SARAH KOFMAN

The Enigma of Woman Woman in Freud}s Writings

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

CATHERINE PORTER

Cornell University Press

ITHACA AND LONDON
Published in France as L'Enigme de la femme: La Femme dam les textes de Preud For G.R.E.PH.,
by Editions Galilee. Copyright © 1980 by Editions Galilee. for my students at the
Sorbonne, Geneva, and Berkeley
Translation copyright © 1985 by Cornell University Paris-Geneva-Berkeley
1977- 1979
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First published 1985 by Cornell University Press.

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 CONTENTS

Perhaps it is not out of place here to give an assurance that this de- PART ONE: THE ENIGMA AND THE VEIL
scription of the feminine form of erotic life is not due to any tendentious
desire on my part to depreciate [Tendettz zur Herabsetzung] women. Apart
from the fact that tendentiousness is quite alien to me, ... I am ready
1. The Battle of the Sexes II
to admit that there are quite a number of women who love according
2. Speculation, Observation 16
to the masculine type and who also develop the sexual overvaluation
3· Freud's Delays 20
proper to that type.
-Sigmund Freud, "On Narcissism: An Introduction" 4· The Other 33
(1914; emphasis added) 5· An Exciting Enigma 36
Man's privilege 37
Woman's inaccessibility 39
The man almost always feels his respect for the woman acting as a The suspended tongue 42
restriction on his sexual activity, and only develops full potency when Shame 48
he is with a debased [erniedrigtes] sexual object; and this in its tum is Narcissistic woman 50
partly caused by the entrance of perverse components into his sexual Criminal or hysteric 65
aims, which he does not venture to satisfy with a woman he respects. Strong sex or weak sex? 68
... Anyone who is to be really free and happy in love must have sur- The sublation of mothers 71
mounted his respect for women and have come to terms with the idea Penis envier, prostitute, homosexual, fetishist 82
of incest with his mother or sister. "The Throne and Altar are in danger" 89
-Sigmund Freud, "On the Universal Tendency to Debasement Bedrock 92
in the Sphere of Love" (1912; emphasis added)
 Contents
PART Two: FREUD INVESTIGATES

1. The Interest in the Enigma of Woman 101

2. The Immediate Certainty of Difference 106

3· The Indecision and Aporia Introduced by the Science of PART ONE

Atlatomy 109

4· Psychology: Its Sterility and Impotence 114

5· Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman 122
The original bisexuality 122 The Enigma and the Veil
The development of sexuality: the difference between
girls and boys 13I
The identity of the sexes in the early phases of libidinal
development 133
Puberty: the girl's two supplementary tasks 143
Even the sympathetic curiosity of the wisest discerner ~f men does ~ot
The hierarchical reversal 143
suffice to divine how this or that woman gets along with the solution
The change of object 144
of this enigma and the enigma of this solution.
The girl's libidinal relations with her mother 148
-Friedrich Nietzsche, The joyjUl Wisdom, 71
Active/passive, masculine/feminine 148 (trans. T. Common)
Ambivalence 158
Freud's exaggeration 161
The transformations of the mother-daughter relation 163
The enigma is the structure of the veil suspended between contraries.
The list of accusations 164
-Jacques Derrida, Glas, p. 284
The specific factor: penis envy 167
A critical turning point: the discovery of castration 178
The desire for the father and the establishment of
femininity 190
The girl's Oedipus complex 199
The girl's masculinity complex 202
The consequences of bisexuality 206
Rhapsodic supplement 210

