Book Il WOMAN’S LIFE TODAY PART IV THE FORMATIVE YEARS CHAPTER XII Childhood © w xis not born, but rather becomes, a woman, No biolog- ical, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the human female presents in society; it i eivlization as whole that produces. this ereature, intermediate between tale and eunuch, which is deseribed as feminine. Only. the intervention of someone else can establish an individual as an Other. In so far as he exists in and for himself, the child would hardly be able to think of himself as sexually differ- entiated. In girls as in boys the body is frst of all the radia- tion of a subjectivity, the instrument that makes possible the comprehension of the world: it is through the eyes, the hands, that children apprehend the universe, and not through the sexual parts. The dramas of birth and of weaning unfold after the same fashion for nurslings of both sexes; these have the same interests and the same pleasures; sucking is at frst the source of their most agreeable sensations; then they xo through an anal phase in which they get their greatest satisfactions from the excretory functions, Which they have in common, Their genital development is analogous; they ex: lore their bodies with the same curiosity and the same in- ‘ference; from clitoris and penis they derive the same vague pleasure. As their sensibility comes to require an sibject, itis turned toward the mother: the soft, smooth, re- 249250 ‘Tux SEconp Sux: Woman's Life Today silient feminine flesh is what arouses sexual desires, and these desires are prehensile; the girl, like the boy, kisses, handles, fand caresses her mother in an aggressive way; they feel the same jealousy if a new child is bor, and they show it in similar behavior patterns: rage, sulkiness, urinary difficulties; ‘and they resort to the same coquettish tricks to gain the Jove of adults, Up to the age of twelve the little girl is as strong as her brothers, and she shows the same mental powers; there is no field where she is debarred from en- gaging in rivalry with them. Tf, well before puberty and sometimes even from early infancy, she seems to us to be already sexually determined, this is not because mysterious instinets directly doom her to passivity, coquetry, maternity; it is because the influence of others upon the child is a fac- tor almost from the start, and thus she is indoctrinated with her vocation from her earliest years. ‘The world is at first represented in the newborn infant only by immanent sensations; he is still immersed in the 4 bosom of the Whole as he was when he lived in a dark womb; when he is put to the breast or the nursing. bottle he is still surrounded by the warmth of maternal flesh, Lit- tle by little he learns to perceive objects as distinet and sep- arate from himself, and to distinguish himself. from: them. Meanwhile he is separated more or less brutally from the nourishing body. Sometimes the infant reacts to this sep- aration by a violent crisis; in any case, it is about when the separation is accomplished, toward the age of six months, perhaps, that the child begins to show the desire to attract dthers through acts of mimicry that in time become real showing off, Certainly this attitude is not established through a considered choice; but itis not necessary to conceive a sit tuation for it to exist. The nursling lives directly the basi Grama of every existent: that of his relation to. the Other. Man experiences with anguish his being tumed loose, his forlornness. In flight from his freedom, his subjectivity, he ‘would fain Jose himself in the bosom of the Whole, Here, Indeed, is the origin of his cosmic and pantheistic dreams, of his longing for oblivion, for sleep, for ecstasy, for death, He never succeeds in abolishing his separate ego, but at least he wants to attain the solidity of the in-himself, the en-so, to be petrifed into a thing, It is especially when he is fixed by the gaze of other persons that he appears to himself as being one, Tt is in this perspective that the behavior of the child must Judith Gautier rates inher _memcies that sbe went and pined so iia gceaSey Teste mars hey Bad to Wing for Uk, and ‘Tue Formative Yeans: Childhood 251 be interpreted: in carnal form he discovers finiteness, soli tude, forlom desertion in a strange world. He endeavors to compensate for this catastrophe by projecting his existence into an image, the reality and value of which others will es- tablish. It appears that he may begin to affimm his identity at the time when he recognizes his reflection in a mizror—a time that coincides with that of weaning: * his ego becomes so fully identified with this reflected image that it is formed only in being projected. Whether or not the mirror actually plays a more or less considerable part, it is certain that the ct commences toward the age of six months to mimic his par- ents, and under their gaze to regard himself as an object. He Xp already an autonomous subject in transoendence toward outer world; but he encounters himself only in a ected form enna ‘When the child develops further, he fights in two ways against his original abandonment. He attempts to deny the separation: rushing into his mother's arms, he seeks her liv- ing warmth and demands her caresses. “And he attempts to find self-justfication through the approbation of others. ‘Adults scem to him like gods, for they have the power to con. fer existence upon him. He fecls the magic of the gaze that makes of him now a delightful little angel, now a monster. His two modes of defense are not mutually exclusive: on the contrary, they complement each other and inter- penetrate. When the attempt