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THE MARRIAGE BOND

BY MARTIN H. STEIN, M.D. (NEW YORK)

Psychoanalytic studies of marriage are surprisingly scarce. The

relations between men and women have been studied in detail,
but unconscious fantasies and conflicts about marriage itself
have been neglected. Marriage is a sociological rather than a
biological event, but it has nevertheless a profound significance
in the emotional life of most people in cultures familiar to us.
Marital problems produce in most patients much unconscious
fantasy and unresolved conflict, indicating that marriage has for
them deep and complex meanings.
There are only five indexed references, all brief, to marriage
as such in the Collected Papers of Freud. The two of greatest
interest are found in his paper, On the Sexual Theories of Chil-
dren (5). 'In direct connection with the insoluble problem of
where children come from, the child occupies itself with the
question of what the nature and the content is of the state called
"being married".' Among the theories Freud observed were that
in marriage 'one urinates before the other', or 'mixing blood'
occurs. Further, 'the infantile ideas about the nature of mar-
riage, which are not seldom retained by the conscious memory,
have great significance for the symptoms of later neurotic ill-
ness'. Discussions in many of Freud's later papers indicate that
it is not alone these fantasies, but also their unconscious counter-
parts, that are of decisive importance in such illness.
Horney (7)J referring to sado-masochistic marriages, wrote
'... with regard to such marriages as these, one often asks one-
self in amazement what can be the reason that they are not dis-
solved, but are often, on the contrary, so stable'. Her attempt to
treat the problem as oedipal is not entirely satisfactory, although
it suggests the study of the unconscious meaning of the state of
marriage itself.
Oberndorf (I I) observed that narcissism may be expressed in
marriage by fantasies of possessing the marital partner as a re-
238
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 239

assurance against feelings of physical and mental inadequacy.

Mittelmann (9), studying a group of couples, indicated the im-
portance of interacting neurotic patterns, although he did not
emphasize the role of marriage itself (two of his couples were
homosexual). Bergler (I, 2) has classified marital difficulties
under a number of headings, each related to attempts to act out
or defend against unconscious cedipal or precedipal fantasies. He
emphasizes the part played by masochism in keeping unhappy
marriages together, and includes some reactions to divorce, such
as depression, which are of considerable interest.
A notable contribution is Nunberg's (IO) Problems of Bi-
sexuality as Reflected in Circumcision. Marriage, for Nunberg's
patient, was an undoing of his circumcision by retrieving his
foreskin in a kind of anatomical unification. The patient at-
tempted to accomplish this in the transference by fantasies of
marrying his analyst, whom he identified with the doctor who
had taken the foreskin. Nunberg emphasizes throughout his
paper the fantasy of marriage as an anatomical reunion of two
separated parts, supporting his clinical observations with ex-
amples from Genesis (the derivation of Eve from a portion of
Adam's body) and from Greek mythology.
Marital problems offer difficult technical obstacles in many
analyses. The usual rule forbidding major decisions about mar-
riage and divorce during analysis is useful, but hardly a solu-
tion of the problem, and it is subject to many exceptions. The
satisfactory analysis of a married patient requires the most
thorough examination of all the unconscious meanings of the
marriage itself. Failure to examine these meanings may cause
the marriage to be used as a perpetual resistance, leading to a
stalemated analysis; or it may cause impulsive acting out by di-
vorce and remarriage, without benefit.
I propose to discuss a single major determinant of marriage,
an unconscious fantasy which played a prominent role in initiat-
ing and perpetuating the marriages of four neurotic men. The
fantasy, in its simplest form, may be expressed, 'My wife is my
phallus' or 'The woman is an appendage of my body'. This
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MARTIN H. STEIN

fantasy played a significant part in the serious marital prob-

lems of all these patients. Its clinical importance lay in its un-
conscious anatomical significance, which had to be understood
clearly and worked through by each patient before much prog-
ress could be made in solving problems of his marriage or of
other aspects of his life.

CASE I
An intelligent young man, who had a responsible job in an ad-
vertising firm and was considered successful and happy by most
people, had married a girl he had known for some years, whose
background was very similar to his own; she was well-educated,
attractive, and competent. This was a marriage of which both
families approved. Although he went through a period of con-
siderable anxiety and doubt before he married, he was a faithful
husband and good provider. They had several healthy and at-
tractive children. By their friends they were considered pros-
perous, well-adjusted, and intelligent. In actual fact, his married
life had been very unhappy. He was afraid of his wife and often
neglected his work because of fear of her displeasure if he ar-
rived horne a few minutes late. Her bitter scoldings caused him
to weep. Had his employer not been tolerant he might have lost
his job, for severe indigestion and frequent colds and sore
throats caused him often to miss several days' work. He visited
his family physician constantly, pleading for some new medicine
that would cure these illnesses.
Outwardly, he was a long-suffering, severely henpecked hus-
band, constantly manipulated by his wife and always resentful
and frightened. His conscious fantasies were however quite
different. In his daydreams he slept with tall, beautiful, blonde
prostitutes, and he made his wife a slave and used her for sadis-
tic purposes, beating her and forcing her to masturbate him.
To his wife he seemed a suffering and plaintive husband,
often ill, for the most part passive, weeping readily when scolded,
and sexually not very competent.
When the patient was made aware that his masochism was a
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 24 1

