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Freud's observations on [[female]] sexuality were made between 1923 and 1933, late in his career. They cannot be [[understood]] without reference to his [[thesis]] of the primacy of the [[phallus]], according to which, for both [[sexes]], "only one [[genital]]"—the [[male]] one—played a [[structuring]] [[role]] (1923e, p. 142). Structurally [[speaking]], the [[phallic]] [[phase]] defined the girl as much as the boy, but the girl's embrace of the phallic—at once [[real]] (experienced directly), [[imaginary]] (fantasized in an oscillation between [[power]] and [[impotence]]), and [[symbolic]] ([[thought]]-[[cathexis]])—was centered on the clitoris. Even though the [[Freudian]] theorization of the girl's [[psychosexual]] [[development]] toward femininity took as its sole basis the psychosexuality of the boy, Freud continually emphasized the differences between the sexes in this [[regard]], and hence too the specificity of the female [[Oedipus]] [[complex]].
As [[Freud]] wrote:
<blockquote>[Little [[girl]]s] "notice the penis of a brother or playmate, strikingly [[visible]] and of large proportions, at once recognize it as the superior [[counterpart]] of their own small and inconspicuous [[organ]], and from that [[time]] forward fall a [[victim]] to [[envy]] for the penis."<ref>[[Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes]]. 1925j, p. 252</ref></blockquote>
This [[injury]], at once [[phallus|phallic]] and [[narcissism|narcissistic]], was experienced to begin with as a personal [[punishment]], then accepted as part of a broader [[truth]]: [[women]] do not have [[them]].
That the [[mother]] should have omitted to "give her a proper penis"<ref>1931b, p. 234</ref> constituted the main motive, specific to the little girl, for transferring her affections to the [[father]].
This [[reversal]] was more a flight from the [[mother]] than a [[choice]] of the [[father]] as [[object]].
It was this disillusionment, coupled with the depreciation of the [[mother]] [[contingent]] upon the discovery that she was [[castration|castrated]], that occasioned the abandonment of the [[relationship]] with the [[mother]] as [[object]].
The [[renunciation]] of p[[phallus|phallic]] [[activity]] (clitoral [[masturbation]]) allowed [[passivity]] to come to the fore:
"The transition to the father-object is accomplished with the [[help]] of the [[passive]] trends in so far as they have survived the catastrophe. The path to the development of femininity now lies open to the girl."<ref>p. 239</ref>
The [[girl]] placed all her hopes on her [[father]], waiting for him to give her the [[penis]] that her [[mother]] had "[[refusal|refused]]" her. The [[femininity|feminine]] attitude would be reached only if an equivalence was established between [[penis]] and [[child]] and the [[wish]] for a [[penis]] transformed into the [[wish]] for a [[child]].
What [[Freud]] had discovered in 1931 was that for the little girl the mother as dispenser of the earliest [[bodily]] care is the object of a particularly intense and long-lasting archaic cathexis. He compared this first bond between mother and daughter to the Minoan-Mycenaean [[civilization]] so long obscured from view by the civilization of Athens: "Our insight into this early, pre-Oedipus, phase in girls comes to us as a surprise, like the discovery, in [[another]] field, of the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization behind the civilization of [[Greece]]" (p. 226). He immediately pointed up the [[ambivalence]] of this earliest bond: primary [[homosexuality]], the [[idea]] of which was to be further developed by Freud's successors, was built upon the amorous or tender current in mother-[[infant]] coexcitation, which was nevertheless not devoid of [[aggressiveness]]. Attachment and hostility toward the mother were differently inflected depending on whether they related to the [[oral]] or the [[anal]] phase. During the oral phase, after the [[withdrawal]] of the [[breast]], they arose in response to the little girl's fears of [[being]] devoured, poisoned or killed by her mother. During the anal phase, the [[pleasure]] associated with various [[maternal]] manipulations was related to the intrusive anal mother (described by Ruth Mack Brunswick as arousing the girl's aggressiveness).
