ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses some dramatic modifications in the seemingly eternal and universal facts of life, dwelling on how our relation to "femininity"—including body schemata and identificatory introjects—has altered since Freud's time, partly through his own influence. It draws on all three—poetry, self-analysis, and scientific inquiry—believing that interdisciplinary research enriches our understanding. Radical changes have occurred in the Western world since Freud's writing of "Femininity". Treating gender definitions as "natural" givens, wishful—Western—interpretations associate femininity with surrender, altruism, empathy, emotional expressivity, as well as masochism, depression, and the unspeakable. Adult reproductive decisions reflect the way oedipal and generative limitations were negotiated in childhood. Contemporary psychoanalytic writers now tend to address eroticism and object choice separately from gender identity. Sexual difference and gender classification commencing in late infancy are consolidated with the acquisition of language and supported or distorted within intense primary dyadic relationships in nuclear families.