[8]
 1

The Battle of the Sexes

Didn't Freud himself predict it? Feminists would take to the

warpath against his texts, which, on the subject of women, would
be seen as rife with masculine prejudice. The woman question has
indeed provoked opposition not only from without but from within
the very heart of psychoanalysis, has unleashed a veritable inter-
necine war: women analysts are turning psychoanalysis against its
founder, accusing him of taking sides, of siding with his sex, because
of his sex. In brief, they say, on the question of woman, a man,
even a Freud, cannot produce objective, neutral, scientific discourse:
he can only speculate, that is, philosophize, construct a system des-
tined to justify an idee fixe, a tendentious view based not on ob-
servation but on self-perception. So he cannot help verging on
madness, paranoia.
In his lecture "Femininity" ("Die Weiblichkeit"), 1 a text recently
'In New Introductory Lectures Ofl Psycho-Analysis, in The Standard Edition of
the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey, 24 vols.
(London, 1953-74), 22: I 12- I 35 (I933a [1932]). Unless otherwise noted, all
excerpts from Freud's works are quoted from the Standard Edition; the volume
number is followed by inclusive page numbers except when the text in question
occupies the entire volume. The publication date indicated in the StandardEdition
is shown in parentheses, with the letter assigned to the corresponding entry in
the Freud bibliography (24:47-82); the date of composition (when it differs)
appears in brackets. Whenever possible, works identified in a previous note
will be cited within the body of the text, identified by short titles as appropriate.
- Translator
[II]
 The Enigma and the Veil
denigrated-to put it mildly-by a woman psychoanalyst;" speaking
to men and women ("Ladies and Gentlemen," he says at the be-
ginning of his talk, repeating an apparently banal formula in order
to bring out all its enigmatic strangeness later on), Freud empha-
sizes-not without irony-that every time any point is made against
women, female psychoanalysts suspect men of deeply rooted mas-
culine prejudices that prevent them from being impartial.
Freud avails himself of various arguments in an effort to dispel
such suspicions. He maintains that the use of psychoanalysis as a
weapon in the controversy is not enough to decide the issue, does
not make it possible to choose between himself and the women
analysts. Psychoanalysis is a two-edged sword that may well be used
against women's discourse, he argues, for it allows us to understand
that the female sex cannot accept, or wish to accept, anything that
runs counter to its strongest desires, anything that contradicts, for
example, the equality with men that women so ardently seek. Psy-
choanalysis thus allows us to understand why "feminists" adamantly·
reject the Freudian concept of the feminine superego, for according
to them this concept originates merely in man's "masculinity com-
plex" and serves as a theoretical justification for men's innate ten-
dency to belittle and repress women."
Almost always, in fact, it is the concept of the feminine superego
and its corollary, women's intellectual and cultural inferiority, that
give rise to controversy. It takes real heroism for Freud to make his
explosive conclusions public:
I cannot evade the notion (though I hesitate to give it expres-
sion) that for women the level of what is ethically normal is
different from what it is in men. Their super-ego is never so
inexorable, so impersonal, so independent of its emotional
origins as we require it to be in men. Character-traits which
critics of every epoch have brought up against women ...
2Luce Irigaray, Speculum de l'autrejemme (Paris, 1974); published in English
as Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, 1985).
3Cf. "Female Sexuality," 21:223-243 (193Ib), in which a comparison is
made with Dostoevsky's "knife that cuts both ways" in The Brothers Karama zov,
(Freud's English translator points out that "the actual simile used by Freud and
in the Russian original is 'a stick with two ends' " [p, 230, n. 1D.
[12]
The Battle oj the Sexes
would [all] be amply accounted for by the modification in
the formation of their super-ego.... We must not allow our-
selves to be deflected from such conclusions by the denials of
the feminists, who are anxious to force us to regard the two
sexes as completely equal in position and worth."
And with regard to the different outcomes of the Oedipus com-
plex in girls and boys, outcomes responsible for the differences in
their respective superegos, "here the feminist demand for equal rights
for the sexes does not take us far.?"
I, Freud, Truth, I speak, and Truth will soon be able to resist
all pressures, all more or less hysterical "feminist" demands; for, 0
women, if you seek to use psychoanalysis against me, I shall be
much better prepared to tum it back against you, even while I
pretend to be granting you some concessions, agreeing to some
compromises in order to put an end to the battle of the sexes between
us, and to reestablish among male and female psychoanalysts a "po-
lite agreement": in my lordly fashion I freely grant you that "pure
femininity" and "pure masculinity" are purely theoretical construc-
tions and that the content of such speculative constructions remains
quite uncertain. I am prepared to grant, too, that most men fall far
short of the masculine ideal, for "all human individuals, as a result
of their bisexual disposition and of cross-inheritance, combine in
themselves both masculine and feminine characteristics" ("Conse-
quences," p. 258).
In this internecine war, the thesis of bisexuality is a weapon that
is supposed to put an end to the accusations made by women psy-
choanalysts: Freud's injurious discourse on women no longer con-
cerns them, for they are exceptions to the rule, more masculine than
feminine.
The discussion of[femininity] has gained special attractiveness
from the distinction between the sexes. For the ladies, when-
ever some comparison seemed to tum out unfavourable to
'''Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the
Sexes," 19:243-258 (1925j; hereafter cited as "Consequences"), pp. 257-258.
'''The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex," 19:173-179 (1924d; hereafter
cited as "Dissolution"), p. 178.
[13]
 The Enigma and the Veil The Battle oj the Sexes

their sex, were able to utter a suspicion that we, the male
analysts, had been unable to overcome certain deeply-rooted
prejudices against what was feminine, and that this was being
paid for in the partiality of our researches. We, on the other
hand, standing on the ground of bisexuality, had no difficulty
in avoiding impoliteness. We had only to say: 'This doesn't
apply to you. You're the exception; on this point you're more
masculine than feminine.' ["Femininity," pp. II6-117]6
More masculine than feminine, if not homosexual. "The Psy-
chogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman" emphasizes
that the patient "was in fact a feminist; she felt it to be unjust that
girls should not enjoy the same freedom as boys, and rebelled against
the lot of women in general."?
The thesis of bisexuality not only is the thesis that Freud is
defending, it also serves as his defense against accusations of anti-
feminism; and it, too, is double-edged. It allows Freud to repeat the
because you are really more masculine than feminine. Thus it allows
him to shut women up, to put an end to their demands and accu-
sations. But this thesis also makes it possible to displace the meta-
physical categories that it renders problematic, since it proclaims the
purely speculative character of the masculine/feminine opposition.
The thesis of bisexuality thus implies that Sigmund Freud himself
could not have been purely and simply a man (vir), that he could not
have had (purely) masculine prejudices. That charge only reveals the
metaphysical prejudices of those who press it.
Freud never appeals to this argument in his own defense, how-
ever, never exhibits his femininity as he indulges in exposing the
masculinity of his female colleagues. The thesis of bisexuality, de-
clared valid in principle for all humans, is in the last analysis used
only as a strategic weapon in cgnnection with women; we shall have
the opportunity to verify this.~nd it is as though Freud were loudly
proclaiming the universality of bisexuality in order better to disguise
his silent disavowal of his own femininity, his paranoial
,,~~. "

most tenacious, the most traditional, the most metaphysical phal-

locratic discourse: if you women are as intelligent as men, it is

"The French text here is retranslated directly from the German of Gesammelte
Werke, 18 vols. (Frankfurt and London, 1952-1968) (hereafter cited as CW),
15:124, as are most of the other excerpts from "Femininity": the existing French
translation is quite dreadful, and it omits many passages. Indeed, in my view
it is no accident that most of the criticisms leveled against Freud are based on
this French "translation." Luce lrigaray claims that even the most meticulous
translation would not have made much difference to the meaning of this dis-
course on "femininity" (Spew/urn, p. 9, n. I). One may at least have one's
doubts about this and wonder why, under the circumstances, Luce Irigaray
almost always persists in using a translation that she knows is faulty-unless
it is to further "the cause." That of Femininity? Going back to the German
text is not a matter of trying to "save" Freud at all costs (I am no more likely
to "save" him than she is), but only of manifesting the minimal intellectual
honesty that consists in criticizing an author in terms of what he has said rather
than what someone has managed to have him say: the critique will be all the
stronger for it. When we tum to Freud's text, we note further that it is much
more complex, more heterogeneous, than the French translation allows one to
imagine. I shall return to this point. [As indicated in n. I above, English trans-
lations given here follow the Standard Edition except as otherwise noted. For a
critique of the Strachey translations, however, and an analysis of their impact
on Anglo-Saxon psychoanalytic thinking, see Bruno Bettelheim, Freud and
Man's Sou/ (New York, 1982). - Trans/ator]
718:147-172 (1920a; hereafter cited as "Psychogenesis"), p. 169.
[I 5]

