Female exhibitionism: Identification, competition and camaraderie

Abstract

The ancient figure of Baubo plays a pivotal role in the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone with an exhibitionistic act that brings Demeter out of her depression. The Baubo episode raises questions about the meaning of female exhibitionism, suggesting divergences from earlier psychoanalytic conceptualizations as either a perversion or a compensation for the lack of a penis. In line with contemporary thinking about primary femininity, such as that of Balsam or Elise, the authors propose a more inclusive understanding of female exhibitionism, which would encompass pleasure in the female body and its sexual and reproductive functions. They argue that female exhibitionism can reflect triangular or "oedipal" scenarios and the need to attract the male, identification with the mother, competition or camaraderie with other women, a sense of power in the female body and its capacities, as well as homoerotic impulses. The authors posit a dual early desire and identification with the mother that underlie and characterize female sexual development. The authors present clinical data from adolescent and adult cases of female exhibitionism which illustrate these Baubo-like aspects and discuss the technical issues that are involved in such cases.

Freud, The Birthing Body, and Modern Life

“…The Electra myth has also been offered to highlight female aggression, which has often been overlooked. Elise (2015), Holtzman and Kulish (2012), and I (Balsam 2008) have brought forward the missing factor of female sexual pleasure and the pleasures of exhibitionism. Castration anxiety has been substantially questioned, and female castration anxieties of various kinds have been suggested by writers like Bernstein (1990) and Dorsey (1996).…”

Edith Wharton’s Threshold Phobia and Two Worlds

“…That is, the girl does not change objects from mother to father, as early psychoanalytic theory would have it, but instead adds an object (Roth 1988;Fischer 2002;Reencola 2002;Kulish and Holtzman 2008). The girl wants the mother as love object but wants simultaneously to be the objecting mother, as she identifies with her (Holtzman and Kulish 2012).…”