THE GROWTH OF LOVE
In medical school one of our courses included the study of the
psychological stages of development man goes through from infancy to
maturity. It also included the various pitfalls people encounter during
these stages, the biological and psychological experiences that can
prevent them from reaching psychological maturity.
During one class in which we reviewed the psychological hazards
of adolescence a very intelligent student raised his hand and was
recognized by the professor. “How does anybody _ever_ really grow up?”
this student asked.
The class laughed, of course. But the professor, after the laughter
had died down, took the question quite seriously and complimented the
student for his acuity. He then proceeded to address us for a half
hour on the indomitable and surging drive of the human body and mind
toward health and pleasure, a drive that will often overcome seemingly
insurmountable obstacles, that will pause for a while at times,
apparently defeated, only to revive its original energy and resume its
move toward the goal of health and maturity.
We see this drive daily in people who come for psychiatric help, and
we know that it is the single most important element in psychological
healing. As soon as the difficulty which was holding the person back
has been resolved, his whole mind and body tend once again to resume
its move toward health and happiness. It is well to keep this factor in
mind as we explore here the stages of development women go through on
their way to grown-uphood.
We have seen the grown-up, truly feminine woman in operation. You
will remember that she is a delighted and delightful partner in that
closest and most perfect expression of love, the sexual act. You will
recall that a great part of her personality is organized around her
maternal instinct and that the chief characteristic of that instinct is
a pleasure in giving, an unappeasable altruism that always puts husband
and child before self, even to the point of risking her own life and
welfare. Her central activities revolve around her nest building and
child rearing. Her personality is characterized by a deep intuitiveness
about others. She is inward and passive, her energies devoted to that
deepest of all needs, the procreation of the race of man through her
own body. Her husband, by contrast, is aggressive, occupied basically
with his struggles in the outside world. Her stage, the focus of her
central interest, is the home and its preservation and its happiness.
How did she get this way? Or, in the case of women who fail to achieve
a truly feminine personality, what actually happens, how do they get
_that_ way?
To be able to answer these questions, one must first understand the
stages of development that women, all women, go through in the process
of growing up. These phases of development have been under the closest
scientific scrutiny for several decades. The realization of their
importance for psychological health and illness has been one of the
major achievements of modern psychiatry. They have been thoroughly
explored, and if we do not yet know all there is to know about the
subject, we still know a great deal.
The material I am about to go into is fact, scientific fact, not
opinion. If the information here seems new or strange or even
irritating to you, do not be surprised or upset. It is new and strange
to most people and at first it may not seem applicable to you. But if
you will stay with it, use it to understand the case histories which I
will discuss afterward, you will gradually see why understanding these
phases is so necessary and helpful to the individual who has not yet
been able to achieve her full femininity. As you have been told many
times, all psychological problems are rooted in infancy, childhood,
or in adolescence. To uproot these problems, we must return to those
stages of development with new tools, new ideas, a new master plan.
There are two over-all stages of biological and psychological
development that every individual must go through. The first stage
lasts from birth to about ten years of age. In turn this stage is
divided into two phases; the first, the phase we call infancy, lasts
roughly for the first five years of life. The second phase we call the
latency period and occupies the second five years of life.
The first five years of growth, the infantile period, is of enormous
importance for later development. In this phase the whole personality
takes the shape and develops the characteristics that will distinguish
it from that time on.
At this point I have to note a certain scientific fact that may
surprise or disconcert you. I ask you to withhold any prejudices of a
personal or moral kind you may have about this fact, for they will only
obscure the entire issue and make it difficult for you to understand
one of the most important contributions science has made to the
understanding of the human mind.
The decisive fact, then, about the infantile period is that the little
creature is very heavily endowed with strong sexual feelings. The
students of this subject are in absolute agreement on this point. There
is no longer the slightest inkling of a doubt about it. All scientific
methods of checking the fact have been employed. These range from
direct observation of children to the recovery of childhood memories
through hypnosis or while subjects have been under the influence of
hypnotic drugs, direct reports from children, and several other sources.