2 That is just the difference between a speculative theory and
Speculation, Observation
It is indeed against the potential suspicion of paranoia that Freud
seeks in particular to defend himself whenever he distinguishes, like
a typical positivist, between (philosophical) speculation and (sci-
entific) observation, or whenever he denies having any sort of gift
for philosophy. It is always his opponents-Jung, for example-
who are speculative. Thus what is fundamentally at stake in "On
Narcissism: An Introduction"! is the demonstration that narcissism,
particularly with regard to paranoia, lends itself to sterile and insane
speculations. This text is a polemical denunciation of Jung's phil-
osophical monisrrr-e-jung, who thinks he can dispense with the
libido's sexual specificity, with the distinction between the energy
of the ego's drives and its libido, between the ego's libido and that
of the object, between sexual libido and nonsexual energy. This
speculative economizing can be achieved only at the expense of
observation and to the benefit of "barren theoretical controversy"
("On Narcissism," p. 77). By way of contrast, Freud's distinctions,
'14:69-102 (1914C).
2See also "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," 7:125-243 (1905d;
hereafter cited as "Three Essays"): "For the present, therefore, no further de-
velopment of the libido theory is possible, except upon speculative lines. It
would, however. be sacrificing all that we have gained hitherto from psycho-
analytic observation, if we were to follow the example ofC. G. Jung and water
down the meaning of the concept of libido itself by equating it with psychical
instinctual force in general" (p. 218; paragraph added in 1920).
[16]
Speculation) Observation
his persistent dualism," result from his elaborations based on close
observation of neurotic and psychotic processes and from his pursuit
of a hypothesis "to its logical conclusion, until it either breaks down
or is confirmed" (ibid., p. 78). To barren speculation Freud opposes
the productive model of physics:
a science erected on empirical interpretation. The latter will
not envy speculation its privilege of having a smooth, logi-
cally unassailable foundation, but will gladly content itself
with nebulous, scarcely imaginable basic concepts, which it
hopes to apprehend more clearly in the course of its devel-
opment, or which it is even prepared to replace by others.
For these ideas are not the foundation of science upon which
everything rests: that foundation is observation alone. They
are not the bottom but the top of the whole structure, and
they can be replaced and discarded without damaging it. The
same thing is happening in our day in the science of physics,
the basic notions of which as regards matter, centres of force,
attraction, etc., are scarcely less debatable than the corre-
sponding ideas in psycho-analysis. ["On Narcissism," p. 77]
~ "I am not Jung, I am not paranoid," Freud reiterates endlessly.
What Freud seems to need to prove in the "Femininity" lecture
is that he, Freud-he insists on this at the end of his talk (a classic
denegation!)-is not the victim of an idee fixe," even though he
never ceases to stress the importance of the role the lack of a penis
plays in the formation of femininity. It is no accident that the lecture
begins, here again, by contrasting observation with speculation: you
cannot evaluate the sexual position of my discourse, for it is not the
pathological subject Sigmund Freud that is speaking or speculating,
it is the transcendental subject of science, whose affirmations are
based entirely on observed facts: "To-day's lecture ... brings for-
3Cf., later, the assertion of an un subia table dualism at the level of the third
topic: the opposition between Eros and the death drives.
"Cf the end of the lecture: "If you reject this idea as fantastic and regard
my belief in the influence of lack of a penis on the configuration of femininity
as an idee fixe, I am of course defenceless" (p. 1]2).
 The Enigma and the Veil
ward nothing bU~Y~.tL[<lcts, almost without any speculative
additions;'(;;~~~nity,"p. 113). With respect to those facts "I"
play no role, do not take sides.
If we recall that in Beyond the Pleasure Principles Freud does not
hesitate to present the hypothesis of the death wish as purely spec-
ulative, as possibly having only mythic roots," the strenuous hostility
to speculation he displays here may seem suspect: the whole cam-
paign he is waging against the speculative no doubt in some way
works to his advantage; perhaps it is to enhance one's own stature
that one claims not to be playing a role or taking sides. In any event,
the appeal to observation has the immediate object ofcleansing Freud
of any taint of partiality by making women psychoanalysts his accom-
plices. He repeats this endlessly: the observations of these "excellent
female colleagues" furnished his most important material, first en-
lightened him on female sexuality. He has only added some clari-
fications, has better isolated certain points that they have already
brought to light. His work is only one contribution among others
and he has limited himself to bringing out the most important points
of agreement or disagreement." Whereas elsewhere Freud insists on
the priority of his own discoveries even while recognizing that they
have often been foreshadowed by some brilliant poets," here for
strategic reasons he ~ to deny the paternity of his ideas and openly
to display his debt to the female analysts.
Speculation, Observation
erotic actions of homosexual women reproduce the relations
between mother and baby. ["Femininity," pp. 130-13 I;
emphasis added]
The appeal to observation has a fundamental strategic value here,
and Freud does not seem to consider that it may be incompatible
with the haste he is demonstrating elsewhere by publishing, against
all scientific caution, results that by his own admission have not
been completely verified, on the grounds that little time remains to
him, though earlier he managed to hold back the Dora case for four
or five years before divulging the secret of his patient out of pure
duty to science ... ;9 on the grounds, too, that the women psy-
choanalysts will in any case be able to exploit and complete his
work: "I feel justified in publishing something which stands in ur-
gent need of confirmation before its value or lack of value can be
decided," he writes at the beginning of "Some Psychical Conse-
quences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes" (p. 249).
9Cf. "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, " 7:3-122 (I90Se [19 0 1:
the Dora case); hereafter cited as "Fragment").

