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In <i>The Question of Lay [[Analysis]]</i> (1926e), [[Freud]] wrote, "We [[know]] less [[about]] the [[sexual]] [[life]] of little girls than of boys. But we [[need]] not feel ashamed of this [[distinction]]; after all, the [[sexual life]] of [[adult]] [[women]] is a '[[Dark Continent|dark continent]]' for [[psychology]]" (p. 212). The evocative phrase <i>dark continent</i> connotes a geographic [[space]] that is murky and deep, one that defies [[understanding]]. Freud borrowed the expression from the African explorer John Rowlands Stanley's description of the exploration of a dark forest—virgin, hostile, impenetrable. By using this phrase and comparing the adult [[woman]]'s sexual life to an unknown continent, Freud indicates both his embarrassment as well as his explorer's curiosity. He also emphasizes the obscure and incomplete [[nature]] of the [[clinical]] [[material]] on the sexual life of girls and women for the [[psychoanalyst]]. His [[metaphor]] for the [[female]] sex turns it into an unrepresentable enigma, expressing the [[castration]] [[anxiety]] of the man who approaches it. For although he insists on the central [[idea]] constituting his [[theory]] of female sexuality—namely, the [[primitive]] masculinity of the little [[girl]], who is a little man before she changes [[objects]] and wishes to acquire a [[child]] from her father—Freud does have doubts about his theory.
If we consider his statements about female [[sexuality]], a theory that was never really explained in a comprehensive manner, we see that Freud is close to [[being]] his most severe critic. In 1923, the year his most specific statements about [[female sexuality]] appeared, he presented, in "[[Infantile]] [[Genital]] Organization," his [[thesis]] of the primacy of the [[phallus]]: "For both [[sexes]], only one genital, namely the [[male]] one comes into account. What is [[present]], therefore, is not a primacy of the genitals, but a primacy of the <i>phallus</i>." He immediately adds, "Unfortunately we can describe this [[state]] of things only as it affects the male child; the corresponding [[processes]] in the little girl are not known to us" (1923e, p. 142).
However, Freud himself attempts to illuminate the darkness of the continent. For he discovers that for the little girl, the [[mother]], who first provides care for the child, is the [[object]] of an especially intense and long-lasting [[cathexis]]. This archaic bond between mother and daughter, which [[psychoanalytic]] theory would later describe as one of primary homosexuality, is compared by Freud to Minoan-Mycenaean [[civilization]], which had been hidden for so long by Athenian civilization. Freud also insists on the function of the phallus for the woman. The phallus—not to be confused with the penis—is [[understood]] to [[represent]] the [[paternal function]] and the capacity for [[symbolization]] in all [[human]] beings. These [[ideas]] were further developed by Jacques [[Lacan]] and his [[school]].
