I cannot tell you how often we psychiatrists get, directly from our patients, information as clearly confirmatory as this of the existence of an early triangle between mother, father, and child. It causes a conflict in the child, of course, and this early conflict in the little girl takes place in a very subtle manner, so subtle, indeed, that its very existence escaped the conscious notice of mankind from the dawn of history until the end of the nineteenth century. Just before the turn of the twentieth century Sigmund Freud, then an obscure Viennese psychiatrist, while using hypnosis on patients suffering from powerful feelings of repressed guilt, noted that these feelings were always connected with very early sexual conflicts. He was astonished to discover that these sexual conflicts dated back to early childhood, and in case after case he was able to demonstrate not only that children possessed strong sensual feelings but that these feelings became attached first to the mother and then to the father, causing a conflict in the childish mind which had to be resolved. He called this the Oedipal situation. If it was not resolved, the child developed irrational feelings of guilt which could and did impede normal sexual and psychological growth. I described this early source of conflict to a woman patient of mine recently in much the same way that I have described it here. After pondering for a moment she asked a question that goes to the heart of the matter. “If this early situation causes a conflict in the child which can lead to a neurosis later, why did nature design things that way? I thought nature set things up to foster growth, not to hinder it.” The observation and question were fine ones and raised points that are generally ignored. Nature _did_ design this early sexual conflict for a very special reason. She did it to foster the growth of the little girl, to push her on to the next step in the development of her femininity, to move her a little farther along the path to her ultimate role of wife and mother. Let me explain this a bit further. For the first few years, by the very nature of family life, as we have seen, all the little girl’s feelings are focused on her mother. She is the center, the fountain of life itself; the little one looks to her for food, security on all levels, and “love.” This love soon becomes tinged with a very strong erotic feeling connected with the little one’s growing sensuality, which, as we have seen, is centered on her clitoris.