[Inhibitions or neurosis and masculine characteristics in women. Contributions to analysis of denial].

The first part of this paper describes the general qualities of the psychical apparatus in two groups of women, male character and inhibition or neurosis. A different attitude towards the realization of the sexual difference in the phallic phase originates these two groups. The girl with a male character identifies herself with the little boy and maintains an autoerotic attitude. In the case of inhibition or neurosis the girl undervaluates herself and renounces her pleasure in masturbation. In the second part we develop a pattern of analysis, the theory of the places within the psychical apparatus: ideal, wish object, assistant and rival of the subject. The ideal is defined as warrantor for the being, for the feeling of oneself. When this ideal-cathexis happens the subject is put in the place of assistant of the ideal, in order to be recognized, to get the identification, the being. The place of rival is occupied by the one whose wishes are identical with the subject's, with whom the former has an exclusion relationship. The place of wish object appears in a heterosexual link, as the consequence of a libidinous cathexis. The distribution of these places in inhibitions or neuroses and male characters is considered in the next three parts of the paper. In inhibitions and neuroses the girl takes her mother as ideal, and her desire is to complete her, in identification with her father. The latter becomes a hostile character for the girl, and his fate is destruction, loss of meaning. The idealized link with her mother, however, progressively becomes hostile while the Ego of the girl develops. The girl then looks for shelter in worthless and multiplied men, and afterwords in a single man, idealized. These characteristics already belong to male characters. An analysis of the metapsychology of denial (Verleugnug), main defense mechanism against the registry of a traumatic perception, is offered in the next part. This defense preassumes an equivalent of an action aimed at putting something in the place of the traumatic registry, therefore maintaining the idealization of somebody as ideal, warrantor for the being. This idealization is questioned by an existence and value judgement. A link is then established between the Ego and three positions: the ideal, whose idealization the Ego tries to keep (love link); a hostile ideal, who assures the traumatic perception (hostile link) and an assistant of the hostile ideal (link of denounciation and disqualification). Denial implies the splitting of the Ego together with the existence of two preconscious organizations with different rules. One of these systems is connected only with primary identifications and the other also includes object-cathexes. In the last item we study how denial works in inhibitions and neuroses and in male characters. The girl may deny as regards either her own body (male characters) or her father's (inhibitions and neuroses). What really happens in both groups is a double denial, and the real definitive Ego, the reflexive judgement, is left out...