Since [my] subject is woman, I will venture on this occasion

to mention by name a few of the women who have made
valuable contributions to this investigation. Dr. Ruth Mack
Brunswick [1928] was the first to describe a case of neurosis
which went back to a fixation in the pre-Oedipus stage and
had never reached the Oedipus situation at all.... Dr. Jeanne
Lampl-de Groot [1927] has established the incredible phallic
activity of girls towards their mother by some assured obser-
vations, and Dr. Helene Deutsch [1932] has shown that the

518:3-64 (1920 g).

"See Sarah Kofman, "Freud et Empcdoclc," in Quatre Romans analytiques
(Paris, 1974).
7Cf. the beginning of "Female Sexuality."
"See Sarah Kofman, L'Enjance de l'art (Paris: Payot, 1970; Galilee, 1985).

[18]

3 the risk of reaching the end? This accounts for Freud's extreme re-
Freud's Delays
In haste to write about women in order to outdistance women
once again, in haste to write for fear that death may outdistance
him: it is as if up to the very last moment Freud had been shrinking
from the impossible task of writing about women; the texts on
female sexuality, stressing the new importance of the preoedipal
relation of daughter to mother and casting doubt on the status of
the Oedipus complex as the core of neuroses, are all late ~<;xts, "a
product of the very last few years" ("Femininity," p. 130). A retreat
in the face of the task at hand which is perhaps a retreat in the face
offemale sexuality itself, because of the horror/pleasure it provokes,
because of the death threat that it is thought to bear. For neither
- death nor woman's sex can be faced directly. To write about female
sexuality is to disclose a dangerous secret, is in one way or another
.eo display openly, to dis-cover, woman's fearsome sex. A sex that
is all the more fearsome and threatening for man in that he feels
vulnerable-and guilty.!
Here we cannot help thinking of Spinoza, whose death left his
Tractatus theologico-politicus unfinished just as he was about to con-
front the question of women in the political sphere and just when
'The French text reads'~((Il1pable (en tous les sensde ce terme]," Kofman thus
underlines the fact that coup._l!b~guilty, susceptible to being blamed-can also
be construed as meaning cuttable, susceptible to being cut" (from couper, to
cut). -Translator
Freud's Delays
he had deprived women, along with servants, of all political rights,
even under the ideal democratic regime.
Wanting to have the last word on women--doesn't that always
mean running the risk that goes with last words? Doesn't the desire
to get to the heart of the matter, to bring the riddle to an end, entail
straint on the subject of women over a long period of time, the
period during which he set up a simple parallelism and a simple
symmetry, for example, between the girl's Oedipus complex and
the boy's; only later, with the preoedipal phase, came the discovery
of the woman as totally other, and then there was the ultimate haste
to publish, the anxiety in the face of death.
It was not the first time in Freud's career that anxiety over death
underlay his decision to publish a text that he had held back a long
time (five years). He had done the same thing with The Interpretation
of Dreams.' at a time when Freud's age alone could not justify an
objective fear of death.
This becomes clear in the famous dream in which Briicke pro-
poses that Freud dissect his own pelvis (Dreams, pp. 452-55 and
477-78). The crucial feature of this dream-showing that, its man-
ifest content notwithstanding, it is indeed a dream of wish fulfill-
ment-is that the dreamer does not experience the feeling of horror
(Grauen) that ought objectively to be connected with the dissection,
with such a "strange task." Freud interprets the dream as follows:
The dissection meant the self-analysis which I was carrying
out, as it were, in the publication of this present book about
dreams-a process which had been so distressing to me in
reality that I had postponed the printing of the finished man-
uscript for more than a year. A wish then arose that I might
get over this feeling of distaste; hence it was that I had no
gruesome feeling ['Grauen'] in the dream. But I should also
have been very glad to miss growing grey-'Grauen' in the
other sense of the word. I was already growing quite grey,
and the grey of my hair was another reminder that I must
not delay any longer. [Pp. 477-478]
'Standard Edition, vols. 4-5 (l900a; hereafter cited as Dreams). As vols. 4-
5 are paginated consecutively, page references alone are provided here.
 The Enigma and the Veil
This fragment of interpretation with the crucial wordplay on
Grauen is not part of the central analysis of the dream, but is tacked
on through association of ideas to the analysis of the dream of the
journeyman tailor who became a famous poet (Dreams, pp. 473-
475). This latter dream seems to contradict the general law ofdreams
as wish fulfillment: it appears, indeed, to be a dream of punishment,
but analysis reveals that the unconscious desire underlying the dream
is the desire to remain young-a painful desire in the aging man,
and one that is never appeased." With the dream of the journeyman
tailor Freud associates, in addition to the Brucke dream, another of
his own in which he finds himself back in the "gloomiest and most
unsuccessful year" of his medical career, when he did not yet have
a job and did not know how he would manage to earn his living.
Even so, this return to an unhappy time of life is indeed wish ful-
fillment, since it is a return to the period of his youth: "I was once
more young, and, more than everything, she was once more young-
the woman who had shared all these difficult years with me.... I
had a choice open to me between several women whom I might
marry!" (p. 476). Nostalgia for youth, as this last association proves,
is always nostalgia for sexual potency, just as ideas of death and old
age are always connected with the idea of impotence: this is con-
firmed by the interpretation of the dream of "an elderly gentleman
[who] was awakened one night by his wife, who had become alarmed
because he was laughing so loudly and unrestrainedly in his sleep.
... The dream-work succeeded in transforming the gloomy idea of
impotence and death into a comic scene, and his sobs into laughter"
(Dreams, pp. 472-473).
In other words, the death anxiety that assails Freud and leads
him to publish The Interpretation ofDreams is not "pure" death anx-
iety; it is inseparable from anxiety related to the limitation of sexual
