Page - 21 - in Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Puberty and Adolescence - The Inner Worlds of Teenagers and their Parents

Psychosexual development in puberty 21 When a girl dresses in a provocatively erotic way, her parents might uneasily interpret this as an indication of promiscuous or exhibitionistic behavior. This could indeed be the case, but it also could be her attempt to find favor with boys and attract attention. Homosexual experiences with both boys and girls can be a transitory episode, or also the beginning of the establishment of a homosexual identity. Clearly, during the transitory phase of adolescence, a given behavior does not constitute an unambiguous symptom. Particularly during this phase, a behavior that appears to be outlandish or pathological might be transitory. As is shown in the case of Fritzi (see Chapter 3), modest and provocative behaviors can alternate with each other, as an expression of deep insecurity. Contrary to the seemingly simple and clear separation between the sexes into masculine and feminine with the goal of reproduction, Freud posits the differ- entiated version of bisexuality. Wilhelm Fliess and later Oskar Weininger were decisive in the shaping of this paradigm. Freud propounded the thesis that each human being comprises an inborn masculine and feminine sexual nature. The development of sexual identity depends on biographical factors. A certain degree of anatomical hermaphrodism occurs normally. In every normal male or female individual, traces are found of the apparatus of the opposite sex. . . . These long -familiar facts of anatomy lead us to suppose that an originally bisexual physical disposition has, in the course of evolution, become modified into a unisexual one, leaving behind only a few traces of the sex that has become atrophied. (Freud S.E. VII 141 1905, quoted in Laplanche and Pontalis 1988, 53) New research in embryology (Sherfey 1966/1972) has shown that the human embryo is primarily “feminine” in nature. Only through the masculine hor- mone androgen do the male sexual organs then become differentiated from the female. The clitoris is from the beginning on a part of the female sexual apparatus. From the embryological point of view, the penis is therefore an extended clitoris – not the other way around, the clitoris as a stunted penis, as was previously believed. (Fleck 1977, 26, translation McQuade) At the same time, the urge to live out both male and female components is both fascinating and unsettling to adolescents, who often try out various sexual prac- tices in their search to discover their own preferences. Another important phenomenon is the “ambivalence of feelings” Freud first discussed in 1912 in his “The Dynamics of Transference”: the same person becomes the object of both love and hate; this person is meant both to become jealous and trusting or emotionally accessible. Such ambivalent feelings can be found in childhood – but in adolescence, they are often linked to overwhelming