A Psychoanalytic View on the Characteristics of Women's Choice of Object

The topic of the peculiarities of female object’s choice is relevant for every patient and is directly related to the passage of psychosexual stages of development, both oedipal and pre-oedipal. A woman goes through these stages differently, so the object in her life has a special role, which also affects the choice. In the pre-oedipal stages, the girl is invested in a different way by the primary object, and the passage of the oedipal stage requires more resources from the mental side, since she needs a triple transition in the psyche: a change of the object of love, a change of the erogenous zone and a change of the active position to the passive one. The female psychosexual is distinguished by a special female sense of guilt, erotic masochism and narcissism of sexuality. A woman tends to offer herself as a sexual object to receive love and narcissistic investments, becoming more dependent on the object. Addiction can acquire masochistic shades, and masochism accompanies the feminine and passive. At the same time, erogenous masochism is a prerequisite for obtaining female pleasure. The object is necessary for the satisfaction of attraction, discharge, as well as for development. The psyche develops and becomes more complicated through interaction with another, so the object has a crucial role, especially for a woman whose sexuality is narcissistic. S. Freud distinguished two ways of choice: supportive and narcissistic. The choice of an object is also influenced by the obsessive repetition of trauma, including between generations. The author explores various concepts of psychoanalysts such as S. Freud, J. Chasseguet-Smirgel, B. Grunberger, J. Schaeffer, C.-J. Luquet-Parat, A. Green, K. Horney, J. Cournut and others. To study the hypotheses, the choice of objects was analyzed by three heroines of the epic novel "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy: Natasha Rostova, Helen Kuragina and Marya Bolkonskaya, through the prism of their psychosexual development and relationships with primary objects.