reaction to his repudiated sadistic fantasies, many of his more

obvious difficulties were alleviated. He stopped weeping, talked
back to his wife, and was often able to remain calm in the face
of her increasingly provoking attacks. His somatic symptoms
were lessened. It was only after this improvement that he became
aware of more painful and deeply concealed fantasies about his
marriage.
He had hoped to marry a rather boyish, competent woman
who would reassure him about his own fantasied deficiencies;
but it now became clear that he had also wished for a wife whom
he could manipulate and who would be his slave. In arguments
his wife accused him of using her for his own purposes without
loving her, as if she were a prostitute, and of treating her like
a mere tool or instrument. There was, as we shall see, much
justification for her complaints. Often he fantasied that she
should exist only for his pleasure, to masturbate him, to bear
his children and cook his dinner, and be beaten by him when
he wished it. But his outward behavior was that of a 'Caspar
Milquetoast'.
Gradually we understood the sadistic fantasy that he dared
not act out. He had been reared by anxious and quarreling
parents and had become more than usually timid, believing that
he was not as masculine as other boys, that his penis was smaller,
and that he would never be a powerful, sexually potent man.
As a child he had insisted that this inferiority was due to his
mother's failure to feed him properly. Sexual play occurred
with his little sister, whom he regarded with mixed contempt
and affection. Later he thought that she would always be his
responsibility, that she would never marry and would be a
'burden' to him. When she did marry during the period of his
analysis, he reacted as if to a violent loss.
In adolescence, he reassured himself by his popularity, par-
ticularly his ability to attract tall, pretty blonde girls, but his
feeling that he was castrated never left him. In adult life this
fantasy of castration was manifested by annoying pains in the
testicles and a fear that his penis was pathologically small. He
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MARTIN H. STEIN

was unable to urinate in the presence of others and his potency

was always impaired. His feelings of inadequacy were reflected
in his attitude toward his work and toward other men, particu-
larly large, bluff, 'masculine' men, with whom he felt very in-
ferior. Only when he had a pretty girl with him did he feel
reassured and somehow a man among men. Even the shortest
separations from his wife resulted in great anxiety.
The meaning of this anxiety became evident through a long
series of associations and dreams. It was illustrated most dra-
matically in a dream: 'I was standing on a mountain or cliff. A
big man standing to the left and behind me threw me a football
which I caught between my legs. I fumbled it for a moment, but
finally clutched it to my chest. Then my father threw me a
basketball. Both balls seemed to be dropping into the valley
very fast, toward some sort of stream-I wasn't too worried
about it.'
He had returned last evening from a business trip to find his
wife extremely affectionate. They had intercourse with her first
sitting on his lap and then lying on him, while he clutched her
to his chest, as he had clutched the football between his legs and
then to his chest in the dream. Before penetration he had ex-
cited her manually. This was represented in the dream by the
fumbling. Coitus was very enjoyable and mutual orgasm oc-
curred. The tall man of the dream was in the position that I
occupy during his analytic sessions.
His mother and father had both condemned masturbation
very severely. Recently he had been feeling quite different about
it. He had sensed that my attitude was not punitive and that I
would not punish him for masturbating as his parents would.
The football, he thought, was pointed like a penis, or like the
testicles, while the basketball was round, without a point. I asked
what other differences there were. He replied, 'You may hold a
football tight, play with it, and kick it around. You may only
dribble a basketball.' It struck him that this was the only way he
was permitted to use his penis as a child-that is, for dribbling,
or urination.
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 243

He commented that his marriage seemed much better now

than formerly. He had not managed it well before, but now he
was more confident and firmer. He could handle things well,
even his difficult wife. During intercourse the night before the
dream, having his wife sit on him gave him a good feeling; it
was as if she were an extension of his penis.
The dream may be interpreted as follows. He is now per-
mitted to keep his wife close to him and he is no longer a
fumbling husband. Unlike his prudish parents, I have permitted
him to play with his wife and to have sexual relations with her
without fear.
He expressed in the dream one of the most important un-
conscious fantasies about his wife. He felt more of a man, less
threatened by his punitive father, who had permitted him only
to urinate or dribble with his penis; now he could play with it
since he did not have to be afraid of me. He could have a penis,
plaything, or toy, or wife, whom he could hug to himself, fumble
between his legs, and (remembering his sadistic fantasies) kick
around. He fantasied, therefore, that it is his wife who is his
penis, sitting erect on his legs. He excited or played with it or
her until he produced an ejaculation in his penis, or orgasm in
his wife. This deeply buried fantasy, derived from his child-
hood, had always been a powerful factor in his adult relation-
ship with his wife.
It is possible now to explain some aspects of this patient's
marital problem that were obscure before. He really did, in a
subtle and unaware fashion, treat his wife like a 'tool', he played
with her and regarded her not as a human being but rather as
an appendage, a part of his body. Unconsciously, his sexual re-
lations with her were a kind of masturbation, independent of
her real needs and feelings.
This fantasy remained so important because, castrated as he
imagined himself to be, he always felt that he was in need of a
penis. His active, competent, scolding, and vivacious wife, by
her attachment to him, repaired or undid this deficiency and,
in his fantasy, became his phallus. In spite of his unhappy life
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244 MARTIN H. STEIN

