Separating the men from the boys: masculinity, psychosexual development, and sex crime in the United States, 1930s-1960s.
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Adult↗
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Fathers and daughters. The significance of 'fathering' in the psychosexual development of the girl.
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Adolescent↗
Time experience and transference.
This paper has examined the historical developments in the understanding of the experience of time in normal and pathological development, with an emphasis on the differences between "objective" time, "subjective" time, the "timelessness" of the system Ucs., and "intrapsychic" time. Using a variety of perspectives--psychobiology, cognitive development, psychosexual development, separation-individuation, and object-relations theory--time experience has been seen to unfold as a result of the constant interrelation of physiological maturation and psychosexual development, with early object relations playing a supraordinate role in organizing the experience of time from its roots in identification with the preoedipal mother (Mother Time), where time is felt as intensity, to the relatively autonomous ego-superego function of time experience in the adult with adequate separation-individuation and capacity for object constancy, where time is felt as duration and continuity. Left unanswered are (1) philosophical questions about the phenomenological observation that all time is experienced in the present in the ego, (2) what the mechanisms for intrasystemic differentiation of past, present, and future are, and (3) metapsychological questions about the locus and mechanism for monitoring the passage of experienced time. The clinical application of concepts of time experience was demonstrated through presentation of aspects of the treatment of a patient for whom time and its experience was the organizing schema for her life, character pathology, and transference neurosis. The fantasy of the omnipotent control of time dominated the analysis and served as a major resistance, yet her manipulation of time served to stabilize the treatment relationship so that analysis became possible.
Adult↗
[Development of psychosexuality and its disorders in girls].
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Adolescent↗
The relationship between early development and psychosexual behaviors in adolescent females.
The relationship between early sexual maturation and the psychosexual behaviors of dating and sexual intercourse was investigated using a national sample of adolescent females aged 15 to 19. Among both black and nonblack subjects, early-maturing girls were more likely to have experienced earlier dating and coital onset than were their later-maturing peers. Blacks experienced menarche and first intercourse at earlier ages, yet dating onset at later ages. Early menarche was also associated with marriage at an early age for nonblacks, but not for blacks. These racial differences were explained in terms of diverse socialization patterns or cultural expectations. For both blacks and nonblacks, those with earlier coital experience were found to have had menarche and dating onset at earlier ages.
Adolescent↗
[Preliminary reports from a psychometric fixation-regression study using the McGill Object Relations Scale].
INTRODUCTION: Psychosexual development is generally assessed clinically, that is to say, in a qualitative manner (Piper and Duncan, 1999). Dymetryszyn, Bouchard, Bienvenu, De Carufel, and Gaston (1997) recently proposed a more quantitative approach based on the overall maturity of the subject's object relations. BACKGROUND: Object-relation maturity is quantified using a profile that defines a score for each stage of an individual's psychosexual development: oral-narcissistic, oral-objectal, anal, phallic pre-oedipal, oedipal, and genital. The McGill Object Relations Scale (MORS) (Dymetryszyn et al., 1997) was adapted (Combalbert, Vautier, Bourdet-Loubère, Favard, & Bouchard, 2002) and then used to obtain the quantitative scores. The relationship between overall object-relation maturity and psychosexual development is complex. Psychosexual development is considered here to be a constant latent dimension. Accordingly, the higher the level of development, the greater the individual's possibility of establishing the object relations that correspond to more evolved stages. Inversely, the lower the level of development, the more the individual is forced to rely on object relations corresponding to earlier stages of development. However, the connection between the object-relation maturity profile and psychosexual development is made even more complex by the existence of the well-known phenomenon of fixation-regression. OBJECTIVES: This article attempts to determine how fixation-regression is reflected in the structure of the profiles of a sample of individuals whose clinical diagnosis suggests probable regression to the anal stage. METHODS: The subjects chosen had borderline personality disorder coupled with either perversion or psychopathy. The data were modelled using an unfolding model. MORS was used on 60 criminal subjects who had been charged with, or convicted of, crimes against persons. The nosographic diagnosis was based on the psychiatric assessment of the prisoners. DSM IV diagnostic criteria were used as a reference to confirm or refute the pronounced diagnosis. Only subjects who met at least five criteria for borderline personality disorder were included in the sample. To assess the reliability of the individual scores, two expert judges blindly scored the 60 protocols. RESULTS: The results obtained with an unfolding model support the hypothesis that the observed ordinates for the oral-narcissistic, oral-objectal, phallic pre-oedipal, oedipal, and genital stages obey a law of synchrony that complies with the postulate of a continuum in psychosexual development. The second main result was the fact that the observed ordinates for the level corresponding to the anal stage could not be described by the model. Furthermore, this