of a specific instinct of gregariousness to account for the greater individualism of the male, since the physiological and psychological conditions referred to are already ample.

The much greater frequency of juvenile and adult delinquency among males is but another and more strongly marked expression of the same group of conditions, and particularly connected with the relation of the sexual and egoistic components of the personality, and the distinctive functioning of the Oedipus complex in the boy and girl respectively.

The fact that, on the whole, women show a lesser degree of scientific curiosity is undoubtedly to be correlated with the greater degree of

repression typically occurring, as a general condition; and with the castration-complex as a specific determinant.

In concluding, we may give a moment's attention to practical considerations, particularly as regards the educational bearing of sex differences. It is hardly possible for the psycho-analyst to subscribe to the view taken by some psychologists that because intellectual differences between the sexes, as tested by laboratory experiments, are practically negligible in degree, educationists need take no account of sex differences as such, but need only insist on ample individual opportunity irrespective of sex. We must agree with this latter; but the problem does not, on the findings of the psycho-analytic method, cease there. We should rather agree with those who hold that the emotional and temperamental differences between the sexes, and the long-run effect of these upon the mental life as a whole are of considerable educational and social importance. The educational problem for both boy and girl is that of reaching the goal of normal sexuality in a balanced relation with the individualised ego; but the emphasis is different in each case.

A word needs to be said as to what is meant by normality of development, since we have used this concept here, and in speaking of the reconciliation of the ego trends with the female sexual impulse and biological functions. It is clear that our conception of normality must itself be governed by the 'reality principle,' and have reference to the actual social and economic conditions of the world in which we live. The population problem is perhaps more relevant to the question of what is the desirable balance of individuality and biological function in women, than any male infantile fantasy of the all-perfect mother. Nor, it must be further said, is the castration-fear of the male, when it impels him to deny intellectual power and personal independence to the woman, any more trustworthy guide than that of the woman herself, when it drives her to the refusal of her feminine functions. External conditions in an industrial and highly individualistic civilisation demand the most delicate adjustment; and we might well have added to our enumeration of the predisposing factors to the castration-complex in the woman, the changing and conflicting demands of modern life. Like any other neurosis, it is largely a function of the discrepancy between the demands of our top-heavy civilisation, and our native resources; and relief does not come by way of turning from the reality of those demands to a woman-imago.

We may perhaps end on a note of paradox, and say that, from the psycho-analytic point of view, neurosis occurs because sex differences are so deep-and yet is only possible because they are not deep enough.

THE WAR ANXIETY NEUROTIC OF THE
PRESENT DAY: HIS 'DIZZY BOUTS'

AND HALLUCINATIONS

BY H. SOMERVILLE.

In a previous contribution to this subject1 it was stated that the principal mental symptoms of a war anxiety neurotic were exhibited in 'dizzy bouts' or attacks of vertigo with their accompaniments, in a chronic condition of poorly suppressed fear accentuated and defined in the dark, terrifying dreams in which the patient is being attacked or killed and, in a smaller number of cases, in hallucinations. An attempt was made to explain this fear in the dark of being pounced upon by an enemy by tracing it back to fear of the father resuscitated owing to the regressive effect of terrifying war experiences-the fear taking on a childhood form or rather associating itself with the fears of childhood.

Concerning dizzy bouts anyone seeing a man in a dizzy bout or even reading a description thereof is immediately struck by the similarity between one of these seizures and an acute attack of extreme fear. The correspondence is complete, and so we feel inclined to say that a dizzy bout is an acute attack of extreme fear, the cause of which, however, in the absence of any obvious external danger, is not at once apparent.

In a good many cases I have been able to trace the stimulus occasioning a dizzy bout to a transference of the affect from a previous occasion on which a similar feeling of fear was experienced. It often happens that patients on being questioned as to what they were doing at the moment when an attack came on are able to help one out a bit by almost at once realising a superficial, apparently trivial, connection between a present and a previous occasion. Thus for example a patient told me that he generally got a dizzy bout when squatting on his hunkers in the mine getting coal out. A single question elicited the information that this was an attitude he often perforce adopted in the trenches when taking shelter. Several men got dizzy bouts when stooping, much in the same way as they had to stoop in France taking cover from shells. Drinking a cup of tea was often the occasion of a dizzy bout with another man. He had 1 Journal of Mental Science, April, 1923.

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