with her for a number of years, he never for a moment seriously

considered separation or divorce, for how could a man separate
himself from his phallus? He would be no man at all without
her. Even when his fantasies did hint at separation, he had to
imagine a taller, blonder, prettier girl waiting for him.
His sadistic fantasies included, of course, hostility to his wife,
which was not very extreme; even more, they expressed his need
to excite and manipulate his wife, to masturbate by beating the
penis-wife, to cause her to weep, that is, to urinate or ejaculate,
He could not treat her as a human being. She sensed this and re-
acted accordingly, once saying spontaneously in a fit of anger,
'You don't want a wife, you want a penis and balls to play with',
The dream also shows how the unconscious infantile fantasy
('my wife is my phallus') may be modified in the course of
clinical improvement. His wife has become something he may
approach and handle without fear. The dream was a primitive
and regressive expression of the wish to maintain what was
actually an improving relationship.

CASE II

The second patient was a successful, intelligent, and hard-work-

ing merchant in his thirties. He came of a family which had some
social aspirations, hampered by uncertainty of income. One of
his motives for marrying was the attainment of a social position
and an economic security that were otherwise just out of reach.
The patient and his wife had much in common, in background
and education. They had been married a long time and had sev-
eral children. Although they had never quarreled bitterly, they
were nevertheless very unhappy. He often thought of divorce
but wondered whether he could be successful without his wife's
position and money. A man of great ability, he would probably
have done well in his business without either so much money
or social position, although he might not have been able to live
so extravagantly. His relationship with his wife became more
and more attenuated and he had a number of abortive affairs
with other women, with some of whom he thought himself in-
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 245

fatuated, Whenever he thought of divorce he did so in a care-

fully guarded way, which revealed his great fear of such a step.
He feared that his business career would fail, that he could not
support a new family, or that his wife would commit suicide. He
produced no evidence to support these fantasies, except for his
belief that she could not survive without him because of her
helplessness.
It is true that during the marriage his wife had become more
helpless, while he took over many of the duties he felt were hers
by right. For example, her inability to drive a car caused him
considerable inconvenience. He expressed great annoyance
about this, but one of his early dreams revealed his true atti-
tude. He dreamed that he had a collection of wooden figures of
women, all arranged on shelves. His associations had to do with
his attitude toward his wife and toward other women; that
women were 'objects' to be collected. It is interesting that he
found it practically impossible to give me any clear description
of his wife, or, for that matter, of any other woman. His ideas
of them were completely colorless and lacking in feeling, al-
though he was otherwise articulate and well-read.
One of his dreams evoked a series of confused memories about
his parents fighting and having sexual relations. This was dis-
cussed but not interpreted beyond pointing out his sado-mas-
ochistic impression of his parents' marriage. On the following
day he reported a dream. 'I saw two men, and a crowd watching
them. There was some sort of horseplay going on. The man in
the rear stuck the front one in the buttocks with a stick; then he
would take the stick away and wave it in front of the crowd to
show that it was covered with something like tar. Everyone
laughed. Then I was talking to a customer who told me that my
prices were too high. Finally, I was walking down a stairway
very slowly; it was quite slippery and wet. My wife was in front
of me and she fell backward, her body rigidly straight. She
seemed to fall very slowly in front of me.'
This dream was reported on a day when he brought me a check
in payment of his bill. He had had it the preceding day but had
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MARTIN H. STEIN

forgotten to give it to me. The price mentioned in the dream

was one that he was in reality charging someone for some goods.
That price was not in fact too high; it was my fee that he re-
garded as exorbitant. He was very much concerned about money
and his standing in the business world, whether he could make
a living by himself, or whether he was dependent upon his wife's
family. He did not feel really in love with her. If he should
divorce her, however, he would be unable to support himself
and a new wife.
In being charged a fee, he felt shamefully treated, like the
man who had the stick pushed into his anus. The stick wasre-
moved with the feces (unconsciously equated with money); this
was being treated like a woman, being raped and deprived of his
strength and dignity. He sought a remedy for castration. In the
stairway episode, his wife had become his penis, sliding along
the slippery canal. He did have a big penis after all-a wife.
He was using her as in childhood he had used his younger
sister. He had been a very timorous boy but was unable to admit
it. Alone in the house with his sister, he used to become very
apprehensive. He would convince the little girl that she was
frightened; then he would telephone his parents and say, 'Come
home, Annie is scared to be alone'. There had been sexual play
with this sister, in which he was the aggressor, all the while feel-
ing that he was unable to stop, as if he were masturbating. In
early adolescence this activity had in fact been a substitute for
the masturbation one would ordinarily expect.
When later his sister became dependent on him for social con-
tacts, he felt contempt for her. She was regarded by him as a
despised, yet necessary appendage. These attitudes were trans-
ferred almost unchanged to his wife, whom he regarded as help-
less and inferior, yet somehow necessary to his potency. This
wife-penis fantasy is very similar in its origin to that of the first
patient, however different the marital situation.
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 247

