Word: galenson
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...time they were retested at the age of one year. This kind of nurturing is essential to both emotional and intellectual growth; indeed, the two are inseparable. "The baby who doesn't smile may be giving us a more reliable indicator than cognitive tests," says Psychiatrist Eleanor Galenson of Manhattan's Mount Sinai Medical Center...
...Galenson and her colleague, Psychoanalyst Herman Roiphe, have spent nine years studying infants ten months and older at the Albert Einstein Research Nursery. Their finding: all 30 of the girls studied so far showed "some degree of disturbance when they got to the awareness of genital difference, whereas little boys...
...absence of a penis and feelings of castration may reject their toilet training, have difficulty sleeping or eating, develop a sudden interest in such phallic objects as pens and pencils, or complain to their mothers that their dolls have no penises. Even in milder cases, notes Dr. Galenson, the play of girls becomes much more intricate and involved than that of boys. "It could be," she says, "that the need of little girls to confront a frustration so early in life may lead to a lot of creative activity...
Some psychoanalytic researchers play down Freud's heavy emphasis on infant sexuality, arguing that it is merely one of many variables in early childhood that shape individual psychology. To Galenson and Roiphe, however, infant sexuality is crucial: they found that children around the age of 16 months are "very aware of sexual differences," easily aroused sexually, and in fact are masturbating as part of normal development. Dr. Galenson feels that adult sexual problems like frigidity may have their origins in these early months of life. To minimize these disturbances, she suggests that parents not flaunt sexual differences by marching...
Outside the psychoanalytic world, the Galenson-Roiphe findings are likely to be taken with many grains of salt. Even inside it, some are doubtful about inferences that can legitimately be drawn from the behavior of very young children. Still, the research bolsters the conviction of most analysts that penis envy is a substantial problem for girls. Says Psychoanalyst Robert J. Stoller, author of Sex and Gender and one of the few analysts to study the behavior of infants: "We can easily detect boys' and girls' attitudes about penises; they still find them impressive...