at enticement succeeds, the sense of justification finds carnal confirmation in. the kisses and caresses obtained: it all amounts to a single state of happy passivity that the child experiences in his mother’s lap and under her benevolent gaze. There is no difference in the attitudes of girls and boys during the first three or four years; both try to perpetuate the happy condition that preceded ‘weaning; in both sexes enticement and showing-off behavior occur: boys are as desirous as their sisters of pleasing adults, causing smiles, making themselves admired is more satisfying to deny the anguish than to rise above it, more radical to be lost in the bosom of the Whole than to be petrified by the conscious egos of others: carnal union creates a deeper alienation than any resignation under the gaze of others. Enticement and showing off represent a sore comple, a les eay stage, than simple abandon in the maternal arms. The magic of the adult gaze is capricious, ‘The child pretends to be invisible; his parents enter into the a252, ‘Tux Seconp Sex: Woman's Life Today ame, trying blindly to find him and laughing; but all at game ng Hy Ba and Leg Stall” The child has amused them with a bright saying; hie repeats it, and this time they shrug their shoulders. In this world, uncertain and unpredictable as the universe of Keafay"ono stumbles ‘at evry step! That 2 why many children are afraid of growing up; they are in despair if their fet into the grownup’ bed. Through the physical fpstation they feel more and more cruelly the forlomness, the aban- ent, which te uma Beng can never be ons of without anguish, , "This is just where the litle gils first appear as privileged ings, A Second weaning, esta and more gradual than se first, withdraws the mother’s body from, the child's, em- eae ‘he ‘boys especially are little by little denied the Kisses and caresses they have been used to, As for the little girl, she continues to be cajoled, she is allowed to cling to fier’ mother’s skirts, her father takes her on his knee and strokes her hair. She wears sweet little dresses, her tears and caprices aro viewed indulgent. her hair is done wp, care rally, older. people are amused at her expressions anc fy ly ale er He Sainst the anguish of solitude. ‘The little boy, in contrast, wil be denied even coquetry; his efforts at enticement, his play-acting, are iritating, He is told that “a man doesn to be kissed... A-man doesn’t look at himself in mirrors. « ‘2 man doesst cry.” He is urged to be “a little man"; he will Gbtain adult approval by becoming iadependent of adults. ‘Ho will please them by not appearing to seck to please them, ‘Many boys, frightened by the hard independence they are condemned 0, wish they were girls; formerly, when boys sere dressed in early years like girls, they’ often shed Years when they bad to change from dresses to trousers and Saw their curls cut, Certain of them held obstinately to the Choice of femininity—one form of orientation toward homo- Sexuality, Maurice Sachs (in Le, Sebbat) says: “I wished passionately to be a girl and I pushed my unawareness of the Erandeur of being male to the point of meaning to urinate in siting position.” net tobe lev han is ters, itis because great things are in store for him. The de- fnands placed upon him at once imply a high evaluation, ia her Orage Bowe Yaesu Grulise rcates ancien of tind pong, em as ee range sel ‘icompredensib.” ‘Tue Fonaative Year Childhood 953 Maurras relates in his memoirs that he was jealous of a younger brother whom his mother and grandmother were cajoling. His father took his hand and drew him from the room, saying to him: “We are men, let us leave those wom en.” The child is persuaded that more is demanded of boys because they are superior; to give him courage for the difficult path he must follow, pride in his manhood is instilled into him; this abstract notion takes on for him a concrete aspect: it is incamated in his penis. He does not spontancously experience a sense of pride in his little lazy sex, but rather through the attitude of the group around him. Mothers and nurses keep alive the tradition that identifies the phallus and the male idea; whether they recognize its prestige in amorous gratitude or in submission, or whether they get a sense of revenge in coming upon it in the nursling in a very humble form, they treat the infantile penis with remarkable com- placeney. Rabelais tells us about the tricks and comments of Gargantua’s nurses, and history has preserved those of the nurses of Louis XIII, More modest women still give a nick- name to the litle boy's sex, speaking to him of it as of a small person who is at once himself and other than himself: they Inake of it, according to the expression already cited, an “alter ego ‘usually more, sly, more intelligent, and more clever than the individual.” « ‘Anatomically the penis is well suited for this role; project- ing free of the body, it secms like a little natural play- thing, a kind of puppet. Elders will lend value to the child, then,” in conferring it upon his double. A father told me about one of his sons who at the age of three still sat down to urinate; surrounded with sisters and girl cousins, he was a timid and sad child. One day his father took him to the toilet, saying: “Iam going to show you how men do it” There- after the child, proud of urinating while standing, scomed girls “who urinate through a hole”; his disdain originally arose not because they lacked an organ but because they had not been singled out and initiated by the father, as he had. ‘Thus, far from the penis representing a direct advantage from'which the boy could draw a feeling of superiority, its high valuation appears on the contrary as a compensation— invented by adults and ardently accepted by the child—for the hardships of the second weaning. Thus he is protected against regret for his Tost status as nursling and for his not being a girl Later on he will ineamate his transeendence and his proud sovereignty in his sex.