Chapter 8THE 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 anybodyeverreally 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 psychiatrichelp, 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 getthatway?
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 beenthoroughly 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 thatthe 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, andher 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. Naturediddesign this early sexual conflict for a very special reason. She did it to fosterthe 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.” Natureintendsno such dilemma for women. She has a step-by-step plan which leads the woman, if parents co-operate, safely to the haven of physicalandpsychological 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 isallthere 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 themidst 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 largeextent. 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,”notthe 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.