Thursday, May 29, 2014

Winnicott on psychic bisexuality

In Psychoanalytic Explorations there are a few more pages on Winnicott's thoughts on Psychic Bisexuality.

"Hamlet's altered attitude to Ophelia and his cruelty to her as a picture of his ruthless rejection of his own female element, now split off and handed over to her" 181

I think Ella Sharpe also read Ophelia as representing Hamlet's feminine side too.The symptom reading favors this interpretation too although there is more going on.

The most interesting aspect is that Winnicott's male patient is sexually active with women, but as a lesbian (i.e. his feminine part in a homosexual defense)

"there was the curious theme that this man felt that if he had had intercourse with his wife although he would have felt satisfied and his wife would have been satisfied this could not be because it would mean that he was unfaithful to his mistress with whom, however, he has a very feeble relation as man and woman and in fact he is giving up this relationship temporarily because it is unsatisfactory and is really a relationship between two women... in the transference therefore the thing is that he is dealing with his wife who is his mother" 186

This is very interesting and I wonder how many males escape castration anxiety by going this route...

No comments:

Post a Comment