Countertransference and the female triangular situation3

This paper represents an attempt toward reconciling contemporary changes in psychoanalytic understandings of female development, particularly in respect to separation issues, with their clinical applications to female patients. Psychoanalytic thinking typically has categorized separation conflicts as pre‐oedipal, but the authors suggest that these are an integral part of the triangular situation of the girl. The authors argue that an allegiance to erroneous theory and/or individual blind spots have led to the infantilization, pre‐oedipalization or cultural stereotyping of females, which constrains the effectiveness of their analyses. The authors present a selected review of the literature on gender‐based countertransference biases in both male and female analysts, with reference to female ‘oedipal’ material. Analytic case material of two women is presented which demonstrates how theoretical misperceptions and countertransferences to triangular separation conflicts can produce an impediment to progression in analysis.     

THE RAPE OF MEDUSA IN THE TEMPLE OF ATHENA: ASPECTS OF TRIANGULATION IN THE GIRL2

The relationship between the Greek goddess Athena and her father Zeus, together with the competitive hostility she displays towards other females, is presented as illustrating some previously neglected aspects of triangular developmental conflicts in the little girl. Literature on ‘the Oedipus complex in the female’ is reviewed and discussed. The mythological early histories of both Athena and the female monster Medusa are examined for the light they can shed on female developmental vicissitudes and resultant conflicts in both women and men. Unconscious split representations of women as assertive, phallic and dangerous, or alternatively passive, castrated and receptive result in defensive repudiation of the idea that a woman can be both actively assertive and also feminine and sexual. Athena's enraged action of transforming the beautiful young maiden Medusa into a monster as punishment for the ‘crime’ of having been raped in her temple is discussed as illustrating an outcome of the lack of resolution of the little girl's early triangular conflicts.