title: The differentiation of an androgynous imago.
abstract: Global phobic-obsessive states accompanied by androgynous images broke, with treatment, into alternating phobic and obsessive phases characterized by paternal images in the former and maternal images in the latter. The dynamics of the phobic states related to the patient's wish for and dread of the paternal phallus, complicated by the father's death during a transitional anal period. The dynamics of the obsessive states were related to wishes and fears of destructiveness of or by the maternal insides. The maternal insides were also experienced as both dangerous and life-giving to the father. As the patient worked through her paternal and maternal fantasies, especially in the transference, her fears of the outside world (the father) and her need to control the insides of her home (the mother) markedly diminished. Active and passive-responsive tendencies bound up and distorted in her obsessive and phobic states were able to undergo fuller differentiation and development with regard to both the internal maternal and paternal objects and the ego's modes of relating to them.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004325:Dreams; D005219:Father-Child Relations; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / Q000150:complications*; D009813:Oedipus Complex; D010333:Paternal Deprivation; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000150:complications*; D011606:Psychosexual Development; D011613:Psychotherapy; D012723:Sex; D014167:Transference, Psychology