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PANY Scientific Meeting: Summary
Monday, December 8, 2003, 8:15 pm
Einhorn Auditorium, Lenox Hill Hospital, 131 E. 76th Street, NYC
Thoughts on Mothers, Daughters, Their Bodies, and Showing Off
Rosemary H. Balsam, MD
Training and Supervising Analyst, and Director, The Psychoanalytic Institute,
The Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis, Associate Clinical
Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University
Discussant: Leonard Shengold, MD
Summary
This presentation is part of work in progress that concerns
the maturing and mature female body and its erased role in the theory
of psychosexual development. The author will trace the traditional place
in our theory of exhibitionism that has been occupied by the male, and
suggest that for females, specifically female body image representations
related to post-pubertal secondary sexual characteristics, pregnancy,
and childbirth play a major role in body display, its ease, and its
conflicts. Some aspect of the history of the body (perhaps including
some attitudes from old Vienna towards female masturbation or the history
of midwifery) may be included. A clinical case involving an adult daughter's
analysis of her mother's physically abusive reactions to her body as
female, will be examined in this light.
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