A Reading of Sigmund Freud’s “Female Sexuality” (1931)

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Freud takes up the question of female sexuality, which poses a new challenge because it must account for the exchange of the original object, which is also the boy’s original object, the mother, for the father. This second step is not a part of the heterosexual boy’s psychical development. There is also the movement from her genital zone, the clitoris, to the vagina. Hence, there are two differences: the movement from the clitoris to the vagina, which, in my reading, is a process concerning jouissance and the drives, and the movement from the mother, as a sexual object, to the father, which, in my reading, concerns desire.

Freud notes that he was struck by two facts, the first of which was that the woman’s attachment to her father could be quite intense and which was preceded by an exclusive attachment to her mother which was equally intense. The change in object did not therefore change the erotic charge, or quanta. The second fact concerned the duration of this intense attachment, which lasted sometimes until the fifth year, which shows a long period of attachment. Freud had found that many women remain “arrested in their original attachment to their mother” and are never able to exchange toward the man. This he named the “pre-Oedipus phase.”

This fact of feminine sexuality had led Freud to wonder if he should abandon the “universality of the thesis” of the Oedipus complex. Yet, to adapt, Freud maintains that we could simply change the Oedipus complex, its meaning, to include all of the various possible relations to the parents, and not just those of the boy. Or, an alternative, is to claim that the heterosexual girl achieves a “normal positive Oedipus situation” only after she has “surmounted” a negative complex. In other words, Freud suggests that one can think of a “positive” or “negative” Oedipus complex, one which has succeeded, in some sense, and one which has remained in abeyance. The negative Oedipus complex is therefore, in this case, one discovered through some indications in feminine sexuality. In the negative complex, the girl’s father is a “troublesome rival, although her hostility towards him never reaches the pitch which is characteristic of boys.” It is at this point that one might wonder if Freud had overlooked something. Is it not the case that the “pitch” could rather be another wavelength, since we are very much capable today of recognizing in the negative complex a pitch which not only rivals that of the boys, but could indicate a major source of our discontents today? In any case, it would seem that Freud had only made this claim in order to bolster the point that there is no “neat parallelism between male and female sexual development.”

Hence, the negative Oedipus complex is in fact a pre-Oedipus complex. Freud reasons that it had been difficult to detect this in patients because it had been significantly repressed. It is a primordial dependency upon the woman, which establishes, according to Freud, “the germ of later paranoia in women.” I will quote Freud: “this germ appears to be the surprising, yet regular, fear of being killed (devoured) by the mother.”

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Freud summarizes: first, a woman’s strong dependence on her father is a substitute for her equally strong attachment to her mother, and; this phase of dependence upon the mother in actuality “lasted for an unexpectedly long period of time.” Freud remarks that one can notice the innate bisexuality of all human beings is nonetheless much more apparent in women than in men. Freud states the following: man has one sexual organ, the penis, while woman has two — the clitoris. The latter, clitoris, is analogous to the male organ. Freud reasons that for girls the vagina does not into existence, psychically, until much later for the girl: “we are justified in assuming that for many years the vagina is virtually non-existent and possibly does not produce sensations until puberty.” In the earlier years, the main sensations seem to take place in the clitoris. For this reason, the sexual life of women, according to Freud, is divided into two: a masculine character, which is perhaps a “phase,” and a feminine — the former related to the clitoris and the latter to the vagina.

All of this concerns the first process, or what I’ve referred to as the drives and jouissance. Next, Freud moves on to the second process, which has to do with “finding of the object,” or what I’ve hitherto discussed as the realm of desire. For the male, there is a mother as the first object and this remains so for him. We know that this is taken up in a different way in the work of Lacan, which can be shown already in his early Paternal Metaphor from his Ecrits. Lacan’s addition is the role of language, of the signifier. Freud does not take this into account because it shows the active role of the signifier in substitute the sensations of the drives for the lost object, the mother, which resurfaces in desire. In any case, for Freud, this is similar for females, since their first objects are also their mothers. Yet, it is the end of the process which demonstrates a difference: “her father — a man — should have become her new love-object.” So, for the female, “a change in her own sex,” at the level of the drive, “must correspond to a change in the sex of her object,” at the level of desire.

