Biosynthesis to the theme, as well as, to the definition of essence. The role played by the feminine principle within the healing arts, in reconnecting us to essence, will then be discussed and illustrated through examples from Latin American popular healing practices. The article concludes with a note on healthy adult relationship, as a privileged realm for the development of essence in our lives. It also includes a poem I wrote to my father as a farewell in his recent transition, to honour the important part he played in the definition of my identity, subjectivity and professional choices. PART I Introduction My motivation to explore the relationship between femininity and essence was awoken, as is frequently the case, by a number of professional and personal insights. First of all, by an array of sociological observations, mainly: the global social devastation caused by neoliberal economic policies and their recent negative effects upon the lives of Latin American working parents and consequently, on the education of their children. As direct or indirect results of these policies: longer working hours, lower wages and income, a rise in unemployment levels, the growth of one-headed households and adolescent pregnancies, the still insufficient, expensive and erratic diffusion of contraceptive methods, the revival of traditional sexual stereotypes among influential social groups and the decrease in the number of extended families. This type of families, through offering emotional and economic support, used to partially compensate for increasing poverty levels. Individualism and poverty have substantively hindered the health and well-being of these populations and often reinforced gender patterns. Second, it is true that traditional gender roles have become more flexible in the last four to five decades. Women have conquered greater economic independence and developed more psychological assertiveness, mass media discourses on body and self-determination are widespread, legislation increasingly reflects free choice in marriage, divorce and care-giving and, though racial, ethnic and sexual minorities are still persecuted or discriminated, there is better social ‘tolerance’ for different sexual choices and living arrangements. However, we are still far from implementing Reich´s notions of social equality (2), that could promote healthy personal relationships and contribute towards orgasmic potency, or towards a fuller expression of our essential qualities in our daily existence. Third, in my clinical practice and in the experience gained as Trainer in various neoreichian approaches (3) during the last 30 years, I have observed a significant increase in the number of clients and students with secondary narcissistic traits, in the acuteness of their problems and their resistance to treatment and/or to substantial change. Other contemporary psychological modalities report similar experiences. These partly reflect the effects of ongoing social and gender trends upon the lives of both sexes. A short, though relevant, history Gender inequality is inscribed in our minds and bodies even when we believe in the need for change. Gendershaping is multiply determined: sexual difference is originally biological but gender categories, to explain these differences, are socially and culturally built to assure and enforce the dominance of the male over the female sex. A very brief history will show how selected psychological theories attempted to explain identity shaping and, in so doing, contradictorily reproduced gender patterns. Freud ´s (1905; 1931; 1933) theory on sexual identity considers all children as born bisexual, physically androgenous and, with a complex mental combination of masculine or active characteristics and female or receptive ones. Towards the Oedipal genital phase, the child becomes gradually more conscious of her/his genital feelings and associated fantasies. At present, it is widely accepted that Freud mainly wrote about the male child´ s experience. He considered the father ´s castration threats, as the main reason for the child´ s willingness to postpone the sexual possession of women till adulthood. Thus, boys sublimate their own incestuous desires through identification with paternal power and male cultural privilege. When the Oedipal complex is not ‘resolved’, misogyny becomes the main expression of masculine castration anxiety. Freud was indecisive and contradictory in his approach to female sexuality. Girls were seen as having to make three renunciations to be able to become heterosexual women: a) to their first love- object: their mothers; b) to their active sexual drives towards their father. (Their aggression becomes internalized; passivity towards their father develops, and they loose part of their sexual desire) ; c) at puberty, to their interest in their clitoris, replaced by that in their vagina. Women- contrary to men- were considered as incapable of identification with male authority. Penis envy would develop during this process, unless they married and were able to have ‘a penis-baby’, to whom their love would be then mainly transferred. When opposed by his female colleagues, Freud recognized the intensity of early mother/ daughter bonding. He also began to argue that the roots of penis-envy were found in the ‘inevitable narcissistic wounds’ brought about by early feeding, that would draw daughters 48 Liliana Acero Feminity, Gender and Essence in Body-Psychotherapy Part I: Reflections on theory, clinical and teaching experience
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