Abstract

The psychosexual development of women became the subject of great debates within the psychoanalysis movement in the ’20s. The question of gender identity shouldn’t be confused with the choice of object. Wanting to be and wanting to have are continuously counterpoised, in the theoretical and in the clinical psychoanalysis. The secret is that object continuously in between these two aspects, wanting to be and wanting to have. Identification and desire can coexist and their formulation in terms of mutually exclusive opposition could avoid conflicts and confrontations with the basic psychic structures of the mind.