This sexual drive is centered on the genitals from the outset, and it
can be seen very clearly in children who masturbate. Such masturbation
is a perfectly normal activity in boys and girls during this entire
period.
The important point about this masturbation is the fact that the little
girl masturbates by the manipulation of her clitoris. She has no
awareness of her vagina as a sensual area.
The sexual feelings of infancy increase in intensity after the second
or third year. Now masturbation may increase. In a very real sense the
strong sensual feelings experienced at this age set the mold for the
later sexual development of the child.
For the first three years the little girl is deeply and primarily
attached to her mother. In the sense that infants “realize” things, the
little girl knows that her mother is the source of all her security.
These feelings have a very clear sensual nature. The little girl loves
to be close to the mother, to be stroked by her, to have her mother
clean her genitalia, etc. She associates her masturbation with the
pleasant sensations she receives, psychologically and physically, from
her mother.
Around three years of age the little girl becomes aware of her
growing attachment to her father. His tenderness toward her and his
play with her stimulate her whole being, and her sensuality becomes
increasingly attached to him. At first she is not aware of the conflict
in this attachment, but as her little mind becomes a bit more aware
of reality she senses, however vaguely and incompletely, the fact
that her increasingly sensual response to her father has put her into
competition with her mother; another woman has a prior claim on her
first man! At this point she begins to develop hostile feelings toward
her mother.
The whole thing seems too fantastic! A little child competing with her
mother for her father’s love? Impossible!
But let me give you a very clear example of a typical dream my women
patients have. This is the dream of a frigid woman who had had several
consultations with me and in one of them, the day before the dream,
suddenly remembered that at the age of five she had been absolutely
convinced that her father would marry her when she grew up. She had
buried that memory in her mind, only to resurrect it in therapy.
Her dream, then, was that she was lying in a crib. A tall thin
man with glasses and a thin mustache was lying on a bed nearby. A
stout, florid-faced woman lay next to him. Suddenly this woman had a
convulsive seizure and, after a few moments of writhing, became still.
The man then looked at her and smiled as if pleased. “She’s dead,”
he said. Then he rose from the bed, went to the crib, and picked
my patient up. “We will have four,” he said to her, and she felt
immeasurably excited and pleased.
My patient woke in a great state of anxiety. In our session she told
me that her father had been tall, thin, and sometimes wore glasses to
read in bed. And her mother was stout and very high-colored. My patient
then suddenly recalled that in the childhood fantasy of marriage to her
father she had decided that she would have four children with him. Her
logic was this: her mother had had three children; she would go her
mother one better!
I cannot tell you how often we psychiatrists get, directly from our
patients, information as clearly confirmatory as this of the existence
of an early triangle between mother, father, and child. It causes a
conflict in the child, of course, and this early conflict in the little
girl takes place in a very subtle manner, so subtle, indeed, that its
very existence escaped the conscious notice of mankind from the dawn
of history until the end of the nineteenth century. Just before the
turn of the twentieth century Sigmund Freud, then an obscure Viennese
psychiatrist, while using hypnosis on patients suffering from powerful
feelings of repressed guilt, noted that these feelings were always
connected with very early sexual conflicts. He was astonished to
discover that these sexual conflicts dated back to early childhood,
and in case after case he was able to demonstrate not only that
children possessed strong sensual feelings but that these feelings
became attached first to the mother and then to the father, causing a
conflict in the childish mind which had to be resolved. He called this
the Oedipal situation. If it was not resolved, the child developed
irrational feelings of guilt which could and did impede normal sexual
and psychological growth.
I described this early source of conflict to a woman patient of mine
recently in much the same way that I have described it here. After
pondering for a moment she asked a question that goes to the heart of
the matter. “If this early situation causes a conflict in the child
which can lead to a neurosis later, why did nature design things that
way? I thought nature set things up to foster growth, not to hinder it.”
