[Separation--aloneness--departure as steps in female development from the psychoanalytic viewpoint]

Abstract

Discussed here is the necessity of an inner process of separation from a maternal provider of care and the mother as a first oedipal object of love for the nonpathological early development of the young girl. The process of separation is bound up with necessary and intense reactions of disappointment in the mother and a destabilization of the young girl's feelings of her own value. It thus bears with it a threat of regression that could result in a fixation on the mother. Two such patterns of fixation, one of "compensation model" and the other the "providing of care model", are discussed. On the other hand, attention is also given to the progressive possibilities for coming to terms with the crisis in the relationship and the feelings of her own worth in the young girl. These possibilities are to be found in the young girl's decisive turning away from the mother in order to form her own identity by mobilizing and developing her own resources. This by no means implies an immediate turn to the father. First of all, this new object of love is already taken by the mother, and secondly, the girl wants to feel strong, not weak, in approaching him and must therefore keep him at a distance.