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Psychological approaches to understanding people
Published in Dominic Upton, Introducing Psychology for Nurses and Healthcare Professionals, 2013
While Freud regarded boys’ and girls’ relationships to the phallus as central to their psychosexual development, the Oedipus complex tends only to refer to the experience of male children. Thus Freud posited a theoretical counterpart to the Oedipus complex known as the feminine Oedipus attitude. (In 1913 Carl Jung proposed the name the Electra complex for Freud’s concept, deriving from the Greek myth of Electra, who wanted her brother to avenge the death of her father by killing her mother.) The feminine Oedipus attitude or Electra complex operates in much the same way as the Oedipus complex but in reverse, i.e. girls desire to possess the father and displace the mother. Freud attributes the nature of this psychosexual stage in girls to the notion of penis envy. According to the theory, penis envy leads to resentment of the mother, who is believed to have caused the girl’s ‘castration’. The father figure now becomes the girl’s love object and she substitutes her penis envy with the wish to have a child; this ultimately leads to identification with the mother. Following these traumas both sexes enter a latency period in which sexual motivations become much less pronounced. This lasts until puberty or what is known as the genital phase in which the locus of pleasure or energy release refocuses around the genital area.
Psychology of women: Feminist therapy *
Published in Phil Brown, Mental Health Care and Social Policy, 1985
Virginia K. Donovan, Ronnie Littenberg
Since World War II women’s lives have been changing rapidly. Women were drawn into the work force at record levels during the war, when they assumed jobs previously reserved for men. They were later pushed out of these jobs by returning soldiers. Women’s participation in the work force never returned to prewar levels and a powerful ideology emerged (or reemerged in new forms) (Ehrenreich and English, 1978) that helped justify their return to the home and acceptance of work at low pay. Psychology, advanced as a neutral, objective science of behavior, was central to this ideological effort. Behavioral scientists joined child-rearing experts in promoting the theory of maternal instinct; women would fulfill themselves by caring for their children. Less than total mothering would lead to deprived children; children needed constant attention by one caretaker or they became apathetic and hopeless. Penis envy and its resultant rejection of femininity was considered the cause of women’s desire for other kinds of fulfillment. Similarly, female masochism was offered as an explanation of why self-abnegation was really gratification. Perhaps most cruelly, women were blamed for any problems with their children (mothers must have been overprotective or rejecting or both) (Ehrenreich and English, 1978) and for their own inability to find contentment (they were neurotic).
The Phant-Astic Wand
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2020
It has been my experience as a psychoanalyst, speaking with multiple transmasculine patients suffering from bottom dysphoria, that their penile yearnings are often dismissed and pathologized as penis envy (Freud, 1949). In this sense, Straayer’s article is comforting as it explores theories of failed fetal neurocircuitry that may help explain the obsessive torment of the bottom dysphoric transmasculine individual (BDTMI) in search of the phallic holy grail. Therefore, if it is based on specific neurobiological underpinnings, the experience of a phantom penis defies any archaic delusional etiology. This allows us to claim that such a phallic quest is not, after all, only in our heads … well it is, and isn’t … Ramachandran and McGeoch (2008) assert in their study of phantom limbs that the brain participates in the generation of phantoms, so much so that phantom penises are believed to be hardwired. More specifically, Ramachandran and McGeoch (2008) state: [There is] powerful support to the conjecture that one’s gender specific body image and internally perceived gender identity have a strong innate component that is ‘hardwired’ into the brain. (p. 13)
Transgender, Hysteria, and the Other Sexual Difference: An Ettingerian Approach
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2019
Because we know that the onset of puberty can be very stressful for trans* adolescents (due to the fact that the body develops in ways that are at odds with gender identity), it is important to keep in mind that some of the natal female hysteric’s struggles articulated by Freud may be comparable to, or on occasion the same as, those narrativized by trans* boys and men in the present day. I would also note that Freud’s three essays on sexuality can be read as a commentary on how difficult it is for the natal female girl to transfer her love from the mother to the father in the service of Oedipalization. Those girls who do not renounce their mothers as primary love objects are said to develop a masculine character. Penis envy and the associated masculinity complex, in Freud’s assessment, are evidenced in those girls who fail to transition their love from the mother to the father. Although trans* studies scholars wisely insist upon a distinction between sexual orientation and gender identity, the unconscious knows no such distinction. Psychically speaking, there is a relation between the two, even as this relation cannot be understood at the level of identity. In Freud’s discussion of psychosexual development, for instance, femininity and masculinity are shaped by the libido, its aim and object at the level of phantasy. For him, the question of sexuality has to do with whether the libido is feminine, passive, and inwardly directed, or masculine, active, and outwardly directed.
The Locker Room
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2019
Another factor that led me onward to the grail of testosterone was that, as time went on, my work with my trans patients threw me. Their drive and courage to pursue relief from the tight chokehold and relentless gnawing of gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia inspired me, as it ratified my envy. My ability to intellectualize and dissociate was wearing thin. I found it harder to trust that psychoanalysis would allow me the internal peace, born out of fantasy, that I so desperately sought. My psychoanalytic inquiry and knowledge, confronted with the reality principle, did not help alleviate my gender dysphoria nor my body dysmorphia. Was such internal angst the product of early trauma? Developmental issues? Penis envy? Phallic envy?