CASE III

A man with a successful career was beset by many feelings of

inadequacy and homosexual fantasies. His pretty wife was much
younger than he. When they were married she was a helpless
and frigid girl with disabling hysterical symptoms which caused
the patient much concern over her and often interfered with his
work. She was psychoanalyzed and improved a great deal, becom-
ing a relatively self-sufficient, even self-assertive, young woman,
no longer so helpless and dependent on her husband, and for
the first time openly eager for sexual satisfaction. This threw the
patient into a severe panic, manifested chiefly by increased diffi-
culties in coitus.
During his analysis he had the following dream: 'I was walk-
ing with a friend. My wife was walking a little ahead of me, just
window-shopping: The window-shopping referred to the main
streets of many beautiful cities the patient and his wife had
visited. These shops were full of beautiful things that they could
not always afford. The night of the dream he had awakened
from sleep with an erection, but for some reason could not
bring himself to awaken his wife and attempt intercourse with
her. He was really only 'window-shopping' with his penis. In
the dream his newly cured and strengthened wife was his penis,
as well as the object of his sexual attraction. The wife-penis un-
did the castration he felt so keenly in his fantasies, which were
marked by depressing thoughts of poverty and illness.
This interpretattion was confirmed a few days later when he
met the attractive fiancee of a powerful politician. As he shook
hands with her, he became very anxious. He remarked to me,
'It was a homosexual feeling'. Touching her hand represented
touching the powerful man's most treasured possession, his penis.
For this patient, therefore, the great man's fiancee was his penis,
as his own wife was to him. He loved to fondle his young wife
and was really attached to her, but he did share with the other
patients reported here the tendency to treat her as a possession
and to resent any real independence on her part. There were
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MARTIN H. STEIN

also sexually charged fantasies of choking or squeezing his wife

as if she were a penis to be masturbated.
On one occasion he was invited to dinner alone, his wife be-
ing away on a visit. He felt forced to refuse. He said, '1 was afraid
to go alone. 1 don't know what it could be; it was as if I couldn't
meet people without her. She's my front.'

CASE IV

Another patient had the following dream during a period of

concern over his potency. 'I was standing up and walking
around. Somehow I was carrying my wife on my hips, as if I were
having intercourse with her in that position. She was sitting
straight up. I felt very strong and elated.'
This couple used to act out a little game in which the hus-
band would fondle his wife's head as she sat on the toilet. This
would induce her to urinate, thus making her his penis. His
attitude toward her was not unlike that of the other patients re-
ported; he regarded her as a beautiful possession to be shown
off, something with no identity of her own. There were many
sado-masochistic attitudes as well. Discussion of divorce would
produce the most troublesome fantasies of being castrated; for
example, of contracting mumps and becoming sterile. In both
this patient and the previous one, rescue fantasies involving the
wife were very prominent. By them he accomplished the rescue
not only of his self (and his mother) but also of his penis, which
was felt to be in such great danger.

Ferenczi, in his paper on Gulliver Fantasies (4)J describes the

girl-phallus equation, saying, 'One of my male patients recol-
lects that in the masturbation fantasies of his youth there was a
little imaginary female figure which he always carried in his
pocket and from time to time took out and played with'. Ferenczi
was inclined to think of the body-phallus equation as biologi-
cally determined.
It was considered in much greater detail by Lewin (8) in 1932.
He described four variants of the body-phallus equation, of
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 249

which the girl-phallus is one, emphasizing particularly the fre-

quent identification of one's own penis with the body of a child.
He traced its origins to earlier oral fantasies, stating that 'the
dominant sexual aim is to be eaten up and this idea is equiva-
lent to the castration fantasy'.
Fenichel (3) in 1936 dealt specifically with the girl-phallus
equation. mentioning the anatomical attachment to the man,-
in a girl, for example. who believed her father was powerless
without her. 'This sexual dependence consists of the dependent
person's feeling indissolubly united with the person on whom
he is dependent, able to do nothing against or indeed without his
will-representing. as it were, a part of him.... that one has not
only become a weak, helpless part of the person one is dependent
on, but also the reverse: his most important part; that the person
in question is now at the same time in (magical) dependence on
the one dependent on him.... The phallus girl is, generally
speaking, not only a penis, but also a child, feces (content of
the mother's body), and milk. It is the introject and one which
is again projected. The penis is thus only the final member of
the series of introjects."-
The converse of this fantasy, in a patient whose extreme de-
pendence on her mother reappeared in an oversubmissive and
ecstatic relationship with her husband, was described by Annie
Reich (I 2)J who stated, '... individuality is dissolved in com-
plete union with the man. We might also understand this union
with the great and mighty as a magic fusion with the mother. It
is like relapsing to a time in which the ego was about to be
formed, and the boundaries between the ego and the outer world
were still blurred and only painfully experienced in moments
of frustration and tension.' This patient suffered the most in-
tense anxiety in childhood when separated from her mother.
The anxiety recurred whenever she was away from her husband,