His discovery of a [[primal]] coexcitation sensorily uniting daughter and mother, and of the dramatic rift that ensued between the two female members of this initial [[dyad]], supplied Freud with much support for his conclusion that the [[mental]] bisexuality of women was more marked than that of men. The subsequent route to femininity was a long one, marked by the detachment from the pre-[[oedipal]] mother and calling for both a [[change]] in the [[erogenous zone]] cathected (the shift from clitoris to vagina), and a change of object. Taking the father as [[love]]-object is thus seen as a second phase in the little girl's mental development, so that it is possible to [[speak]] of a two-phase oedipal period for women (Jeanne Lampl-de Groot, [[Julia Kristeva]]). Freud went so far as to say that he saw no [[dissolution]] of the Oedipus complex in the female. Whereas in the boy the complex succumbed to the [[threat]] of [[castration]], it would have no end in the [[case]] of women and would [[manifest]] itself as such in both the [[need]] for [[motherhood]] and in the [[character]] of "females as [[social]] beings" (p. 230). In addition to the path leading to the choice of the father as object, Freud evoked two [[other]] possible routes: the young [[woman]] might turn away from sexuality into [[neurosis]] ([[inhibition]]), or she might refuse to [[renounce]] the phallus and develop a [[masculinity]] complex.
Freud's phallocentric account, which he took up again in the <i>New Introductory Lectures on [[Psycho]]-[[Analysis]]</i> (1933a [1932]), has been widely criticized. In the first [[place]], a [[number]] of [[psychoanalysts]], among them Karen Horney, Ernest [[Jones]], Melanie [[Klein]], and Helene Deutsch, have in [[particular]] contested the [[claim]] that penis envy is a primary given rather than a [[construction]] developed or used in a secondary way in response to [[primitive]] wishes. At the same time feminists have castigated Freud for incorporating his own phallocratic and bourgeois prejudices into his [[theory]]. But it must not be forgotten that Freud's theorizing here addresses the [[Unconscious]], so that only criticisms doing likewise have relevance (André, 1994). Furthermore it is essential to bear in [[mind]] that according to Freud the phallic organization in [[fantasy]] is based on the "[[infantile]]" genital organization, and that the primacy of the phallus, for the girl as for the boy, is deemed an aspect of the child's development and can in no way be conflated with the [[adult]] genital organization. Last, and most important, the idea of phallic primacy must be understood as the primacy of a symbolic [[dimension]], not an [[organic]] one. In his<i>[[Écrits]]</i> (1966), Jacques [[Lacan]] describes the dynamics of a [[human]] [[psyche]], dependent on [[language]], which necessarily embraces both the male and the female speaking [[subject]]. Even though the "detachability" of the penis inevitably makes it the "[[signifier]] of the [[lack]]," and hence the [[symbol]] of the signifying function itself, men and women nevertheless relate to it differently. [[Recent]] [[psychoanalytical]] research has paid particular attention to the exploration of this [[difference]], and notably to the "strangeness of the phallus" for the female (Kristeva).
==See Also==
* [[Feminine masochism]]
* [[Femininity]]
* [[Femininity, rejection of]]
* [[Feminism and psychoanalysis]]
* [[Gender identity]]
* [[Infantile sexual curiosity]]
* [[Masculinity/femininity]]
* [[Oedipus complex]]
* [[Penis envy]]
* [[Phallic woman]]
* [[Psychosexual development]]
* [[Sexual differences]]
* [[Sexuality]]
* [[Sexualization]]
* [[Wish for a baby]]
==References==
<references/>
# André, Jacques. (1994). Sur la sexualité féminine. [[Paris]], Presses Universitaires de [[France]].
# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1923e). The infantile genital organization. SE, 19: 141-145.
# ——. (1925j). Some [[psychical]] consequences of the [[anatomical]] [[distinction]] between the sexes. SE, 19: 241-258.
# ——. (1931b). [[Female sexuality]]. SE, 21: 221-243.
# ——. (1933a [1932]). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. SE, 22: 1-182.
# Kristeva, Julia. (2000). The [[sense]] and non-sense of [[revolt]] (Jea-nine Herman, Trans.). New York: Columbia [[University]] Press, 2000. (Original [[work]] published 1996)
# [[Lacan, Jacques]]. (1966). [[Ecrits]]. Paris: Seuil.
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