finding did not come from a possible scoring error, since inter-judge reliability was 0.93 for that level. DISCUSSION: These results are encouraging for the utilization of MORS as a technique for quantifying object relations. This study on a sample of individuals with a high probability of anal stage fixation-regression suggests that this type of phenomenon can be objectified by means of MORS profiles. However, the present study has some limitations of its own. The main methodological drawback pertains to the subjective aspect of the protocol scoring. The two judges had a great deal of joint experience in scoring other protocols on the MORS grid. This could explain the particularly high inter-judge correlations, compared to the within-class correlations published by Dymetryszyn et al. (1997). CONCLUSION: One cannot rule out the possibility that our analyses would have had different outcomes had other independent judges scored the 60 protocols. Moreover, our results cannot be generalized without replication. A critical test would be to replicate our analyses on similar data, and to examine the unfolding model's behavior on data from a sample of ordinary adults diagnosed as not having strong fixation-regression tendencies. If the synchrony laws defined by the unfolding model are correct, the anal stage should be included in the arc formed by projecting the six stages on the factorial plane of the principal component analysis. Fundamental research based on the psychosexual theory of the libido and supported by statistical data can objectify the vicissitudes of psychosexual development (such as fixation-regression) or developmental differences across groups of individuals. This makes a strong case for pursuing MORS-based investigations.
Adult↗
Abnormal sexual development and psychosexual issues.
Animal models of gonadal hormone influences on the sexual differentiation of brain and behaviour are reviewed and discussed as a basis for predicting hormonal influences on human neurobehavioural development. Behavioural outcomes in clinical intersex cases, including congenital adrenal hyperplasia, androgen insensitivity syndrome, enzymatic deficiencies and situations in which hormones have been prescribed during pregnancy are reviewed. It is concluded that the prenatal or neonatal hormone environment contributes to the development of human behaviours that show sex differences, particularly childhood play behaviour, sexual orientation and core gender identity. There also is some evidence for influences on aggression and cognition. It is also concluded that additional research is needed to determine why some intersex patients assigned and reared as girls are not successful in this identity and role.
Adrenal Hyperplasia, Congenital↗
Woman-centered perspectives on female psychosexuality.
Numerous contemporary analyses have challenged traditional models of female psychosexual development, identifying their norms as implicitly androcentric. Femaleness has been regarded as derivative or deviant, as less and "other" than maleness. Alternative, woman-centred, models emphasise three major aspects of female psychosexual development: affiliation (women and others), maternity (women as mothers), and alterity (women and otherness). For some theorists the affiliative/maternal emphasis constructs a model of healthy and desirable femaleness. For others it represents not only the outcome of millennia of female subordination but also provides a justification for perpetuation of that subordination. Whatever the resolution of these dilemmas, a woman-centred perspective of female psychosexual development is relevant to contemporary psychiatric thinking. This review will present such a perspective and raise some of those dilemmas.
Female↗
Development of psychosexual concepts in relation to expressive language performance.
Cognitive-developmental theory suggests that the learning of gender identity concepts is a sequential process, beginning with the learning of one's own gender, and moving to recognition of the invariance of gender as a human characteristic. Neither clinical nor theoretical literature can fully explain the steps involved. In this study, retarded and nonretarded children were asked to respond to tasks requiring knowledge of core gender identity and gender constancy. When both the retarded and nonretarded children were pooled, a significant interaction was found across all ages between expressive language performance and the development of the psychosexual concepts of core gender identity and gender constancy.
Age Factors↗
Prolactinemia in adolescent males surviving malignancies in childhood: impaired dating activity.
A relationship appears to exist between prolactin metabolism and psychosexual development. We studied pubertal stage, testicular size, and serum follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), testosterone, thyroxine, thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), and prolactin concentrations in 94 adolescent males who had survived malignancies in childhood. Of the patients, 22% had elevated serum prolactin, > 300 mU/L. In multivariate analysis, the only therapeutic agents or treatments found to be independently associated with prolactin concentration were cisplatin and cytosine arabinose. Administration of cisplatin was associated with an increase of 55 m U/L (p < 0.01) and that of cytosine arabinoside with an increase of 23 mU/L (p < 0.01) in serum prolactin concentration. Serum prolactin concentration correlated with serum FSH (r = 0.26, p = 0.16) and LH (r = 0.30, p = 0.005). In 45 of the patients 10 criteria of psychosexual development were evaluated using a personal, semi-structured, and psychodynamically-oriented interview. A significant inverse relation existed between serum prolactin concentration and dating with the opposite sex (p = 0.008); none of the patients with elevated serum prolactin were dating. We conclude that even a slight elevation of serum prolactin above normal is associated with or may be reflected in the psychosexual development of adolescent males who have survived malignancies in childhood.
