Assumptions About Pre-verbal Aspects Of Gender Identity Formation

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

A person's individual self-determination of his position in the system of measurements, male and female, masculine and feminine, reflects his gender identity. Gender identity is a multilevel phenomenon. It is based on a biology foundation, which is laid at the time of conception and determines the sex anatomical, morphological and physiological characteristics. After birth, social, psychological and cultural influences are built on him. However, due to the fact that gender, according to J. Money and R. Stoller, initially does not have any mental representation, the process of gender identification is exclusively postnatal and depends to a greater extent on socio-psychological factors [3, 4].

According to R. Stoller's assumption, gender identity is formed around the core, which is laid by one or two years of age and determines the basic conscious and unconscious feeling of oneself as a man or a woman throughout subsequent life. Moreover, the age of the formation of nuclear gender identity excludes the influence of castration anxiety or envy of the penis as fundamental processes of the period of the oedipal conflict. J. Money noted that gender identity is differentiated in the pre-verbal period of development. M. Mahler and colleagues suggested that the pride of boys in the penis and the bodily narcissism of girls originate in the anal phase [2].

Among the factors determining nuclear gender identity, R. Stoller singled out the structure of the genitals at birth, which serves as the basis for prescribing one or another sex to the infant and influencing the formation of his primitive bodily ego and sense of selfhood, as well as conscious and unconscious interactions in the mother-infant matrix. The latter are due to the mother's unconscious expectations regarding the sex of the child, the peculiarities of her personal gender identity, the volume of libidinal and frustration load in the mother-child dyad, as well as the nature of the mother's relationship with the child's father.

Thus, the leading factors in the formation of the core of gender identity are early bodily experiences and unconscious communication with the mother, or rather, the influence of the unconscious mother on the undifferentiated psychosomatic matrix of the infant.

J. McDougall believes that the mother's unconscious is the earliest external reality of the child. She is structured by her own childhood experiences and perceptions, as well as by her relationship with the child's father. All together, this determines the nature of the mother's treatment of the baby's genitals, stimulating the development of his bodily ego, self and gender identity in the direction of synthesis or conflict [1].

According to J. McDougall, in the process of early differentiation of the infant's psychosomatic matrix, the mother's fantasies about the penis play an important role, which are somehow transmitted to the baby through the color of emotional and tactile interaction with his genitals, regardless of gender. The libidinally charged, narcissistically enhancing image of the penis in these fantasies "invests" in the infant not only satisfactory object relationships with men, but also satisfaction with his own gender identity and the bodily reality of the mother. If, in the mother's unconscious, the penis is devoid of libidinal load, the psychic representation of the mother's sex can become a representation of boundless emptiness, and the penis itself can become a representation of something idealized, not accessible for desire and identification, or a powerful destructive and haunting partial object.

With this in mind, I will allow myself to suggest that even in the symbiotic phase of development, the infant is already included in unconscious triangular relationships, and prototypes of gender-specific partial objects are translated into its psychosomatic matrix: the vagina and the penis belonging to the “third”. It follows from this assumption that, perhaps in this way, in the unconscious of the infant, along with good and bad breasts, primitive images of the penis and vagina (libidinal or frustrating) arise, causing early experiences of the oedipal nature. In addition, regardless of the sex of the infant, mental bisexuality is, among other things, the result of the influence of the mother's unconscious, loaded with object relations.

I also assume that in parallel with the development of the infant's own body image in close communication with the mother, primitive representations of the other's body image are formed, which have a complementary or concordant character.

The development of the child's internal representation of the child's bodily reality, including his genital zone, together with ideas / fantasies about the bodily reality of the mother and the father as a third, are integral components and harbingers of the general consolidation of one's own I and the images of others, the final design of which takes place already during the period of the oedipal conflict.

Summarizing the above, we can assume:

1. The mother's unconscious acts as a source of prototypes of gender-specific partial objects for the infant's undifferentiated psychosomatic matrix.
2. The development of the bodily ego meets in the unconscious of the infant the prototypes of these gender-specific partial objects and incorporates them into the bodily reality.
3. The nature of future satisfaction with one's bodily reality is determined by the degree of libidinal or anti-libidinal load of gender-specific partial objects in the mother's unconscious.
4. The infant's mental representations of his own body develop together with the mother's body representations and the incorporation of her fantasies about the father's body, which are complementary or concordant to the infant's bodily reality.
5. The core of gender identity is formed on the basis of fantasies about the compatibility of one's own body with the body of another (mother or father).

Of course, attempts to comprehend the earliest, pre-verbal, psychic reality are mostly speculative. But a psychoanalytic understanding of the primary processes of gender identification is necessary to form a more complete picture of the Oedipal period, which is important for the formation of identity. I have made an attempt to draw attention to the gender aspects of the baggage with which the unconscious of the child enters into the oedipal period, in the hope that more correct and reasonable formulations will be the result of discussion.

Literature:

1. McDougall J. Body Theaters: A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Treatment of Psychosomatic Disorders. - M.: Kogito-Center, 2013.-- 215 p.
2. Mahler M., Pine F., Bergman A. Psychological birth of a human infant: Symbiosis and individuation. - M.: Kogito-Center, 2011.-- 413 p.
3. Money J., Tucker P. Sexual Signatures on Being a Man or a Woman. - London: ABACUS, 1977.-- 189 p.
4. Stoller R. Sex and Gender: The Development of Masculinity and Femininity. Access mode: