Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T03:31:08.039Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Variations on a phallic theme

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Ellen Oliensis
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access

Summary

The previous chapter brought me to the verge; now I close my eyes and step right over, taking the plunge into one of the most embarrassing and rebarbative of psychoanalytic obsessions: the Freudian penis, the Lacanian phallus.

There is no way around the fact that this is a pivotal topic in classical psychoanalytic theory. For Freud, it is the penis that signposts the devious journey that arrives, with surprising frequency, and as if by design, at normative heterosexuality. Fear of losing it (“castration anxiety”) spurs the son to relinquish the mother; wanting it (“penis envy”) sets the girl on the winding path toward motherhood, which alone can abate her sense of privation. In one of Freud's everyday myths, the differentiating crisis is triggered by the sight of a different body, perceived as fearfully deficient or enviably furnished. Whereas the boy's reaction has to be activated by a threat of castration (it is only in tandem with this threat that the girl's body appears castrated, thereby furnishing ghastly proof that such threats are not always empty), the girl's is instantaneous: “she has seen it and knows that she is without it and wants to have it.” Though sometimes refusing the evidence of his eyes, the Freudian boy typically has the good sense to relinquish his mother in order to keep his penis. By contrast, the Freudian girl scarcely ever succeeds in recovering fully from her initial disappointment. And the consequences of this difference ramify far beyond individual sexual destinies.

Type
Chapter
Information
Freud's Rome
Psychoanalysis and Latin Poetry
, pp. 92 - 126
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×