Adolescent↗
Psychosocial aspects of precocious puberty.
This paper will deal with the psychologic correlates of abnormal puberty and the implications for assessment and treatment. The main areas of adolescent behavior, equally relevant to the child who undergoes normal or abnormal puberty, are psychosexual development, psychopathology and mental functioning in terms of level of intelligence and cognitive strengths and weaknesses. Regarding psychosexual development, the important findings are that adolescents with precocious puberty tend to be somewhat earlier in starting their adolescent sex life, though they still remain within the normal range of current standards. The reports on psychopathology in children with precocious puberty on a short-term or long-term basis are based on clinical case reports and systematic studies and suggest that a history of precocious puberty may carry with it an increased risk of psychopathology. IQ and school achievement are typically not negatively affected in precocious puberty; in fact, there is a suggestion of the opposite. It may be that there is an advantage in intellectual development associated with early pubertal maturation, which may be temporary rather than long-term.
Adolescent↗
Individuation of women.
The period between 30 and 40 years of age is probably the normal time developmentally for women to complete the individuation from their mothers. Because of the change of object from the primary object (mother) to the secondary object (father), as well as the lack of a narcissistic triumph over the mother comparable to that of a boy's penis, a woman's psychosexual development is more difficult and prolonged. The girl must resolve her attachment to the omnipotent mother and work through her Oedipus complex by deidealizing the father, recognizing that her anal-sadistic impulses do not castrate men, before she can completely individuate. Only then does she become an autonomous, complete woman. Passive-dependency in women is not a mature adult state, as several authors hold, but a partially resolved individuation from the mother, now transferred onto men. Becoming attached to men, idealizing them, they devalue themselves in order not to regress to the omnipotent preoedipal mother. Adulthood (30-40 years) is the time when this resolution can occur because there have been sufficient narcissistic achievements for the woman, enough distance from the actual preoedipal mother, and an opportunity to observe that their own anal-sadistic impulses toward men have not castrated or destroyed them, as well as an opportunity to see men as fallible and human. This is a reason so many woman return to school and begin careers in their 30s. This incomplete resolution is also a reason for fewer original discoveries and creative contributions by women than by men during the course of history. As society changes, this special difficulty for women to individuate may change as well, but I would predict that such change would not be as much as one might expect because of the unique psychosexual development of women.
Achievement↗
Children in lesbian and single-parent households: psychosexual and psychiatric appraisal.
Thirty-seven school-age children reared in 27 lesbian households were compared with 38 school-age children reared in 27 heterosexual single-parent households, with respect to their psychosexual development and their emotions, behaviour and relationships. Systematic standardized interviews with the mothers and with the children, together with parent and teacher questionnaires, were used to make the psychosexual and psychiatric appraisal. The two groups did not differ in terms of their gender identity, sex role behaviour or sexual orientation. Also, they did not differ on most measures of emotions, behaviour and relationships--although there was some indication of more frequent psychiatric problems in the single-parent group. It was concluded that rearing in a lesbian household per se did not lead to atypical psychosexual development or constitute a psychiatric risk factor.
Adolescent↗
Sexual differentiation of odor and partner preference in the rat.
Previous studies have shown that adult male rats, in which brain estrogen formation was inhibited neonatally by SC administration of the aromatase inhibitor 1,4, 6-androstatriene-3,17-dione (ATD), show an altered sexual partner preference. When tested in a three-compartment box, such gonadally intact ATD males approach and mate both with the estrous female and the sexually active male, whereas normal males prefer to approach and mate with the estrous female, avoiding the stimulus male. After castration in adulthood and estradiol treatment, ATD males prefer sexually active males. Similarly treated normal males prefer estrous females, and estrous females prefer to mate with males. In the present study, we asked what stimulus characteristics of active males vs. estrous females determined the different sexual preferences of males, ATD males, and of females. Were they chemosensory cues or more distal cues such as actually seeing and hearing the stimulus animals or the reward of sexual activity with the stimulus animals? Sex differences in preference were evident when animals were given a choice between soiled bedding from estrous females and from sexually active males. ATD and control males spent significantly more time on soiled bedding from estrous females than on soiled bedding from sexually active males. Control females spent significantly more time on soiled bedding from sexually active males than on soiled bedding from estrous females. More distal cues, such as seeing and hearing the stimulus animals, revealed differences in preference between control males and females, but not between ATD and control males. Physical interaction with the stimulus animals was a prerequisite for revealing differences in preference between ATD and control males. Then, the behavior of ATD males was clearly intermediate between that of normal male and female rats. In conclusion, neonatal estradiol is important for the psychosexual development of the male rat. However, the present data suggest that the psychosexual development of the male rat also requires either prenatal estradiol or perinatal testosterone.
