Kathleen, in your post with this heading, I got lost in the quotation
marks. I can't tell which passages are quotes from the Jelliffes (Derrick
or Patrice, or both?) and which, if any, are from someone else citing the
Jelliffes, and/or your friend who shared it with you. In the text as it
appears at the archives, there seems to be an orphaned quotation mark of
this kind: "
That mark precedes the first passage you cited, but I couldn't find a
corresponding mark showing where that quote ended.
I have cut and pasted the post, minus your introductory sentence, below.
Can you clarify where the " should be closed, and who is the 'I' in the
first sentence below? Is it C.Weichert, or someone quoting C. Weichert, and
is C.Weichert quoting the Jelliffes, and if so, from where?  Is the 'I' in
the first sentence, the same person as the 'She' in the final one?
This seems picky, I'm sure, but since you cite someone who cites someone
else (and who possibly is citing a third instance) we need to know who to
credit if we cite them to others :-)
Rachel


"  I found the following description in Jelliffe & Jelliffe' s Human Milk
in the Modern World to be explanatory for me.

….. a functional castration of women has occurred.  They have acquiesced to
a combination of forces, medical and cultural, which have eventuated in the
use of the breast as the primary sex symbol and yardstick of feminine
desirability, divorced from its nurturing role. Women in a critical period
of their life cycle have become divorced from themselves and from the
ability to confirm their identity fundamentally.  In this instance, the
degree of concern of the medical profession might be described as inversely
proportional to the dimension of the problem.  To draw an analogy, would
the professional distance of physicians be maintained were it routinely
recommended that all insemination  be accomplished artificially?  Would
anybody suggest, seriously, that males abstain from intercourse, bind
themselves, take drugs to relieve congestion, or be mechanically relieved
routinely, and that it would be as good?

The apparent absurdity of the analogy goes to the heart of the problem.  If
one sees lactation as part of a psychosexual continuum in women, the
analogy can be taken seriously.
Weichert , C (1975) Pediatrics 56.987.  Breast-feeding: first thoughts.
She is also of the opinion that: ‘To deal with anxieties that lactating
women express concerning their ‘normality’, because of the sensual
relationship they share with the infant, one must confront the relationship
between lactation and sexuality, not deny it.’

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