Freud next rejects the theory of the “Electra complex” because it seeks to emphasize the analogy of the two sexes. Instead, Freud wishes to show a dissymmetry. Freud argues that only the male child shows a “combination of love for the one parent [mother] and simultaneous hatred for the other as a rival [father].” What is fascinating is that Freud seems to describe castration as a “possible discovery,” which happens through the gaze (e.g., “sight of the female genitals”), forcing him to transform his Oedipus complex into a creation of “super-ego” in order to initiate him into the wider cultural community of which he now becomes a member. I want to isolate this sentence: “In his case [the boy] it is the discovery of the possibility of castration, as proved by the sight of the female genitals, which forces on him the transformation of his Oedipus Complex, and which leads to the creation of his super-ego and thus initiates all the processes that are designed to make the individual find a place in the cultural community.”

If I highlight this passage at length then it is because it shows for Freud a necessary function of the super-ego. The super-ego “initiates” into a wider cultural community. It does not imply that the boy is comfortable in that community, or that neuroses are thereby eradicated, but it does show that he has advanced beyond the pre-castration, that is, the place whereby the mother is not lacking. It is at this point that he discusses the “paternal agency,” which is in direct relation to the superego in function: the paternal agency is a function for Freud, one which initiates the boy into the wider cultural community as a subject whereby the mother is seen as lacking. And what is even more fascinating is that Freud does not credit the father with this achievement, though his function is essential, but the boy’s “remarkable course of achievement” which is his “narcissistic interest in his genitals — his interest in preserving his penis.” In other words, the cultural achievement is not imposed from outside, by the law, but is advanced, actively selected, precisely through the boy’s prior narcissistic identification with the phallus.

However, one of the consequences of this passage through the castration complex — which, in my usage means a particular and essential sub-function of the Oedipus complex — is a possible “disparagement in their attitude towards women, whom they regard as being castrated.” Freud remarks that this can sometimes lead toward an inhibition — and even to homosexuality or what he elsewhere names introversion.

Next, Freud turns to female sexuality, which has a different effect. Whereas the female acknowledges her own castration and inferiority, and even the “superiority of the male,” she nonetheless rebels against it. She cannot live in this state of fact. Three consequences: first, revulsion toward matters of sexuality, second defiant stubbornness to relinquish her desired masculine position — there persists sometimes a “phantasy of being a man,” which Freud even calls a “masculinity complex.” This can lead her toward homosexuality. Finally, there is the taking of the father as an object and the presumption of a feminine position in the Oedipus complex. Once again, the period of development is protracted and lengthy. Unlike masculine sexuation, for Freud, here, castration is where it begins. Freud includes the following footnote:

“It is to be anticipated that men analysts with feminist views, as well as our women analysts, will disagree with what I have said here. They will hardly fail to object that such notions spring from the ‘masculinity complex’ of the male and are designed to justify on theoretical grounds his innate inclination to disparage and suppress women. […] [they] will argue that it is quite natural that the female sex should refuse to accept a view which appears to contradict their eagerly coveted equality with men. The use of analysis as a weapon of controversy can clearly lead to no decision.”

In any case, Freud concludes that we must direct ourselves to the mechanisms that are or were involved in her turning away from her mother as her exclusive object, since it was there that she was so intensely and exclusively attached. Freud goes on to examine some possible factors which assist the little girl to turn away from the mother, one of which is the existence of sibling rivalries. Another is if the little girl has a brother, she can discover, fairly quickly, of her “organic inferiority.” Here, in defense of Freud, I do not think at all that he is claiming that she is “actually” organically inferior but rather that she comes to believe that she is — it is in this erroneous belief, which sets the stage for the Oedipus complex, that Freud attempts to make some progress through analysis. Once again, there are three possible outcomes: (1) turning away from sexuality (drive-related), (2) over-emphasis on masculinity, and (3) turning toward femininity (desire).

Freud writes: “when the little girl discovers her own deficiency, from seeing a male genital, it is only with hesitation and reluctance that she accepts the unwelcome knowledge. As we have seen, she clings obstinately to the expectation of one day having a genital of the same kind too, and her wish for it survives long after her hope has expired.” We can see this taken up, in his own way, by Lacan, particularly in his chart of sexuation in the vector that moves from the feminine side to the phallus.