The observation and question were fine ones and raised points that
are generally ignored. Nature _did_ design this early sexual conflict
for a very special reason. She did it to foster the growth of the
little girl, to push her on to the next step in the development of her
femininity, to move her a little farther along the path to her ultimate
role of wife and mother.
Let me explain this a bit further. For the first few years, by the very
nature of family life, as we have seen, all the little girl’s feelings
are focused on her mother. She is the center, the fountain of life
itself; the little one looks to her for food, security on all levels,
and “love.” This love soon becomes tinged with a very strong erotic
feeling connected with the little one’s growing sensuality, which, as
we have seen, is centered on her clitoris.
Now, it is necessary for humans to love and to have erotic feelings
centered on others. But clearly, if this early love situation did not
change at some point, the little girl would grow up to have women as
her erotic centers of interest. Nature intends no such end result.
She intends these erotic feelings to become ultimately very much
man-centered. Thus she makes the role of the father in the child’s
development all-important. He becomes the first bridge from the
infantile erotic and dependent relationship with the mother to mature
relationships with members of the opposite sex. There are, of course,
several other bridges that the growing girl will have to traverse on
her journey to maturity, but this first one is of central importance.
Ultimately, of course, she will have to give up her father, too, as the
center of erotic interest, but he will remain in her unconscious life
as the model of all that she wants from the male in her life.
We see, then, at the end of this early phase of development the first
big step in the preparation of the little girl for her ultimate destiny
as wife and mother. But since we know that she is nowhere near ready
for such functions we might wonder how nature ends this early period
and enters the second important period of growth.
The end of the first stage and the beginning of the second (which,
you will recall, will last to about ten years of age) begins with a
remarkable psychological event: the early infantile sexuality goes
completely underground. The little girl “forgets” that she ever went
through such sensual experiences, that there was anything the least bit
erotic in her former attachments. Her masturbation stops, under normal
circumstances, and she enters into approximately a five-year period of
total non-sexuality.
However, you must understand that when I use the word “forget” I do
not mean it literally. In psychiatry we use the word “repression” to
describe this kind of forgetting. It means the ability of the human
mind to push anything it does not wish to recall out of awareness, into
a part of the mind called the unconscious. When we repress something,
a memory or experience, we do not remember that it ever happened with
our conscious mind. However, it remains quite intact in our unconscious
mind and can and does exert an influence upon us that we are not aware
of. Too, it can be revived in the conscious mind by later experiences,
or, even if it does not revive, later experiences can be very much
influenced by the “forgotten” memory.
The new stage into which the young girl now enters is called the
“latency period,” because the sexual feelings of the earlier period
have become repressed, or latent.
The latency period is chiefly characterized by an attempt on the
part of the little girl to understand and master her environment.
It is marked by a tremendous growth physically and mentally. She is
interested in everything, in everything that gives her a chance to
advance herself physically: rope-jumping, doll-playing, ball-playing,
swimming, climbing, running; there is sometimes very little that she
does, feels, or thinks in this period that distinguishes her in any
very important manner from a little boy of the same age. She may be a
bit more obedient, a bit better about doing her homework than a boy,
but not dramatically so.
We may ask, then, what nature’s intention in bringing on this latency
period might be? Let me put it this way. Nature, plainly and simply,
wishes to give the child a chance to grow a little mentally, to
learn to master her body and mind, to integrate the earlier phase of
development, to learn to form personal relationships so that when
she comes to the next great step in development, the phase marked by
menstruation and female maturation, she will be ready. Think what would
happen if the little girl were plunged from the stresses and strains of
infantile sexuality directly into full sexual readiness. Her body might
be ready, but psychologically she would have no understanding of her
environment, no idea of personal relationships, no sense of her self
or of her abilities. She would have, as the actress Elizabeth Taylor
noted of herself and her reaction to a too-early plunge into grown-up
experiences, “a child’s mind in a woman’s body.” Nature _intends_ no
such dilemma for women. She has a step-by-step plan which leads the
woman, if parents co-operate, safely to the haven of physical _and_
psychological maturity.
