Envy and Infants

Radical feminists regard Sigmund Freud as the ultimate male chauvinist --and with some reason. The master taught that women are masochistic, secretive, insincere, dependent and jealous, have little sense of justice and become more rigid and unchangeable at an earlier age than men.

Nothing in the Freudian canon, however, outrages feminists more than the notion of penis envy--that female identity hinges on the crippling discovery that boys have penises and girls do not. Thus the latest psychoanalytic research on the question, due in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, is bound to incur feminist wrath. Says Co-Author Dr. Eleanor Galenson of New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine: "Some women's lib people have felt that penis envy is a dirty word, but there is no doubt that it occurs, and much earlier than Freud thought."

Dr. Galenson and her colleague, Psychoanalyst Herman Roiphe, have spent nine years studying infants ten months and older at the Albert Einstein Research Nursery. Their finding: all 30 of the girls studied so far showed "some degree of disturbance when they got to the awareness of genital difference, whereas little boys did not."

Pens and Pencils. The crisis typically occurs at the age of 15 to 17 months, the researchers report, and can range from mild to severe. The girls most disturbed by the absence of a penis and feelings of castration may reject their toilet training, have difficulty sleeping or eating, develop a sudden interest in such phallic objects as pens and pencils, or complain to their mothers that their dolls have no penises. Even in milder cases, notes Dr. Galenson, the play of girls becomes much more intricate and involved than that of boys. "It could be," she says, "that the need of little girls to confront a frustration so early in life may lead to a lot of creative activity."

Some psychoanalytic researchers play down Freud's heavy emphasis on infant sexuality, arguing that it is merely one of many variables in early childhood that shape individual psychology. To Galenson and Roiphe, however, infant sexuality is crucial: they found that children around the age of 16 months are "very aware of sexual differences," easily aroused sexually, and in fact are masturbating as part of normal development. Dr. Galenson feels that adult sexual problems like frigidity may have their origins in these early months of life. To minimize these disturbances, she suggests that parents not flaunt sexual differences by marching around nude in front of young children or show strong disapproval of masturbation. Parents should also be constantly available to their children during the critical and insecure age of 15 to 17 months.

Outside the psychoanalytic world, the Galenson-Roiphe findings are likely to be taken with many grains of salt. Even inside it, some are doubtful about inferences that can legitimately be drawn from the behavior of very young children. Still, the research bolsters the conviction of most analysts that penis envy is a substantial problem for girls. Says Psychoanalyst Robert J. Stoller, author of Sex and Gender and one of the few analysts to study the behavior of infants: "We can easily detect boys' and girls' attitudes about penises; they still find them impressive."

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