The Internal Triangle: New Theories of Female Development

Based on over twenty years of clinical work with women, both individually and in groups, The Internal Triangle represents the first attempt by a woman to use Freud's drive theory to explain female development since Helene Deutsch's two-volume Psychology of Women in 1945. It presents a completely new hypothesis about the way girls use the introjection of parental figures much in the way that boys utilize the penis: to separate from powerful early objects and to gain control and mastery. The author offers an innovative new theory about how the female personality and the qualities associated with femininity develop, utilizing a fantasy internal triangle of mother, father and self. It follows development through the major milestones of the female life cycle: preoedipal, adolescence, childbirth, and menopause, with vivid clinical material illustrating each of the author's ideas. The second half of the book focuses on clinical data and technique which will aid therapists in working with women individually and in groups.

Lucy Holmes, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She is president of the Society of Modern Psychoanalysts, and a member of the faculty at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and the Center for Group Studies in New York. She lectures all over the country and has published numerous articles on psychoanalysis and female development, one of which, The Object Within: Childbirth as a Developmental Milestone, won the Gradiva Award for best article of 2002, presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.