Androstatrienes↗
A deaf sex offender.
Sex offenders are common among deaf criminals seen for psychiatric evaluation. This has previously been attributed to discretionary handling of deaf criminals within the criminal justice system. The author presents the case of a deaf sex offender which illustrates discretionary handling, but which also suggests altered psychosexual development. He then discusses several characteristics in the development and lives of deaf people that may contribute to an altered psychosexual development and an increase likelihood of committing sex offenses.
Adolescent↗
On the universal nature of primal scene fantasies.
The scope of this paper is limited to inspecting primal scene fantasies, their meaning and function, as part of the primary organizing fantasies in the psychosexual development of the human being. The aim is to examine how primal scene fantasies, throughout life, reflect the shaping of oedipal sexuality. An infant cannot cathect the use of genital functions or their psychic contents by practising them with his more knowledgeable parents or caring persons. In order to alleviate this deprivation the child creates fantasy self objects, proto fantasies of his sexual parents with whom, in the form of primal scene fantasies, he then tries to work out his sexual libido. In our opinion, the formless, psychically non-structuralized impulses of genital-oedipal sexuality tend to awaken an inner state of mind at any stage of life in which the infantile primitive dynamics, helplessness and readiness to destroy, are again repeated. Not only oral desire and the breast alone are 'good' or 'bad'. The same dynamics apply to every impulse for which the actual capacity for psychic work is insufficient. The new inner impulses brought along with progressing psychosexual development can create such a situation. The unstable cathexis of genital-oedipal sexuality is the universal fate of a human being. The child cannot participate in the sexual activities of adulthood, and is unable to cathect his genital functions under real conditions and with real partners. The cathectic wound thus inflicted on the self and the exclusion experienced are essentially bound together. The theme of inclusion or exclusion, so intertwined with the primal scene fantasies, concerns not only object relations, but self-esteem as well.
Adult↗
Gender dysphoria in a child with true hermaphroditism.
This case report describes the psychosexual development of a child with true hermaphroditism who was assigned to the male sex at birth, but reassigned to the female sex at age two months. Given this child's excessive exposure to male sex hormone in utero, relative to physically normal females, one would predict a biological predisposition to behave in a masculine manner. This has occurred since two years of age. In addition, this child has had periodic episodes of gender disturbance, dysphoria, and ambivalence. In contrast, a physically normal fraternal twin sister has been conventionally feminine. A number of psychosocial factors appeared to have exacerbated the biologic predisposition to behave in a masculine manner, and thus may have been responsible for "pushing" this child into varying degrees of gender identity conflict. These included a closer father-daughter than mother-daughter relationship, parental tolerance of cross-gender behavior, and a mother who has been psychologically disturbed since the birth of her children. The heuristic value of this case will be discussed in relation to contemporary models of psychosexual development which emphasize the interaction of biological and psychosocial factors.
Child, Preschool↗
Envy, shame, and sadism.
In this article, envy is identified as a drive derivative, erupting as a definable behavior in the anal phase of psychosexual development, locating envy as first being experienced during the stage of self-development, separation/individuation. The aim of envy, as identified by the nature of the investment the subject makes in envied objects, is described as "aquisitiveness," or, following Klein, sadism, defined in terms of the subject wanting to incorporate the envied object, making the aim of envy narcissistic, that is, an aggrandizing of the self. The usual aim assigned to envy, destructiveness, is conceptualized as a defense against the cannibalistic hunger of envy, in response to the regulatory affect, shame. The dynamic of this defense accounts for the dyadic nature of the object of envy (as opposed to jealousy), supporting the "splitting" quality of this defense. This rendering of envy, shame, and sadism promotes the integration of narcissistic urges into normative psychosexual development and deepens an understanding of the splitting defense in pathological narcissism.
Defense Mechanisms↗