46 Part II Psychodynamic Theories
The onset of gender awareness is an important part of the Oedipal complex.he develops some amount of a feminine disposition. During the Oedipal period,
therefore, his feminine nature may lead him to display affection toward his father
and express hostility toward his mother, while at the same time his masculine
tendency disposes him toward hostility for father and lust for mother. During this
ambivalent condition, known as the complete Oedipus complex, affection and
hostility coexist because one or both feelings may be unconscious. Freud believed
that these feelings of ambivalence in a boy play a role in the evolution of the
castration complex, which for boys takes the form of castration anxiety or the
fear of losing the penis.
To Freud (1905/1953b, 1917/1963, 1923/1961b), the castration complex
begins after a young boy (who has assumed that all other people, including girls,
have genitals like his own) becomes aware of the absence of a penis on girls. This
awareness becomes the greatest emotional shock of his life. After a period of
mental struggle and attempts at denial, the young boy is forced to conclude that
the girl has had her penis cut off. This belief may be reinforced by parental threats
to punish the boy for his sexual behaviors. The boy is then forced to conclude that
the little girl has been punished by having her penis removed because she mastur-
bated or because she seduced her mother. For the boy, the threat of castration now
becomes a dreaded possibility. Because this castration anxiety cannot long be tol-
erated, the boy represses his impulses toward sexual activity, including his fantasies
of carrying out a seduction of his mother.
Prior to his sudden experience of castration anxiety, the little boy may have
“seen” the genital area of little girls or his mother, but this sight does not automatically