1 Grotjahn (6) illustrates the girl-phallus fantasy most vividly in his paper on
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. He describes the 'drum majorette', the girl
who marches before a group of men in an obviously phallic fashion, acting as if
she were the exhibited penis of the group and so regarded by them.
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MARTIN H. STEIN

even briefly, and she became very ill when her marriage failed.
The fantasy of the girl as phallus was even clearer in a patient
described by Annie Reich in 1954. This woman (not yet a wife)
felt 'intense excitement experienced over the whole body sur-
face, and a sensation of standing out, erect, with her whole body.
Obviously, she felt like a phallus with her whole body.'
I do not suggest that the men I have described necessarily
married women with this fantasy, but it is likely that the hus-
bands' girl-phallus fantasies played a significant role in the
personalities of their wives. One wife (Case I), psychoanalytically
naive, accused her husband of treating her like a tool. In more
subtle, less regressive forms the fantasy 'I am my husband's
phallus' may be as common among wives as its converse is pre-
sumed to be among husbands.P
One of the most perceptive and entertaining accounts of the
phallus-girl equation is found in George Bernard Shaw's Pyg-
malion (I 4)' Professor Higgins, a devoted student of linguistics
and a confirmed bachelor of somewhat eccentric tastes, has, for
clearly narcissistic reasons, transformed a Cockney flower girl, 'a
squashed cabbage leaf', into a beautiful and charming creature,
easily mistaken for a duchess. This miracle has been accom-
plished chiefly through the correction of her speech. In company
with an elderly bachelor colleague, he exhibits Eliza, his Galatea,
at a tea party in his mother's home. His mother, a most intelli-
gent lady, reproaches them, 'You are certainly a pretty pair of
babies, playing with your live doll'. Later, when Eliza attacks
him for his lack of human feeling for her, he defends himself,
'I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that has
come my way and been built into my house'. Finally, Eliza, basi-
cally a very tough-minded daughter of a Shavian realist dustman,
defiies Higgins and attacks him for his attempt to use her as 'a
baby or a puppy'-or a slave. She asserts her independence, and
Higgins, after he has experienced a period of great anger and
panic. pleads with her: 'Five minutes ago you were like a mill-
stone around my neck. Now you're a tower of strength, a con-
2 See also Spitz (I5, I6) for the infantile woman's charm for 50 many men, and
its relation to neurosis.
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THE MARRIAGE BOND

sort battleship. You and I and Pickering will be three old bache-
lors together instead of only two men and a silly girl:
Shaw had an excellent sense of reality, and did not at the end
allow Eliza to marry Higgins, who was unable to regard her as
anything but an appendage to be used and exhibited. 'Now,
though Eliza was incapable of explaining to herself Higgins'
formidable powers of resistance to the charm that prostrated
Freddy at the first glance, she was instinctively aware that she
could never obtain a complete grip of him, or come between
him and his mother (the first necessity of the married woman).'
As usual, Shaw has struck at the heart of the argument. He ends
the epilogue, 'Galatea never does like Pygmalion: his relation
to her is too godlike to be altogether agreeable'.
The movie makers were more romantic. They had Eliza marry
Higgins. We may wonder whether the marriage could be a
happy one.
The vicissitudes of a fantasy such as this may be studied from
two aspects: with reference to its origins in earlier phases of
development and in its appearance in the symptoms and charac-
ter traits of the adult. The latter investigation is far easier. The
manifestations of the fantasy, as it appears in each of the four
men I have described, are fairly clear, and it is not too difficult
to demonstrate its specificity. In these patients the girl-phallus
equation serves to bind the marriage; it gives greater force to
the concept of the adhesive character of the marital bond, so
often expressed in the marriage service, in homilies, and in
colloquial speech. The Protestant Episcopal service reminds its
communicants that matrimony signifies 'the mystical union that
is betwixt Christ and His Church', and commands 'Those whom
God hath joined together, let no man put asunder'. In collo-
quial speech, we hear the wife referred to as the 'better half', or
less graciously as the 'ball and chain'. These terms are not gen-
erally applied to one's mistress. She may be very difficult to be
rid of, but she is never a 'ball and chain'. The husband con-
ceives of himself as joined to the wife anatomically, at least for
those persons in whom this fantasy plays a prominent role.
It is expressed, too, by the tendency to treasure one's wife, to
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MARTIN H. STEIN