* 4A, Balint: La Vie intime de Venfort. Cf. Book To 43. See Book I 7 43.254 ‘Tu Sxcoxp Sex: Woman's Life Today The lot of the little girl is very different, Mothers and | nurses feel no reverence or tenderness toward her genitalss they do not direct her attention toward that secret organ, inc visible except for its covering, and not to be grasped in’ the hand; in a sense she has no sex organ. She does not ence this absence as a lack; evidently her body is, for her, ‘quite complete; but she finds herself situated in the world dif- ferently from the boy; and a constellation of factors can trans- form this difference, in her eyes, into an inferiority. There are few questions more extensively discussed by. psychoanalysts than the celebrated feminine “castration| complex.” Most would admit today that penis envy is mani- fested in very diverse ways in different eases. ® To begin with, there are many litle girls who remain ignorant of the male anatomy for some years. Such a child finds it quite natural that there should be men and women, just as there is a sun and a moon: she believes in essences contained in words and her curiosity is not analytic at first. For many others this tiny bit of flesh hanging between boys’ legs is in~ significant or even laughable; it is a peculiarity that, merges with that of clothes or haircut, Often it is first seen on a small nevbom brother and, as Helene Deutsch puts it, “when the ttle girl is very young she is not impressed by the penis her little brother.” She cites the case of a girl of eighteen months who remained quite indifferent to the discovery of the penis and attached to importance to it until much Tater, {in accordance with her personal interests. It may even hap- pen that the penis is considered to be an anomaly: an out- growth, something vague that hangs, like wens, breasts, or warts; it can inspire disgust. Finally, the fact is that there are mimerous cases where the little girl does take an interest in the penis of a brother or playmate; but that does not mean that she experiences jealousy of it in a really sexual way, still less that she feels deeply affected by the absence of that organ; she wants to get it for herself as she wants to get any and every object, but this desire can remain superficial. There is no doubt that the excretory functions, and in par ticular the urinary functions, are of passionate interest to children; indeed, to wet the bed is often a form of protest against a marked preference of the parents for another ‘6m addition t the works of Freud and Adler, an abundant Hterature fon the “suhect iv tn existence Abraham waa feet to voice tbe Wen that fhe lite ait miebe"canider ber sex asa wou! resulting from a util Hon, Karen Hlrney, owen Jeanne Lamp de" Grost, Helene’ Deutsch and "aioe have studied the’ question from the pevchasnalytie point of view Sconewreerays tp cocone peychoanalysa wit the teas of Plage and Langues 'Seo also Bolles Les Tdcer der enfants our ln iflronce det seeee ‘Tue Formative Yeans: Childhood 255 child, ‘There are countries where the men urinate while seated, and there are cases of women who urinate standing, as is customary with many peasants, among others; but in contemporary Wester society, custom generally demands that women sit or crouch, while the erect position is reserved for males. This difference constitutes for the little girl the most striking sexual differentiation. To urinate, she is required to crouch, uncover herself, and therefore hide: a shameful and inconvenient procedure. The shame is intensified in the frequent cases in whicii the girl suffers from involuntary dis- charge of urine, as for instance when laughing immoderately; in general her control is not so good as that of the boys. To boys the urinary function seems like a free game, with the charm of all games that offer liberty of action; the penis can be manipulated, it gives opportunity for action, which {s ono of the deep interests ofthe child. A little gol on seeing a boy urinating exclaimed admiringly: “How convenient! She” sream ‘canbe duected. at wil and. ta consid- erable distance, which gives the boy a feeling of omnipo- tence. Freud ‘spoke of “the burning ambition of early diuretics”; Stekel has discussed this formula sensibly, but it fs true, as Karen Homey says,* that the “fantasies ‘of om- nipoterice, especially those of sadistic character, are fre- quently associated with the male urinary stream”; these fan- tasies, which are lasting in certain men,* are important in the child. Abraham speaks of the “great pleasure women derive from watering the garden with a hose”; I believe, in agreement with the theories of Sartre and of Bachelard,* that fdentifying the hose with the penis is not necessarily the source of this pleasure—though it is clearly so in certain cases. Every stream of water in the air seems like a miracle, a de- fiance of gravity: to direct, to gover it, is to win a small victory over the laws of nature; and in any case the small boy finds here a daily amusement that is denied his sis- ters. It permits the establishment through the urinary stream of many relations with things such as water, earth, moss, snow, and the like. There are little girls who’ in their wish to share these experiences lie on their backs and try to make the urine spurt upward or practice urinating while standing. According to Karen Homey, they envy also the possibility of exhibiting which the boy has. She reports that “a patient, upon seeing a man urinating in the street, sud- Cited by A. Balint "The Genesis of the Casteation Compler in Woman," International Journal of Pagchoanaiptn, 2925-4 CE Montheriant, Back, p. 195. 