The Internal Triangle: New Theories of Female Development - Paperback

by Lucy Holmes (Author)

This book presents the first new theory of female development based on drive theory since Helene Deutsch's Psychology of Women in 1945. Holmes posits an 'internal triangle'-an intrapsychic structure unique to female development. Consisting of mother and father introjects in relation to the self, it is set up on a fantasy level to help girls separate from and gain control over early objects. In this way, it functions for the girl like the penis does for the boy. Integration and realignment of the triangle, Holmes argues, occur at adolescence, during pregnancy and childbirth, at menopause and even in old age.

Author Biography

Lucy Holmes, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is president of the Society of Modern Psychoanalysts, and a member of the faculty at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and the Center for Group Studies in New York. She lectures all over the country and has published numerous articles on psychoanalysis and female development, one of which, The Object Within: Childbirth as a Developmental Milestone, won the Gradiva Award for best article of 2002, presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.