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Loyal opposition and the clarity of dissent. Commentary on Donald P. Spence's >the hermeneutic turn<
(1998)
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.