Freud claims that the strongest motive for “turning away from [mother] [is that] her mother did not give her a proper penis, that is to say, brought her into the world as a female.” Here, one’s intense attachment to mother wanes precisely because of her unfair expectation that she be the phallus. The paradox is that it is precisely the intense attachment which serves as its own undoing: it is because she is so intensely attached that one can expect it to fail, since that attachment can inevitably not succeed and the failure will be felt all the more strongly and push toward another phase in the turn away from the mother.

Freud notes that the earliest phases of development include the merging of love and hate, and only those who have, to some degree, surmounted the Oedipus complex, namely adults, are capable of separating love from hatred, to a greater degree: “in the first phases of erotic life, ambivalence is evidently the rule. Many people retain this archaic trait all through their lives. It is characteristic of obsessional neurotics that in their object-relationships love and hate counterbalance each other. In primitive races too, we may say that ambivalence predominates.” Similarly, for the little girl, ambivalence is hegemonic, and this explains much of infantile sexuality more generally.

So, where do the ambivalent feelings go? For the boy, claimed Freud, it is channeled into hatred toward their father: the father is the recipient of the hatred and the mother is the receptable of love. I wonder, then: what of the comrades? In Lacan, the comrades are sustained by a vertical relation, pre-Oedipal, without the father — one way to deal with the internal ambivalence is to hatred what is outside of the bond, and yet, not unconsciously — but consciously. This remains a problem of the contemporary social bond that is still well worth exploring.

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Freud moves on to discuss the relation of “activity” to “passivity” in the development of feminine sexuality. He even seems to offer an axiom: “it can easily be observed that in every field of mental experience, not merely that of sexuality, when a child receives a passive impression, it has a tendency to produce an active reaction. It tries to do itself what has just been done to it. This is part of the work imposed on it of mastering the external world and can even lead to its endeavoring to repeat an impression which it would have reason to avoid on account of its distressing content. Children’s play, too, is made to serve this purpose of supplementing a passive experience with an active piece of behavior and of thus, as it were, annulling it.” In other words, there is an “active” revolt against their “passive” status.

First, the experiences of a child in relation to her mother is passive. The child is a passive recipient of the mother’s behaviors. Freud reasons that this is actively caught up in the little girl’s libido, and there remains some pleasure in this passivity. Yet, another part strives to transform this into activity. There are also “intense active wishful impulses directed toward her mother” which arise during the “phallic phase,” which means the admission, possible or not, into the Oedipus complex. This is what leads toward “clitoridal masturbation.” In any case, the passive trends can nonetheless persist behind and beyond the active trends which have emerged during later developments. Freud wrote that “the transition to the father-object [desire] is accomplished with the help of the passive trends in so far as they have escaped the catastrophe. The path of the development of femininity now lies open to the girl, to the extent to which it is not restricted by the remains of the pre-Oedipus attachment to her mother which she has surmounted.” This sentence is not entirely clear, but it seems to me that the passive trends actually give rise to the push toward the father, to the establishment of Oedipal desire. How and why? It is in their frustration, in the passive mode rather than the active mode — one does not succeed in being the phallus.

Yet, Freud now turns toward a surprising conclusion: the masculine trends in boys also show, even in their active aims, a turn toward feminine channels. Freud suggests that there is only one libido, despite the fact that science might one day show us two substances, and which has an active and passive aim or mode of satisfaction.

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Freud notes that there are still many areas to pursue in terms of research. For example, we might wonder more about why it is that a girl, as a result of “disappointment from her father, returns to the attachment of her mother which she had abandoned, or when, in the course of her life, she repeatedly changes over from one position to the other.” The remainder of this section, and indeed of the paper, deals with some minor disagreements, already elaborated in their detail, among the papers of clinicians on the topic of female sexuality. One of the biggest criticisms was directed toward Karin Horney who described a “secondary penis-envy” in girls, which she described as a “fending off” of feminine impulses and an “attachment to her father.” Freud states plainly: “this does not tally with my impressions.” He also critiques Ernest Jones’ view that the phallic phase is a secondary and protective reaction and not a developmental stage — whereas Freud seems to indicate that this is a more normal course of development.