Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionII. Psychodynamic
Theories(^48) 2. Freud: Psychoanalysis © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
awareness becomes the greatest emotional shock of his life. After a period of men-
tal 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 masturbated 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 tolerated, the boy re-
presses 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 automati-
cally instigate the castration complex. Castration anxiety bursts forth only when the
boy’s ego is mature enough to comprehend the connection between sexual desires
and the removal of the penis.
Freud believed that castration anxiety was present in all boys, even those not
personally threatened with the removal of their penis or the stunting of its growth.
According to Freud (1933/1964), a boy does not need to receive a clear threat of cas-
tration. Any mention of injury or shrinkage in connection with the penis is sufficient
to activate the child’s phylogenetic endowment. Phylogenetic endowmentis capable
of filling the gaps of our individual experiences with the inherited experiences of our
ancestors. Ancient man’s fear of castration supports the individual child’s experi-
ences and results in universal castration anxiety. Freud stated: “It is not a question of
whether castration is really carried out; what is decisive is that the danger threatens
from the outside and that the child believes in it.” He went on to say that
hints at... punishment must regularly find a phylogenetic reinforcement in him.
It is our suspicion that during the human family’s primaeval period castration used
actually to be carried out by a jealous and cruel father upon growing boys, and
that circumcision, which so frequently plays a part in puberty rites among
primitive peoples, is a clearly recognizable relic of it. (pp. 86–87)
Once his Oedipus complex is dissolved or repressed, the boy surrenders his in-
cestuous desires, changes them into feelings of tender love, and begins to develop a
primitive superego. He may identify with either the father or the mother, depending
on the strength of his feminine disposition. Normally identification is with the father,
but it is not the same as pre-Oedipal identification. The boy no longer wants to be his
father; instead, he uses his father as a model for determining right and wrong be-
havior. He introjects or incorporates his father’s authority into his own ego, thereby
sowing the seeds of a mature superego. The budding superego takes over his father’s
prohibitions against incest and ensures the continued repression of the Oedipus
complex (Freud, 1933/1964).
Female Oedipus Complex The phallic phase takes a more complicated path for
girls than for boys, and these differences are due to anatomical differences between
the sexes (Freud, 1925/1961). Like boys, pre-Oedipal girls assume that all other chil-
dren have genitals similar to their own. Soon they discover that boys not only pos-
sess different genital equipment, but apparently something extra. Girls then become
envious of this appendage, feel cheated, and desire to have a penis. This experience
42 Part II Psychodynamic Theories