Daughters and mothers. Aspects of the representational world during adolescence

This paper explores the transformations of the girl's intrapsychic relationship to the mental representations of her mother and their contribution to mastery of the specifically female developmental milestones during adolescence and early adulthood. The vicissitudes of the girl's intrapsychic organization of the mental representations to the maternal object both reflect and characterize the psychological tasks of female adolescence: puberty, menarche, sexuality, and psychological independence. It is argued that the characteristic fantasies of this period can be understood not only as representing an intrapsychic developmental progression along object lines but as complex compromise formations which serve multiple structural functions as well. Clinical material is presented to illustrate typical fantasies of female adolescence.