'See also the dream in which Freud sees his son dead, a dream that he
interprets as wish fulfillment: "Deeper analysis at last enabled me to discover
what the concealed impulse was which might have found satisfaction in the
dreaded accident to my son: it was the envy which is felt for the young by
those who have grown old, but which they believe they have completely stifled.
And there can be no question that it was precisely the strength of the painful
emotion which would have arisen if such a misfortune had really happened that
caused that emotion to seek out a repressed wish-fulfilment of this kind in
order to find some consolation"(Dreams, p. 560).
Freud's Delays
potency. And to publish The Interpretation of Dreams is not only to
outdistance the death that is to come, it is in every sense to recapture
youth, potency, even omnipotence: this publication, in fact, should
confer immortality on its author, the immortality of the heroes and
great men who could set out for an "unknown land which scarce
an alien foot has pressed"4 from time immemorial, could reveal
"strange things," defy all taboos, including that of incest. By its
unheard-of revelations, the publication of The Interpretation ofDreams
is to transform Freud into a superman, make him a rival of that
Oedipus who "resolved the dark enigma, noblest champion and
most wise.?" A superman, indeed a demigod: the dream in which
Freud identifies with Hercules cleaning out the Augean stables (with
a "long stream of urine" he would cleanse the science of neuroses
of all its errors and prejudices) ends with the megalomanic affir-
mation: "in short, ... I was a very great man" (p. 470).
Through the publication of this work, Freud was to achieve not
only his infantile desire of immortality but also what his father, the
Jew Jakob, had been unable to accomplish, so that his son had to
accomplish it in his stead. To the son's great disappointment, Freud's
father-as we know from the famous anecdote of the cap knocked
to the ground by a Christian-was not a hero, although later, in his
dreams, the son gives shape to his nostalgia for a heroic father
modeled on Hannibal's: " 'To stand before one's children's eyes,
after one's death, great and unsullied'-who would not desire this?"
(Dreams, p. 429). After telling the story of the cap, Freud writes:
This struck me as unheroic conduct on the part of the big,
strong man who was holding the little boy by the hand. I
contrasted this situation with another which fitted my feelings
better: the scene in which Hannibal's father, Hamilcar Barca,
made his boy swear before the household altar to take ven-
geance on the Romans. Ever since that time, Hannibal had
had a place in my phantasies.... To my youthful mind Han-
nibal and Rome symbolized the conflict between the tenacity
4H. Rider Haggard. She (London. 1887). p. 78.
"Sopbocles. Oedipus Rex. cited in Dreams, p. 263 (Lewis Campbell's trans-
lation. II. 1524-25).
 The Enigma and the Veil
of jewry and the organization of the Catholic
church. [Dreams, pp. 197, 196; emphasis added]
Against this background we can understand the complex factors
that may have led Freud to put off publishing The Interpretation of
Dreams even though the work was destined to confer immortality
on its author (in one passage Freud alludes to a request made by
Louise N. the previous evening to borrow one of his books, where-
upon he proposed instead a book by Rider Haggard, for his "own
immortal works" had not yet been written), and even though an-
other dream confirms his desire to be done with The Interpretation
of Dreams in order to become independent at last and fulfill all his
desires (this is the botanical dream in which the initial situation is
the same as in the Briicke dream: in the one case Freud sees bejore
him his own pelvis, in the other he sees before him the monograph
he has written on the genus Cyclamen: "I saw the monograph which
I had written lying before me. . . . I had had a letter from my friend
[Fliess] in Berlin the day before in which he had shown his power
of visualization: 'I am very much occupied with your dream-book.
I see it lying finished before me and I see myself turning over its pages.'
How much I envied him his gift as a seer! If only I could have seen
it lying finished before mel" [p. 172]. "The dream ... [was] a pas-
sionately agitated plea on behalf of my liberty to act as I chose to
act and to govern my life as seemed right to me and me alone"
[po 467]). We can now understand why Freud, despite his strong
desire for publication, nevertheless postponed it, why the idea of
publication was so painful to him, stirred up in him a feeling of
horror (Grauetl), gave him gray hair (grauen) ... ; we can understand
why the dream about Brucke, in which he seems finally to satisfy
his desire, is at the same time a dream of anguish in which, far from
attaining the immortality he desires, he sees himself in a wooden
house identified by association with a grave (although the grave is
Etruscan, this being a dream ruse to make him accept the unac-
ceptable, to transform "the gloomiest of expectations into one that
was highly desirable" [Dreams, p. 455], just as the heroine, the woman
guide, of She, the book lent the evening before to Louise N., instead
of retrieving immortality for herself and others meets death in a
mysterious subterranean fire). The only consolation the dream af-
Freud's Delays
fords is that perhaps the children will obtain what was denied the
father, those children who are their parents' sole access to immor-
tality, those children who are one with their parents, in a way, as
that "strange book" also indicates, that novel in which a character's
identity is maintained through successive generations over a period
of two thousand years.
By conferring immortality upon myself through my publication,
I make a gift of it also to my father, with whom I identify, as my
own children will one day confer it upon me by living after me:
such may be the meaning of this dream. But it may also be inter-
preted differently: I deny myself immortality and bequeath it only
to my children out of guilt toward my father, who was unable to
attain it himself for lack of heroism.
Guilt at having succeeded where the father failed thus explains
his delay in publishing (he waited five years)6-as Hannibal delayed
before entering Rome, as Moses waited to enter the Promised Land.
Generally speaking, guilt explains why Freud always postponed
fulfillment of his desires or his ambitions, why he put off his mar-