The latency period is also marked by a very close relationship to
the parents, particularly to the father. However, there are now no
conscious sexual feelings attached to him. She admires and values her
father above all other things and wants his admiration and very high
regard too. Most fathers instinctively give their little daughters a
great deal of love and reassurance during this phase, and the child
basks in it as a flower in the sun. She strives to do the things
that will please him, make him notice her, make him love her. His
responses are studied assiduously, and it is in this way that she
receives her first real experience with the all-important feminine need
to “please her man.” The feelings of joy she gets from his pleasure
in her accomplishments, physical and mental, are the precursors of
the rewards she will later prize so highly when bestowed on her by a
loving husband. As you might suspect, this period is very important
to her development into full womanhood with its varied psychological
give-and-take. If the father seriously fails in his role during this
period he can do irreparable harm to the growing girl.
The mother’s role, of course, continues to be important too. The little
girl has repressed her guilt feelings toward her mother, along with all
of her directly sensual feelings, and during the latency period Mother
emerges as a model to imitate. In effect the little girl says something
like this to herself: “She, after all, got the man I prize most highly
in the whole world. Therefore, she must have something very desirable.
Therefore, I’ll imitate it.” She proceeds to do just that.
Of course I do not mean that this is _all_ there is to her feelings
about her mother; she loves her mother deeply and abidingly and without
her would feel, and indeed would be bereft. Her imitation of her mother
is a tribute to those feelings too. However, I may remind you that I am
selecting those aspects of the child’s relationships that bear directly
on her later sexual maturity.
The next stage of development starts approximately at the age of ten
and ends with the complete maturation, psychological and biological,
of the individual woman. It is often divided into two phases; the
first phase, which lasts until thirteen, fourteen, or fifteen, we call
puberty; the second, by that much-misunderstood word “adolescence.”
Puberty is ushered in by great glandular changes in the child. The
young body begins to take on the semblance of womanhood. Breasts
begin to grow; pubic hair starts. Gradually the uterus, or womb,
stirs, begins to expand, readies itself to hold the child which will
ultimately grow there. In the midst of this preparatory growth
menstruation, the cyclical ebb and flow of fecund woman, starts in
earnest. In a few months the child stands just within the portal of
physical maturity.
The little girl now again (for the first time since infancy) begins
to experience rather strong sexual feelings, and she reacts to them
with some anxiety. She may start once more to masturbate clitorally,
although this time the act is accompanied by guilt feelings and with
apprehension. As I have pointed out, these feelings of apprehension can
be thought of as fully justified. Her sexuality is going to lead to
motherhood, and this in turn means that she is going to have to face
the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, the biological need of putting
her child’s welfare ahead of her own. In effect, as we have seen, she
is going to suspend the law of self-preservation as it applies to her
own person.
The little girl knows this; she knows it with her body and mind, for
even the most prudishly reared child cannot be prevented from finding
out the facts of life. If her parents have not told her she will soon
find out all there is to know from her girl friends.
I have said that the new changes in her cause her apprehension. They
also cause her feelings of joy, excitement, and intense curiosity.
Throughout her entire puberty she will run between these two states of
mind, anxiety on the one hand and feelings of pleasure on the other. At
times she will look back in envy at the blissful latency period when
she was not bothered by these powerful indications of her biological
destiny, which lies immediately ahead. She will hate her developing
breasts, her menstrual period, the hair growing under her arms and
around her genitalia. At other moments she will be rapturous about
these very same changes.
At this point she withdraws from her parents to a large extent.
Nature, as we saw in the latency period, must not only prepare her
biologically for womanhood but must ready her psychologically too. If
the little girl were to maintain the total dependency on her parents
that she has had up to this point in her growth, she would not be able
to develop the fullness of personality, the strength and individuality
necessary for successful wifehood and motherhood.
