Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/17

 MANIFESTATIONS OF THE FEMALE CASTRATION COMPLEX 9

aim. The tendency to take away by force is evident from numerous accompanying psychical conditions. This phantasy of robbery exists in close connection with the idea of transferring the robbed penis to oneself. We shall return to this later.

The woman's wishes for masculinity, as already mentioned, only occasionally succeed in breaking through in this 'archaic' sense. On the other hand, there is a considerable number of women who are unable to carry out full psychical adaptation to the female sexual r61e. A third possibility remains to these women, namely, the way to homosexuality in virtue of the bisexual disposition common to humanity ; they tend to adopt the male r61e in erotic relations with other women. They love to exhibit their masculinity in dress, in the way of doing their hair, and in their general behaviour. Other cases approximate to these in which the homo- sexuality does not break through to consciousness ; the repressed wish to be male is here found in a sublimated form, i. e. masculine interests of an intellectual and professional character and other kinds are preferred and accentuated. Femininity, however, is not consciously denied ; they usually proclaim that these interests are just as much feminine as masculine ones. They consider it irrelevant to say that the performances of a human being, especially in the intellectual sphere, belong to the one or the other sex. This type of woman is well represented in the woman's movement of to-day.

I have not thus briefly described these groups because I lightly value their practical significance. The phenomena of both types are well known, however, and have been sufficiently treated in psycho-analytical literature, so that I can rapidly pass on to the consideration of the neurotic transformations of the castration complex. There are many of them and they must be described exactly, some of them for the first time, and rendered intelligible from psycho-analytical points of view.

IV

The neurotic transformations originating in the female castration complex may be divided into two groups. The phenomena of one group rest on a strong, emotionally-toned, but not conscious desire to adopt the male r61e, i. e. on the phantasy of possessing a male organ. In the phenomena of the other group is expressed