Gender repertoire body, mind, and bisexuality

Abstract

Selected aspects of case material in the treatment of a bisexual woman are used to illustrate the theme of penetrability versus impenetrability in the feminine and masculine psyches. I examine the dimensions not of activity and passivity, but of a fixed versus a permeable bodily and psychic boundary—the ability to penetrate as well as the ability to be penetrated. The patient showed shifting gender identifications, depending on the relational context—the geography of the lover's body and mind—that she described as “expanding her gender repertoire.”; Bisexuality is discussed as a creative use of potential space that does not necessitate the collapse of core gender identity. An integration is offered of a clinical and theoretical focus on sexuality with an emphasis on earliest object relations. To the metaphors of the primal scene and the combined parent, I add the metaphor of the nursing couple as the site of bisexual identifications and as the earliest relation of the penetrating to the penetrated. I critique the gender split regarding the ability to penetrate—an ability not inherently male but that comes to be seen as such.