riage for five years, why he waited five years to take his medical
examinations. The delays can thus be attributed to inhibition, but
also to the fact that Freud always had the strength to postpone the
immediate satisfaction of his desires in order to satisfy them more
fully later on. As if five years of life did not count for him, as if he
had all the time in the world ahead of him, as if he knew that in
spite of his delays he would nevertheless achieve his aims. Symp-
tomatically, he sets five years as the length of treatment of the
patients to whom he is closest: what are five years of life in com-
parison with all the benefits that analysis offers? Freud knows that
in spite of having a poor jew for a father (whom he replaces in a
dream by the professor Meynert, thanks to whom Freud, had he
been the professor's son, would have advanced more rapidly), indeed
thanks to his own-jewish-tenacity, he will succeed in the end.
" 'And just as I succeeded in the end in that, though you would not
believe it, so I shall achieve this, too' " (Dreams, p. 438), he notes
"Concerning The Interpretation of Dreams and "Fragment of an Analysis of
a Case of Hysteria," Freud wrote in 1925 that they "were suppressed by me-
if not for the nine years enjoined by Horace-at all events for four or five years
before I allowed them to be published" ("Consequences," pp. 24 8- 249).
 The Enigma and the Veil
in interpreting the "absurd" dream in which his father declares that
he was married in 1851 after getting drunk and being locked up.
This marriage resulted in the immediate birth of his son Sigmund-
in 1856.
This dream proves that father Jakob did not have the strength
to postpone the satisfaction of his own desires, that he was unable
to accomplish the psychic exploit that matters most to a man, that
of rising above his own nature (cf. the conclusion of "The Moses
of Michelangelo"). 7 He got drunk (which in the symbolic language
of dreams means that he made love), got his future wife pregnant,
had to get married in a hurry, had to falsify his son's birthdate by
two months in order to conceal his guilt (two months transformed
in Freud's dream into five years the better to cleanse the father's
stain)," as Freud declares that the paternal figure in this dream, an
exception to the rule, plays the role of straw man, that this figure
merely represents Professor Meynert, who had said of himself: " 'You
know, I was always one of the clearest cases of male hysteria' "
(Dreams, p. 438). Thus Freud conceals the paternal hysteria and takes
it upon himself to accomplish the feat that his father was unable to
perform: the "heroic" postponement of the satisfaction ofhis desires,
giving the lie to the proverb "like father, like son," while contriving
to do just the opposite in his dreams so as to create a father in his
own Image.
So Freud always postpones the satisfaction of his desires, killing
two birds with one stone: he shows his own superiority to his father,
and he punishes himself for succeeding where his father failed.
That is why, in the Briicke dream, in order to publish his book,
to make himself independent and immortal, he needs paternal au-
thorization, even an order emanating from that substitute father,
old Briicke. For why did he choose old Briicke if not because "even
in the first years of my scientific work it happened that I allowed a
discovery of mine to lie fallow until an energetic remonstrance on
his part drove me into publishing it" (Dreams, p. 454), and because
the evening before, when he went to see Louise N., he felt that she
was pressing him to publish, transmitting someone else's orders:
713:211-236 (19 14b).
"Marie Balmary, in L'Homme aHX statues (Paris, 1929), might well have
referred to this dream in support of her thesis,
Freud's Delays
" 'Well, when are we to expect these so-called ultimate explanations
of yours which you've promised even we shall find readable?' she
asked, with a touch of sarcasm. At that point I saw that someone
else was admonishing me through her mouth ... " (p. 453)?
All this, however, cannot in itself explain the delay in publishing
The Interpretation oj Dreams, the shame that Freud says he felt in
making public a work that would betray such a large part of his
most private character:
Das Beste was du wissen kannst,
Darfst du den Buben doch nicht sagen,"
a work that would reveal "such strange things," things that horrify
him and that threaten to horrify others: how is it that taking the
father's place "heroically" could be so shameful and terrible? Unless
this "heroism," like that of Oedipus, consists not only in "killing"
the father (Oedipus' father, according to Plato, also begat his son
while he was drunk) but also in sleeping with the mother. Unless
the son's heroism can be achieved only by virtue oj the mother's com-
plicity and pre.ferential love.
In the Briicke dream, it is a maternal figure, Louise N., who
presses him to publish, to becorneahero (even though the interpre-
tation casts her in the role of simple intermediary). Similarly, the
dream of the three Fates casts the mother in the role of an educator
who teaches her son to defer his desires by making him wait before
appeasing his hunger: it is she who teaches him "heroism." In a note
to The Interpretation oJDreams concerning the oedipal dreams ofsome
classical heroes (Iulius Caesar's dream of relations with his mother,
Herodotus' dream of Hippias), dreams already interpreted in the
classical period as favorable signs, signs of possession of (Mother)
Earth, or of a reconquest oflost authority (like the Tarquinian oracle
affirming that the first man to kiss his mother would be master of
Rome), Freud remarks that "people who know that they are pre-
ferred or favoured by their mother give evidence in their lives of a
peculiar self-reliance and an unshakeable optimism which often seem
9P. 453; cf. p. 142, n. 1: "Mephistopheles, in Goethe's Faust, Part I [Scene
4]: 'After all, the best of what you know may not be told to boys.' "
 The Enigma and the Veil
like heroic attributes and bring actual success to their possessors"
(Dreams, p. 398, n. I). Finally, in Supplement B of "Group Psy-
chology and the Analysis of the Ego,"10 at the point where Freud
is showing how the first epic poet invented the myth of the hero-
"A hero was a man who by himself had slain the father"-he adds:
"The transition to the hero was probably afforded by the youngest
son, the mother's javourite, whom she had protected from paternal
