FEMALE SEXUALITY View manuscript page with highlighted passage View full manuscript page unaltered With the small girl it is different. Her first object, too, was her mother. How does she find her way to her father? How and when does she detach herself from her mother? Sigmund Freud, 1931 For Freud, the formation of heterosexuality was a puzzle, not a given. He thought that both boys and girls took their mothers as the first object of desire. The task of growing up was to both live with this desire and to leave its immature form behind. Late in his career Freud attempted to say how this task differed for boys and girls.

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( November 20, 2001 )