From "nothing" to "something" to "everything": bisexuality and metaphors of the mind

Psychoanalytic understanding of female sexuality has continued to evolve since Freud presented it as a central and abiding question in psychoanalytic theory. This paper is an attempt to demonstrate that much of what we have learned and added to our theory is based in part on the classical thinking which remains a foundation of psychoanalytic wisdom about human sexuality in general, male and female. And this foundation rests on the cornerstone of the human longing for completeness, for "everything"--a bisexual core. A clinical case, the basis of psychoanalytic data, demonstrates, primarily through the analysis of a dream, the neurotic derailments that follow upon a disavowal of the need for the little girl to identify with the metaphorical representation of male genitalia. The theoretical underpinnings of this perspective are presented as well as a correction of a common misreading of Freud's ideas about anatomical "bedrock."