fondle her and treat her tenderly, meanwhile considering her

a very precious appendage, and certainly a senseless one! The
manipulation of the penis is transferred directly to treatment
of the wife in a masturbatory fashion. 'Self-abuse' becomes, as it
were, 'wife abuse'. Thus it is a vehicle for true sadistic expres-
sion, whether by teasing or by some form of violence, having as
its aim the production of an orgastic equivalent in the wHe-
tears, a temper tantrum, or some other manifestation of loss of
control (while the husband maintains his). More favorably, al-
though less often, the aim is the production of a true orgasm in
the wife, although for the husband this represents merely an
ejaculation of his girl-phallus.
The fantasy is one of the determinants of the preference for
certain variations in the sexual act, for example, that in which
the woman sits on the man, or in which the greatest empha.sis
is on fondling. This was particularly clear in one of Oberndorf's
patients, a wife with pronounced body-phallus fantasies, in
whom this sexual practice played a prominent role.
The fantasy is often, perhaps generally, expressed by a type of
dependence that is notably lacking in respect. The husband
feels he cannot do without his wife, but he is hardly ready to
dignify her by admitting that she has any more than material
or even mechanical importance. Her presence as an object for
reassurance, manipulation, and exhibition are obvious; but she
is not appreciated as a companion or helpmeet.
This fantasy, of course, is only one among many determinants;
but it may be an important one and if so, can be demonstrated
and conveyed in interpretation.
Tracing the fantasy back to its origins in earlier phases of de-
velopment is a much more difficult task, and the results are less
convincing. In the practice of psychoanalysis generally, greater
understanding of the most infantile elements of the personality
has led to greater difficulty in establishing specific interpreta-
tions capable of validation. This greater understanding also
makes possible the construction of general theories that can be
applied all too broadly. (The interpretations of the English
school are a good example.) For this and other reasons it is diffi-
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 253

cult to discover why this particular fantasy developed and re-

tained such power in these patients. It seems likely that the
fantasy is universal in men, as its converse may be in women,
but we must assume that some specific reasons account for its
exaggerated importance here.
There is a good deal of clinical evidence to support Lewin's
contention that the fantasy has important oral determinants and
that it is derived from earlier oral fantasies. Also, its function in
undoing castration in the resolution of the cedipal conflict ap-
pears well established. Why should this particular method of
defense against castration be favored?
One of the patients (Case II) reported the following dream
(in part): 'There was a young woman named" " (a name
associated with eels)-I was watching two turtles in the water,
fighting. One of them bit off the other's head. I saw the severed
head and neck lying on a rock. It was apparently still alive, be-
cause it gasped convulsively, opening and closing its mouth.'
The rest of the dream dealt with his wish to minimize the ac-
complishments of his father.
The severed head and neck of the turtle reminded him im-
mediately of a severed penis, then of his wish to have his mis-
tress perform fellatio, and his guilt over this. The night before
he had had diarrhea, and he had been concerned over having
a broken tooth filled. Diarrhea, he said, comes from 'something
you ate'.
It struck him that eels are remarkable because, if separated
into several pieces, each seems to retain a life of its own, like the
turtles. This statement referred to his concern over the effect of
a divorce on his wife. He had always feared not only that the
children would suffer but also that his wife would die, by suicide
perhaps. In the dream he expressed the wish that his wife, al-
though cut off from him like a severed penis, might still live.
Presented with this interpretation, he replied that he was
struck suddenly by a memory of the night before. He had inter-
course with his wife for the first time in many weeks. She had
an orgasm, and had gasped just like the turtle. He thought, too,
that this was like dying.
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254 MARTIN H. STEIN

In this dream, although swallowing is not emphasized, orality

through biting is closely related to the wife-penis fantasy, and
the wife is represented as an appendage with no life of its own.
Two weeks later he reported the following dream. '1 was near
a swimming pool. The attendant was a blonde woman who re-
sembled Alice [his mistress] and later my sister. I had a date
with her to close the pool at twelve o'clock so that we could go
to bed together. Many women came to use the pool, and I hoped
they would leave by twelve. It was very frustrating. We went
down to look at the pump, which had something wrong with it.
It was too large for the pool, I thought. It was not mounted on
a concrete base like most pumps, but on a rubber mounting, so
it could vibrate. I was wearing a bathrobe, and enclosing the
woman in its folds. The cord of the robe was hanging down:
The many women reminded him of his mother's host of
women friends, whom he resented as intruders. It had occurred
to him recently that his mother might have had homosexual
tendencies, a thought which he recognized as an expression of
his jealousy. The pump reminded him of the colloquial term
for a prostitute, 'the town pump', referring to both his mother
and Alice, who had told him recently that she doubted that she
would be able to leave her husband for him. His own penis was
a town pump, too, since he had used it so indiscriminately. He
thought of the pump as a sucking mechanism rather than as a
propulsive one.
Again he refers to fellatio with Alice and thinks of sucking
like a baby, a reference to his intense dependence on his mother
during his childhood. I reminded him of the bathrobe scene as
a representation of pregnancy. He commented that the cord
must be umbilical. As a child he could not allow his mother out
of his sight, particularly after his sister was born at an age at
which he was experiencing the height of his cedipal conflict.
The woman he encloses in the bathrobe is his little sister,
also his phallus-wife; conversely, it is his mother who encloses
him in her robe; alternatively, mother is pregnant with his sister,
This pregnancy accentuated his own need to remain attached
to his mother, like a phallus. He is the pump, attached to mother
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 255