But she is not a woman yet by any means. Do not get that impression,
for there are vital steps ahead which she must take first. The attempt
some girls make to embrace true sexuality and feminine functioning
around the age of fourteen or fifteen is generally disastrous. In
normal development she will flutter between strong feelings of
dependency on her parents and rebellion against them, or rather
rebellion against her intense desire to be a little girl with them
again. The success of this phase of her growth is marked by achieving
the feeling that she has the “potentiality,” _not_ the actuality, of
freedom from her parents.
At some point during this period she will become dramatically attached
to a girl friend. This fact is so unalterable in normal development
that the whole period of puberty is often referred to as “the chum
stage” of development. She uses this friend to buttress her feelings of
separateness, of independence from the parents. The two share secrets
together constantly, pool their information on all matters pertaining
to sex, boys, women, childbirth. The friendship is a liberal education
for both and should be encouraged for the most part. The girl friend
is sometimes older by a year or two or three, and the younger one’s
worship of her is clearly a substitute for her feelings toward her own
mother. If the older girl is not too precocious sexually, nothing but
good can come from this relationship.
Very gradually puberty merges into adolescence. This is the last stage
before maturity. I call this whole period the “daydream stage.” It
is a period of almost literal waking dreams on the part of the young
lady. She is still held lightly by the long preparatory sleep of
childhood and early youth, but she is ready to wake. Her head is filled
with tremendous plans for herself. These plans usually have a highly
maternal and altruistic character about them; she will become a great
doctor and serve suffering humanity in darkest Africa, or she will
become a lawyer and defend the poor free of charge, or she will become
a nurse and, under fire that would daunt a lesser creature, she will
tend the wounded among our boys at the front. She has scores of great
loves with boys or men whom she considers wonderful--all in her head.
The satisfaction of her now nearly mature maternal and sexual impulses
through such dreams is clear. But they serve another function which is
perhaps a bit more obscure. She is not quite ready for real love yet.
She has still half a foot in childhood, is still reluctant to give
herself wholly to the realities of grown-uphood. She needs to hang upon
the tree, so to speak, for a few more years, to ripen a bit. The great
roles she plays in her daydreams are, in most cases, not achievable.
They allow her, by the very impossibility of their fruition, to have
her cake and eat it too.
Yes, the dream of young love is a long and lovely one, and it readies
the dreamer for real love. Woman will always be a romantic dreamer,
a weaver of inner reveries, of tapestries of thought that give her
whole personality its richness and flavor. In love, as in life, man is
a doer, an aggressive achiever. Woman is the passive one; she is the
dreamer who values the man’s achievements, who creates the need for his
achievement and gives color and glory to it through her appreciation of
it. The dreams of adolescence ready her for this role with her man.
Adolescence is a gradual preparation for true sexuality and love. In it
the young girl conquers her impulse to masturbate, though in certain
rather “free” communities there may be a great deal of petting with
the opposite sex. If the girl’s development is normal and she puts the
normally high value on herself that is characteristic of this period,
she will not have sexual intercourse until she actually falls in love
seriously. Also, nature gives her an almost unerring instinct for the
“right” man, one who will cherish her and their children.
It is important to know that it is the man who ultimately wakens the
sleeping beauty sexually. Until she is ready for intercourse and all
that it implies in the way of a relationship, she is conscious of no
particularly urgent vaginal sensations of a sexual nature. The man
awakens these for the first time in the act of love.
With her first intercourse, she finds a whole continent of sensations
whose existence she had only heard about second-hand. While her
clitoral sensations may still be quite pleasurable in the period of
foreplay, her whole body now, in excitement, soon learns to yearn for
the penetration of her lover’s penis, the unspeakable delight of the
now vaginally centered sensations he can give her. She has little or no
block to these sensations; there may be a period of adjustment for a
few weeks or months until they become totally unfettered from childhood
inhibitions and fears, but the months will be short. Now true orgasm
is hers at virtually every sexual encounter with her husband, and in
mutual delight their relationship will prosper and deepen.