help, and we know that it is the single most important element in psychological healing. As soon as the difficulty which was holding the person back has been resolved, his whole mind and body tend once again to resume its move toward health and happiness. It is well to keep this factor in mind as we explore here the stages of development women go through on their way to grown-uphood.
We have seen the grown-up, truly feminine woman in operation. You will remember that she is a delighted and delightful partner in that closest and most perfect expression of love, the sexual act. You will recall that a great part of her personality is organized around her maternal instinct and that the chief characteristic of that instinct is a pleasure in giving, an unappeasable altruism that always puts husband and child before self, even to the point of risking her own life and welfare. Her central activities revolve around her nest building and child rearing. Her personality is characterized by a deep intuitiveness about others. She is inward and passive, her energies devoted to that deepest of all needs, the procreation of the race of man through her own body. Her husband, by contrast, is aggressive, occupied basically with his struggles in the outside world. Her stage, the focus of her central interest, is the home and its preservation and its happiness.
How did she get this way? Or, in the case of women who fail to achieve a truly feminine personality, what actually happens, how do they get that way?
To be able to answer these questions, one must first understand the stages of development that women, all women, go through in the process of growing up. These phases of development have been under the closest scientific scrutiny for several decades. The realization of their importance for psychological health and illness has been one of the major achievements of modern psychiatry. They have been thor-