like a sucking baby; conversely, the pump is the breast, even

more securely attached.
The complexity of this dream (difficult to present clearly) re-
flects the confusion between self and others so characteristic of
this man, who was very unsure of his identity. He used a very
complicated defense to overcome his dread of separation and
annihilation. In later childhood he created a situation in which
he could remain passively attached to his mother; unconsciously
he was her phallus. He felt that everything he did was her fault.
H he did wrong, it was because she had not stopped him. If he
felt frightened, it was because mother had transmitted her anxi-
ety to him. (If he sneezed, mother must have a cold!)
Simultaneously, he attempted to establish his independent
identity by pretending to be mother, with his little sister as his
phallus for him to play with. He could by this device be both
the phallus and the phallic mother.
In his adult life, he arranged a similar situation. His incom-
petent wife represented his little sister-phallus, which he could
use and despise. He was attached to a mother surrogate repre-
sented by his wife's powerful and loving family, to which he felt
himself to be a mere appendage and without which he felt as if
he were 'nothing at all'. He could conceive of divorcing his wife,
but not of severing himself from her family; without them he
would starve, according to his fantasy. His mistress he thought
of as both a more beautiful and effective phallus and a mother
to whom he could attach himself. Unfortunately, she was willing
to accept neither role and his relationship to her was always
frustrating.
Many anal determinants were evident in this patient, in the
dream, for example, of the two men and the stick and in his
use of money as feces as well as for sustenance. His wife was as
much assailed for her dirtiness as valued for her wealth. Anality
is also evident in his difficulty in getting rid of a despised object.
One patient (Case I) revealed in some early memories the re-
lationship between the wife-phallus fantasy and earlier anal
fantasies. As a child he used to sit on the toilet with his buttocks
in the water. Not only was this sexually exciting but it repre-
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MARTIN H. STEIN

sen ted a fantasy of reclaiming the feces that had been lost down
the toilet, a wish associated with ideas of thrusting his younger
siblings down the drain. In talking of this he experienced severe
gastric discomfort.
All the patients presented very similar material emphasizing
the connections: baby with breast and mother; baby with feces:
man with penis; man with girl-phallus (little sister); man with
phallus-wife. In each of these equivalences a sense of anatomical
union is a defense against the fear of imminent loss, whether
of breast, mother, feces, penis, or wife. It might be expected that
these patients would offer special problems of termination of
analysis, which became in each a new marriage (as described by
Nunberg).

What is the relationship of this fantasy to ego development

and specific defenses? It may be described as a narcissistic fantasy
in that it confines love for the wife to her role as a part of one's
own body. Object relations are developed only partially and are
subordinated to the need to undo the fantasy of anatomical loss.
Nevertheless, for these individuals the phallus is after all an
organ to be treasured and not to be destroyed. Many of the
overt and direct manifestations of the equation are expressed
in ways that simulate adult love. This was particularly clear in
the first patient, whose marital relationship improved as he be-
came less guilty about using his penis as a source of sexual pleas-
ure. Here the fantasy appeared as a determinant of his symptoms
and as a vehicle for his sado-masochistic needs; later it contrib-
uted to his symptomatic improvement, making it possible for
him to 'handle' his wife with less anxiety and to love her and
give her phallic orgasms instead of urinary tears.
In the second patient, however, the wife was not only valued,
she was also despised for her dirtiness and limpness. The mar-
riage persisted in spite of an atmosphere of coldness and dis-
trust. The divorce of another patient, when he was able to ac-
cept severance from his wife, was made possible by analysis of
the fantasy. Dissolution of the marriage was followed by many
symptoms related to castration and by some depression. This
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 257

reaction follows regularly even the most desired and realistically

justified divorce. Depression may follow the divorce itself rather
than the separation (which may have occurred long before),
and can be explained only if we suppose that the legal bond of
marriage represents to the unconscious an anatomical union.
Such fantasies may perpetuate intolerable sado-masochistic
quarrels and pathological dependence, which cause prolonged
unhappiness or impulsive and tragic divorce. The development
of mature object relations is certainly hampered by the persist-
ence of such a fantasy in many persons. Even in stable marriages
without prominent neurotic features the husband who 'loves
his wife as himself' may speak with more truth than he knows,
emphasizing the importance of narcissism in the development of
object love.
It has not been easy to determine to what extent this fantasy
is related to specific ego defenses. The small group of rather ob-
sessional men I have described had considerable apparent suc-
cess, both in their professions and in their relationships with
their wives. Unhappy as they were, they had found a solution
which satisfied the need to appear happy, to have a durable mar-
riage to an attractive wife, and to be a respected member of
society. Thus the fantasy may be an essential feature of a partly
successful compromise which involves to some degree all areas of
the psychic structure. It offers great opportunities for more or
less concealed sado-masochistic gratification, and considerable
scope for permissible exhibitionism. It reaffirms the primal at-
tachment to the mother and undoes the castration of both the
individual and the mother. It offers an effective defense against
homosexuality and avoids or diverts many other drives offensive
to the superego.
The expression of a basically primitive, narcissistic fantasy
through behavior that seems very conventional, even moralistic,
might be expected in people with powerful and rather rigid
superegos, moderate capacity for denial, and some ability to in-
hibit or divert many unacceptable aims. These patients demon-
strated secondary autonomy of certain ego functions, particularly
in their work and social activities. This autonomy was interfered
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MARTIN H, STEIN

