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the inner and outer world frees humans from the tyranny of being stimulus-bound (Blum 1978, p. 470).
IV. C. Examples of Modern Conflict Theory
IV. Ca. Jacob Arlow and Charles Brenner (1964) argued that primary process mechanisms such as symbolization, displacement and condensation, should be considered defenses. While acknowledging the existence of symbolic function in human beings, they do not enter into a discussion about the origins of symbol formation. In his particular extension of Structural theory, which became known as Modern Conflict Theory, Brenner (1982, 2006), maintaining that everything in psychic life is a compromise formation born out of conflict, recognizes that some aspects of compromise formations can be symbolic. As the constellations of defenses shift with psychoanalytic interpretation, symbolic expressions of certain types, which are relatively more unpleasurable to the analysand, shift to compromise formations whose symbolism is more adaptive and less unpleasurable (1975). IV. Cb. Critique of Phallocentric Bias in the Interpretation of Symbols Within the same conceptual framework is the observation and conceptualization of Leila Karme (1978, 1981) that penis could represent an umbilical cord in certain types of pathology, and penis envy, when it occurs, is therefore not a primal concept. Rather, penis envy is a compromise formation, which has multiple symbolic meanings. She illustrates how a female analysand sought her out as a female analyst because the analysand did not want a male analyst to tell the patient she had penis envy. Eventually, the patient imagined Karme was male, and mutliple determinants of the transferential illusion were now available for analysis. Recently, Rosemary Balsam (2018a,b) revisited related symbolic-representational complexity of castration anxiety in both sexes. Considering a still relevant and important body fearful fantasy in males, especially expressing fear of the father, and the female castration anxiety equivalent marked by fear of the ablation of the sexual and reproductive organs, especially by the avenging mother, she demonstrates the phallocentic nature of aspects of a claim of “universal” symbolism, when in most cases female body symbolization is not even considered as an option, in spite of a patient’s associations. In her contemporary review of classical psychoanlytic thought on symbolism and representation of the body, Balsam views Lewin’s (1933) paper, on “The Body as Phallus” (above), as an example of the limitations imposed by such bias within psychoanalytic thinking: Most of Lewin’s patients described there were female, who referred symbolically to unconscious female and not male body anxieties expressed as phallic symbols, related to giving birth. Balsam recommends that a straightforward sense of female castration, informed by the contemporary notion of primary femininity, including emotional and imaginative appreciation
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