Theories of Personality 9th Edition

Chapter 2 Freud: Psychoanalysis 49

plex, little girls do not experience a traumatic event comparable to boys’ castration
anxiety. Fourth, because girls do not experience this traumatic event, the female
Oedipus complex is more slowly and less completely dissolved than the male
Oedipus complex.
The simple male and female Oedipus complexes are summarized in Table 2.1.
Freud presented his views on the female Oedipus complex more tentatively
than he did his ideas regarding the male phallic stage. Although he framed these
views on femininity in a tentative and provisional manner, he soon began to vigor-
ously defend them. When some of his followers objected to his harsh view of
women, Freud became even more adamant in his position and insisted that psycho-
logical differences between men and women could not be erased by culture because
they were the inevitable consequences of anatomical differences between the sexes
(Freud, 1925/1961). This rigid public stance on feminine development has led some
writers (Brannon, 2005; Breger, 2000; Chodorow, 1989, 1991, 1994; Irigaray, 1986;
Krausz, 1994) to criticize him as being sexist and uncomplimentary to women.
Despite his steadfast public position, Freud privately was uncertain that his views
on women represented a final answer. One year after his pronouncement that “anatomy
is destiny,” he expressed some doubts, admitting that his understanding of girls and
women was incomplete. “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’ for psychology” (Freud 1926/1959b, p. 212).
Throughout his career, Freud often proposed theories without much clinical
or experimental evidence to support them. He would later come to see most of
these theories as established facts, even though he possessed no intervening sub-
stantiating evidence. For as long as he lived, however, he remained doubtful of the
absolute validity of his theories on women. Freud once admitted to his friend Marie
Bonaparte that he did not understand women: “The great question that has never
been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty

TABLE 2.1

Parallel Paths of the Simple Male and Female Phallic Phases

Male Phallic Phase

1. Oedipus complex (sexual desires for
   the mother/hostility for the father)


2. Castration complex in the form of
   castration anxiety shatters the
   Oedipus complex


3. Identification with the father


4. Strong superego replaces the nearly
   completely dissolved Oedipus
   complex

Female Phallic Phase

1. Castration complex in the form of
   penis envy


2. Oedipus complex develops as an
   attempt to obtain a penis (sexual
   desires for the father; hostility for
   the mother)


3. Gradual realization that the Oedipal
   desires are self-defeating


4. Identification with the mother


5. Weak superego replaces the partially
   dissolved Oedipus complex