Female Sexuality

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...