Notes on Oedipus 2

Holtzman, D. and Kulish, N. 2000. The femininization of the female oedipal complex, part 1: a reconsideration of the significance of separation issues. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 48(4), pp.1413–1437.

Holtzman agrees with Chodorow (1978) and Lerner (1980) that for little girls, separation from their mothers is more difficult than for little boys because while the girl is developmentally separated from her primary object, the mother, she perceives her mother as a same-sex object, and thus the boundary between mother and daughter is more permeable than the boundary between mother (PP1418-1419)

Holtzman uses three clinical cases to show that when women have difficulty separating from their mothers it manifests itself in an inability to marry or enjoy sex, adding that the pre-Oedipus complex can make exacerbate the difficulty of separating mother and daughter(PP1431)

Holtzman found the issue of mother-daughter separation to be a fundamental part of the female Oedipus paradigm, but she argued that the Oedipus episode did not accurately describe the girl's triangular phase, and proposed that mother-daughter separation be named the ‘Persephone complex.’PP1434

Holtzman, D. and Kulish, N. 2003. The Femininization of the Female Oedipal Complex, Part II: Aggression Reconsidered. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. 51(4), pp.1127–1151.

Holtzman criticises Freud's concept of ‘penis envy’ as insufficient to understand the complex process of a girl's transition from attachment to her mother to sexual interest in her father, in particular, this transition is understood to be driven by the girl's anger and frustration at her mother as a ‘castrated’ and devalued object. Holtzman argues that this shift does not signify a replacement of one object of affection with another, but rather an expansion in the range of objects. Furthermore, she highlights the problematic aspect of not being able to use male norms - particularly castration anxiety - as a basis for comparison, as such a framework risks pathologising women, portraying them as perpetually tied to their mothers or exhibiting weaker superego development（PP1147-1148).