Cloacal Anxiety in Female Development

Abstract

Contemporary psychoanalytic theory about feminine genital anxieties has shifted our focus away from some essential developmental realities of the little girl prior to the oedipal phase. Anal phase experience has recently been reemphasized as contributing significantly to the girl's developing body image, her mastery modes, and her psychological experience of gender. This paper proposes that associated with this phase is a specific anxiety described as the girl's fear that her genital is dirty, messy, and repellent to the love object, and that her sexuality is out of control and dangerously explosive. This is an important anxiety for the girl, a specific feminine version of anxiety around loss of love and approval. It derives from her bodily experience and is typically incorporated into the feminine genital anxieties of the oedipal period.

Castration Depression: Affect, Signal Affect, and/or Depressive Illness?

“…Developmental studies of boys focus more on castration anxiety, selfimage, and preoedipal phallic issues (Davies 2012;Edgcumbe and Burgner 1975;Galenson and Roiphe 1971;Serota 1969). A series of important developmental studies on girls suggests an association between recognizing the female genitals, problems with sphincter control, congenital defects, conflicts about menstruation, and castration reactions (Abraham 1924;Brenner 1982;Fenichel 1945;Galenson and Rophe 1971;Gilmore 1998;Kulish 2000;Mayer 1995;Olesker 1988). However, the association between adult female depressive illness and childhood castration conflicts is often neglected or underemphasized (Brenner 1974a(Brenner , 1982Mahler 1966;Rochlin 1953;Schmale 1972).…”

Exploration of Women's Body Experiences Surrounding First Childbirth

“…Beginning with Karen Hor ney (1926), the question of how a woman makes sense of her body as it relates to her development has been carefully explored in the psychoanalytic literature (Stoller 1968;Galenson and Roiphe 1976;Bassin 1982;Tyson 1982Tyson , 1994Tyson , 1997Applegarth 1988;Mayer 1995;Richards 1996;Birksted-Breen 1996;Halberstadt-Freud 1998;Kulish 2000;Lasky 2000). Various aspects of female genital anxieties have been explored (Olesker 1998;Elise 1998;Bernstein 1990;Mayer 1985;Dorsey 1996;Chehrazi 1986;Gilmore 1998;Chasseguet-Smirgel 1976;Maenpaa-Reenkola 1996;Hall 2005), and a more detailed picture of women's experience, fantasies, and feelings about their bodies has thereby emerged. Women's experience of being pregnant, their natural regressions, their changes in dream life, and their experience of body changes and states have also been addressed (Kestenberg 1976;Bibring et al 1961;Lester and Notman 1986;Guttieres-Green 1992;Balsam 1996).…”

Sexuality and Shame

“…There are many interesting positions and hypotheses regarding the question, ranging from refutation, to the internalization of a misogynistic culture, to particular aspects of female internal dynamics. Examples of this last would be women's special identification with their mothers, or the vicissitudes of their female-to-female erotism (Elise 2008) or bodily competition in childbirth (Balsam 2007(Balsam , 2008, or their vulnerability to "cloacal anxiety" (Gilmore 1998). Freud's original observation that shame is generated very early on as relational, and that it is a response to a clash between the individual's internal desires with external personal forces, has formed a bridge to contemporary theoretical developments in self psychology and intersubjective and relational models.…”