with only intermittently by the intense conflicts centering

around this and related fantasies. Without this or comparable
defenses, many lives are ruined by unsuccessful marriages.
Perhaps the fantasy is equally important among other types
of men, although one would expect it to be overshadowed by
adult object relations in healthier individuals who would be
less rigidly bound by the limits of such a regressive unconscious
fantasy, and whose representations of themselves had achieved
higher levels.
Probably the fantasy, 'My wife is my phallus', is one of the
commonly occurring special cases of 'Those I love are a part of
me', a fantasy derived from the even more primitive 'The breast
and I are anatomically attached, and cannot be separated'. The
basic fantasy is 'The breast and I are the same and cannot be
separated', The wife-phallus equation ultimately both gratifies
the wish to be swallowed and serves as a defense against the
threat of separation from the life-sustaining breast.
The emotional and legal concept that marriage is binding
and eternal has at its root the child's primitive interpretation of
all human ties as concrete and anatomical. Perhaps this is just
as well.

SUMMARY
Marriage has many special unconscious meanings to the individ-
ual. These meanings are distinct from the significance of adult
heterosexual relationships in general.
Because of its ceremonial and legal character, the marriage
bond is readily represented in special instances by fantasies of
anatomical attachment. These primitive fantasies serve as de-
fenses against fear of separation and annihilation. The evidence
presented here does not, however, demonstrate that the fantasies
constitute the historical source of the social institution of mar-
riage. This is a question for anthropological research.
One common fantasy is 'My wife is my phallus', which is
demonstrated clinically in a group of men who maintained sado-
masochistic marriages with surprising tenacity, and among
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THE MARRIAGE BOND 259

whom the fantasy represents a modification of their original
narcissism and a partial approach to object relations.
The fantasy is highly overdetermined, drawing elements from
all libidinal phases. The predominantly oral factors are pre-
sented but a more complete report would include many anal,
urethral, and phallic determinants. The oedipal phase is of cru-
cial importance in the fantasy. The importance of love for the
father has here been only implied. It is often of importance as
an intermediate factor.
The fantasy 'My wife is my phallus' is of clinical importance
as one of a group of unconscious fantasies representing the un-
conscious meaning of marriage to the individual. Thorough un-
derstanding of such fantasies is a prerequisite for the analytic
solution of neurotic problems in married people.

REFERENCES

I. BERGLER, EDMUND: Divorce Won't Help. New York: Harper & Bros., 1948.
2. - - - : Conflict in Marriage. New York: Harper & Bros., 1949.
3. FENICHEL, OTTO: The Symbolic Equation: Girl-Phallus. This QUARTERLY,
XVIII, 1949, pp. 303-324.
4· FERENCZI, SANDOR: Gulliver Fantasies. Int. J. Psa., IX, 1928, pp. 283-300.
5. FREUD: On the Sexual Theories of Children (1908). Call. Papers, II, pp. 59-75.
6. GROTJAHN, MARTIN: About the Symbolization of Alice's Adventures in Wonder-
land. Amer. Imago, IV, 1947, pp. 32-41.
7. HORNEY, KAREN: The Problem of the Monogamous Ideal. Int. J. Psa., IX, 1928,
pp. 3 18-331.
8. LEWIN, BERTRAM D.: The Body as Phallus. This QUARTERLY, II, 1933, pp. 24-47.
9. MITTELMANN, BELA: Complementary Neurotic Reactions in Intimate Relation-
ships. This QUARTERLY, XIII, 1944, pp. 479-491.
10. NUNBERG, HERMAN: Problems of Bisexuality as Reflected in Circumcision.
London: Imago Publishing Co., Ltd., 1949.
II. OBERNDORF, CLARENCE P.: Psychoanalysis of Married Couples. Psa. Rev., XXV,
1938, p. 453·
12. REICH, ANNIE: A Contribution to the Psychoanalysis of Extreme Submissive-
ness in Women. This QUARTERLY, IX, 1940, pp. 470-480.
13· - - - : Narcissistic Object Choice in Women. J. Amer. Psa, Assn., I, 1953,
pp.22-44·
14. SHAW, GEORGE BERNARD: Pygmalion (1912). In: Selected Plays. New York: Dodd.
Mead & Co., 1948.
15. SPITZ, RENE A.: Ein Beitrag zum Problem der Wandlung der Neuroseniorm
(Die infantile Frau und ihre Gegenspieleri. Imago, XIX, 1933, pp. 454-467.
16. - - - : Choix objectal masculin et transformation typologique des neuroses.
Paris: Bibliotheque Psychanalytique, Denoel & Steele, 19!17.
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