jealousy, and who, in the era of the primal horde, had been the
father's successor" (p. 136; emphasis added)."
Now Freud, although the eldest son, indeed thought he was his
mother's favorite. With respect to the dream in which he aspires to
the title of professor extraordinarius, he wonders:
What, then, could have been the origin of the ambitiousness
which produced the dream in me? At that point I recalled an
anecdote I had often heard repeated in my childhood. At the
time of my birth an old peasant-woman had prophesied to
my proud mother that with her first-born child she had
brought a great man into the world. Prophecies of this kind
must be very common: there are so many mothers filled with
happy expectations and so many old peasant-women and oth-
ers of the kind who make up for the loss of their power to
control things in the present world by concentrating it on the
future. [Dreams, p. 192]
If Freud hesitates to publish The Interpretation oj Dreams and ex-
periences death anxiety on his own account and his mother's, it is
because this publication entails the formidable risk of exposing to
everyone his double crime and revealing his mother's complicity.
The dream of the dead mother that Freud had when he was seven
or eight years old (the age at which the incident between his father
1°18:67-143 (1921C; hereafter cited as "Group Psychology").
"Earlier, in L'Iinfance de l'art (1970), I stressed the way in which the artistic
space' that substitutes for the totemic feast, repeating it in different ways, is
opened up by this assumption of the collective murder of the father on the part
of the first poet-hero. The fact that this assumption was possible only through
maternal preference, thus through identification with the mother, has more
recently been noted by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, particularly in Le Sujet de la
philosophic (Paris, 1979), p. 296, and in Portrait del'artiste, en getll:ral (Paris, 1979).
Freud's Delays
and the Christian over the cap is supposed to have occurred) confirms
that the death anxiety on his mother's behalf refers to the son's
incestuous desires: in this dream he sees his
beloved mother, with a peculiarly peacejul, sleeping expression on
her features, being carried into the room by two (or three) people
with birds' beaks and laid upon the bed. . . . I was not anxious
because I had dreamt that my mother was dying; but I in-
terpreted the dream in that sense in my preconscious revision
of it because I was already under the influence of the anxiety.
The anxiety can be traced back, when repression is taken into
account, to an obscure and evidently sexual craving that had
found appropriate expression in the visual content of the
dream. [Dreams, pp. 583, 584]
To publish one's dreams is to make known to everyone one's
own (fantasmatic) incestuous relations. Freud is himself another
Oedipus, not only because he too has been able to solve famous
riddles, to head for unknown regions where no one has ever before
set foot, but also-for the one is always a corollary of the other-
because he has (although only in dreams, and that is what distin-
guishes him from Oedipus) "killed" his father and slept with his
mother. He who seeks to know the deep mysteries of nature must
not be afraid to violate natural laws, to appear to everyone as a
monster, horribile visu: such is the lesson of the Oedipus myth, as
Nietzsche had already exposed it in The Birth oj Tragedy. Supreme
wisdom requires supreme monstrosity. To be a hero is always also
to be a monster who runs the risk of arousing a feeling of horror
(Grauen) and of being cast out of society like a pharmacos instead of
acquiring the immortality one has been seeking.
Moreover, if we recall that Freud uses the same term, Grauen,
to designate the feeling experienced by most men when confronted
by a woman's (the Mother's) genitals (represented symbolically by
the Medusa's head)12-a feeling of horror that may well make one's
hair tum gray (grauen) overnight-we may wonder whether "these
12S ee "Medusa's Head," 18:273-274 (1940C [1922]; hereafter cited as "Me-
dusa"): "the horrifying decapitated head of Medusa" (das abgeschnittene Crauetl
enoekkende Haupt der Meduse [CW, 17=47]).
 The Enigma and the Veil
strange, unknown things" that Freud reveals in The Interpretation of
Dreams are not more specifically concerned with woman's sex, the
Mother's, upon which the dreamer has dared to cast his glance, at
the risk of being blinded, of being castrated, and of seeing his mother,
like Jocasta, hang herself.
Throughout his work Freud notes the horror and terror that
women's genitals inspire, and the disastrous influence that woman
is thought to have on man. By virtue of her sex, woman cannot fail
to bring about man's ruin. The Autodidasker dream offers a simple
alternative: woman brings to man either organic ailments (syphilis,
general paralysis) or functional difficulties (neuroses). Freud seems
to have settled on the second choice, and like another Hercules he
devotes his life to attempting to rid humanity of its "waste prod-
ucts"-that is, the neuroses, for which woman is considered pri-
marily responsible. That these strange things revealed by Freud in
The Interpretation ofDreams indeed concern woman's (the mother's?)
sex is indicated by several features of the Bnicke dream: the parallel
established with the dream of the botanical monograph concerning
the "genus Cyclamen," his wife's favorite flower, and the occasion
that dictated the dream's formation: the book lent the previous eve-
ning to Louise N. was titled She. Freud calls it " 'a strange book,
but full of hidden meaning ... the eternal. feminine'" (Dreams,
'1 p. 453); moreover, in this novel a woman plays a major role. To
publish The Interpretation ofDreams is to expose-along with his own
criminal incestuous relations-woman's sex, the mother's sex; for
such a book not to arouse horror, the reader would have to be
familiar with the representation of incest and to have overcome
castration anxiety. Freud's willingness to publish this book implies
that he himself has overcome such anxiety and by the same token
is no longer afraid to expose his own ftmininity as well, that most
secret part of his most private being. The Brucke dream identifies
Freud with the heroine of She, that woman guide who heads toward
the unknown with the intention of winning immortality and who
meets death in a subterranean fire. Another detail ofthe dream flaunts
castration even while resisting it: Freud sees part of his own body
