Penis envy stems from Freud's concept of the Oedipus complex in which the phallic conflict arises for males, as well as for females.[8][9] Though Carl Jung made the distinction between the Oedipus Complex for males and the Electra Complex for females in his work The Theory of Psychoanalysis,[10] Freud rejected this latter term, stating that the feminine Oedipus complex is not the same as the male Oedipus because, "It is only in the male child that we find the fateful combination of love for the one parent and simultaneous hatred of the other as a rival".[11] This development of the female Oedipus complex according to Freud begins when the female makes comparisons with another male, perceiving this not as a sex characteristic; but rather, by assuming that she had previously possessed a penis, and had lost it by castration. This leads to the essential difference between the male and female Oedipus complex that the female accepts castration as a fact, while the boy fears its happening.[8]
Freud felt that penis envy leads to:
Resentment towards the mother who failed to provide the daughter with a penis
Depreciation of the mother who appears to be castrated
Giving up on phallic activity (clitoral masturbation) and adopting passivity (vaginal intercourse)
A symbolic equivalence between penis and child[9]
This envy towards the penis leads to various psychical consequences according to Freud, so long as it does not form into a reaction-formation of a masculinity complex. One such consequences is a sense of inferiority after becoming aware of the wound inflicted upon her narcissism. After initially attempting to explain this lack of a penis as a punishment towards her, she later realizes the universality of her female situation, and as a result begins to share the contempt that men have towards women as a lesser (in the important respect of a lack of a penis), and so insists upon being like a man. A second consequence of penis envy involves the formation of the character-trait of jealousy through displacement of the abandoned penis envy upon maturation.[12] Freud concludes this from considering the common female fantasy of a child being beaten to be a confession of masturbation, with the child representing the clitoris. A third consequence of penis envy involves the discovery of the inferiority of this clitoris, suggested through the observation that masturbation is further removed from females than from males. This is, according to Freud, because clitoral masturbation is a masculine activity that is slowly repressed throughout puberty (and shortly after discovering the penis-envy) in an attempt to make room for the female's femininity[13] by transitioning the erotogenic zone from the clitoris to the vagina.[9]
The result of these anxieties culminates in the girl giving up on her desire for the penis, and instead puts it in the place of the wish for a child; and, with that goal in mind, she takes her father as the love-object and makes the mother into the object of her jealousy.[14]
AdultEdit
Freud considered that in normal female development penis envy transformed into the wish for a man and/or a baby.[15]
Karl Abraham differentiated two types of adult women in whom penis envy remained intense as the wish-fulfilling and the vindictive types:[16] The former were dominated by fantasies of having or becoming a penis—as with the singing/dancing/performing women who felt that in their acts they magically incorporated the [parental] phallus.[17] The latter sought revenge on the male through humiliation or deprivation (whether by removing the man from the penis or the penis from the man).[18]
