Self-Surrender, death, and the mystery of sexuality. Freud's theory of femminity from a present-day viewpoint.

The author investigates the question why, despite a change of views on sexual development, Freud's theory of femininity has been a subject of continuing debate up to the present day. She also asks why so much less attention has been given to male sexual development. The first part of the article is given over to a comprehensive overview of psychoanalytic theories of gender difference from Freud to the present. Subsequently the author argues that the notion of phallic monism bound up with Freud's theory of femininity still lives on because both for men and women it unconsciously serves the denial of symbolic castration. In both cases the reality of symbolic castration is replaced by the desire for something unattainable. For girl this is the desire to have a penis, for a boy it is the notion that it is only the threat to his penis by the castration of the father that prevents him from becoming his mother's sexual partner. In this context femininity can only be conceived of in terms of castration. As soon as it figures in its own right it becomes >> scandalous <<, both as the objective of incestuous desire, which is invariably also a desire for death, and in the specific form of sexual enjoyment as submission to the lover.