Differentiation between male and female in the reproductive period

This short section of her book was designed as a transition to an original contribution with which Helene Deutsch was more at home. In a paper first presented in 1924 (Deutsch, 1948a), she had begun to develop her ideas about the significance of the functions of reproduction for feminine psychology. (This paper, to her chagrin, was never cited by Freud, although she mentioned it at the outset of Psycho-Analysis of the Sexual Functions of Women; the issue of priorities was terribly important to Freud and the early analysts—see, for example, Roazen, 1975, p. 474; Roazen, 1969.)