4 See Book Ls pf256 Tue Seconp Sex: Woman's Life Today denly exclaimed: “If 1 could ask one gift from Providence, it would be to have for once in my HS the power of aaeee ing like a man.’” To many little girls it scems that’ the boy, having the right to touch his penis, ean make use of it a5 a plaything, whereas their organs are taboo. “That all the factors combine to make possession of a male sex organ seam desirable to many gis Isa fact attstod by humerous inquiries made and confidences received by psy. chiatrists, Havelock Elis * cites these remarks made’ by @ Patient of Dr. 8. E, Jellfe, called Zenia: “The igushing of ‘water in a jet or spray especially from a long garden hose, has always been highly suggestive to mo, recalling the act of urination as witnessed in childhood in my brothers or even ine other boys.” A correspondent, Mrs. R. S, told Ells that as a child she greatly desired to handle a boy's penis and imagined scenes involving such behavior with urination; one day she Was allowed to hold a garden hose. “It seemed delightfully like holding a penis” Sho asserted that the penis had no sex- ual significance for her; she knew about the urinary function Gals A post interesting cas, that of Flori is reported by welock Ellis? (and later analyzed el); T giv Havelock Elis (and lator alyzed by Stekl); Tigo hore ‘Tho woman concemed is very intelligent, artistic, acth biologically normal, and not homosexual. She says that the ray fonction paved ‘a great lo in her childhoods e played urinary games with her brothers, and they wet ee ag ames wis es her od hey we the superiority of the male were connected ‘with urina- tion. 1 felt aggrieved with nature because T lacked 80 use- ful and omamental an organ. No teapot without a spout felt so forlom, Tt required no one to instil into me the theory of male predominance and superiority. Constant proof was before me.” Sho took great pleasure in urinating in the country. "Nothing could come up to the entrancing sound as the stream descended on crackling leaves, it tho depth of a wood and she watched its absorption. Most phallshe wat fainted by the iden o doing i into wate [as are many litle boys], Florrie complains that the style of her knickers prevented her from tying various desized experiments, but often during country walks she ‘would hold back as long as she could and then suddenly relieve herself standing. “I'can distinctly. remember the strange and delicious sensation of this forbidden delight, and also Studie in the Poycaody of Set, “Unda?” (Random Hoase VaLitiNg dye’ POO oF Ser “atin Random Hue en 3 li pc, Vol Hp 121 ‘tue Formative Yeans: Childhood 257 my puzzled feeling that it came standing.” In her opinion, the style of children's clothing has great importance fot feminine psychology in general. “It was not only a source of annoyance to me that I had to unfasten my drawers and then squat down for fear of wetting them in front, but the fap at the back, which must be removed to uncover the posterior parts during the act, accounts for my early im- Pression that in girls this function is connected with those arts, The first distinction in sex that impressed me—the ‘one great difference in sex-was that boys urinated. stand- ing and that girls had to sit down. . . . The fact that my earliest feelings of shyness were more associated with the back than the front may have thus originated.” All these impressions were of great importance in Florric’s case be- cause her father often whipped her until the blood came fand also a governess had oneo spanked her to make her turinate; she was obsessed by masochistie dreams and fancies’ in which she saw herself whipped by a school mistress under the eyes of all and having to urinate ‘against her will, “an idea that gives one a curious sense At the age of fifteen it happened that under urgent need she urinated standing in a deserted street. “In trying to analyze my sensations I think the most prominent lay in the shame that came from standing, and the consequently greater distance the stream had to de- scend. Tt seemed to make the alfair important and con- spicuous, even though clothing hid it. In the ordinary at- titude there is a kind of privacy. As a small child, too, the 1m had not far to go, but at tho age of fifteen T'was Il and it seemed to give one a glow of shame to think of stream falling umehecked such a distance. (I am sure that the ladies who fled in horror from the urinette at Ports- mouth * thought it most indecent for a woman to stride across an earthenware boat on the ground, a leg on each side, and standing there to pull up her elothes and do a stream which descended unabashed all that way.)” She renewed this experience at twenty and frequently’ thereafter. She felt a mixture of shame and pleasure at the idea that she right be surprised and that she would be ineapable of stop- ping. “The stream seemed to be drawn from me without my consent, and yet with even more pleasure than if 1 were doing it freely. (The italics are Florrie's.] This cu- rious fecling—that it is being drawn away by some un- seen power which is determined that one shall do it ‘1p alloron to an episode previously related: at Portsmouth @ madera selling tom for lafies was opened whlch salled for the sanding postlons GHGS Gini ere scene depart Sanly a toon ab they ered