(his pelvis) before him (detached from him, as it were), but at the
same time he does not have the sensation that that part is missing
from his body. To expose a "supplementary" pelvis is tantamount
[Jo]
Freud's Delays
)to a duplication of the genital organs; it has apotropaic value. Pub-
!'lishing The Interpretation ofDreams is a way for Freud simultaneously
:to display his castration and to defend himself against it. The Inter-
~retation of Dreams is an apotropaic defense that is to protect Freud
against castration and death, against his detractors, against anti-
Semitism. We know, indeed, that circumcision for Freud is equiv-
alent to castration, and that he attributes the same unconscious origin
to misogyny and anti-Semitism: the horror provoked by female
genital organs, the fear of castration. 13 And we may perhaps relate
the Grauen of the Bnicke dream to the Grauen that we find in the
famous dream about Uncle Josef (who bears the name of that biblical
figure with whom Freud often identifies). Uncle Josef, that "sim-
pleton," as Freud's father Jakob used to call him, that criminal, that
Jew who had made Freud's father's hair tum grey (grauen) in just a
few days because of grief over his criminal conduct (Dreams, p. 138).
The Uncle Josef for whom Freud, at the level of dreams, feels a
great affection revealing in fact a deep hatred, a strange repulsion-
in another dream Freud identifies that same Uncle Josef with col-
leagues who have been denied the post of professor by the ministry,
yet he does not hesitate to identify himself with the minister, and
thus to mistreat those learned and eminent colleagues simply because
they are Jews. His uncle josef's greatest crime, in the last analysis,
was the fact that he was Jewish. This, even more than his misdeeds,
is what made him an object of horror and revulsion to his own
society-just like women, and for the same reasons.
By playing in his dream the role of persecutor, the role of the
minister, Freud shows that he will not submit to the fate of his uncle
or his Jewish colleagues, that he will become a professor precisely
because of his "Jewish tenacity" and the love of his Jewish mother.
13See, for example, "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood,"
I 1:59-137 (I9IOC; hereafter cited as "Leonardo"), chap. 3: "Under the influence
of this threat of castration he now sees the notion he has gained of the female
genitals in a new light; henceforth he will tremble for his masculinity, but at
the same time he will despise the unhappy creatures on whom the cruel pun-
ishment has, as he supposes, already fallen" (p. 95). And in a note: "The
conclusion strikes me as inescapable that here we may also trace one of the
roots of the anti-semitism which appears with such elemental force and finds
such irrational expression among the nations of the West. Circumcision is
unconsciously equated with castration" (pp. 95-96, n. 3).
 The Enigma and the Veil
"In mishandling my two learned and eminent colleagues because
they were Jews, and in treating the one as a simpleton and the other
as a criminal, I was behaving as though I were the Minister, I had
put myself in the Minister's place. Turning the tables on his Ex-
cellency with a vengeance! He had refused to appoint me professor
extraordinarius and I had retaliated in the dream by stepping into his
shoes" (Dreams, p. 193).
The intimate, shameful secrets that Freud fears to expose to the
:public, because of the horror they are very likely to arouse, are thus
linseparably linked with his Jewishness and with femininity, with
F castration anxiety. In this sense, The Interpretation of Dreams is an-
i' other Medusa's head.
fl This long detour by way of Freud's dreams will prove not to
have been useless, for these dreams are the royal road that may lead
us to a better understanding of the status of female sexuality in
Freud's theoretical texts. The detour has in any case allowed us to
explain both Freud's delay in publishing on the subject of female
i sexuality and his ultimate haste, for fear of being overtaken by death.
[32]
4
The Other
To the fear of death is added a supplementary anxiety: Jhe dis-
covery of the radical otherness of woman, which threatens to bring
about a thoroughgoing upheaval in psychoanalysis. Freud compares
this revolutionary discovery of the entirely other to finding the M y-
cenean civilization behind that of the Greeks: "Our insight into this
early, pre-Oedipus, phase in girls comes to us as a surprise, like the
discovery, in another field, of the Minoan-Mycenean civilization
behind the civilization of Greece" ("Female Sexuality," p. 226).
This comparison with the history of civilizations is designed to
stress the fact that a great gap separates the two phases of the little
girl's libidinal development, since the historians of Freud's day pos-
ited a radical break between the fourteenth to twelfth centuries B. c.,
when Mycenean culture, so close to the Minoan, was flourishing,
and the beginnings of archaic Greek culture in the eighth century
B.C. Between the two there was thought to have been a dark age,
the Hellenic Middle Ages, in which little-known upheavals separated
the pre-Hellenic world from the Greek world proper. The Myce-
neans were thus seen as pre-Hellenes, just as the earliest period of
the girl's development was seen as preoedipal; and just as the two
peoples, pre-Hellenes and Hellenes, had nothing in common, so a
real gulf separates the preoedipal and oedipal periods, and thus the
sexual development of little girls and little boys. "J!~ have, after
all, long given up any expectation of a neat parallelism between male
[33]
 The Enigma and the Veil The Other
and female sexual development" (ibid.). M ycenean civilization was
considered to be a simple preface, external to Greek history; in the
continues to be Oedipus, -and for him woman is never the.fiancee I
butstilL;md_alW;l,ysthe mother..'
same way, the preoedipal period was seen as merely a preamble to At the level of the text, the insistence on the surprise caused by
the Oedipus complex. the discovery of the preoedipal period corroborates the positivist
To be sure, this comparison would not hold up today, since the character of Freud's undertaking, proving once again that it is not
discovery of the Linear B script has shown that the Myceneans were a matter of speculation: when observation requires it, Freud is ca-
Greeks, or at least spoke Greek, that the Mycenean civilization is pable of giving up earlier hypotheses, abandoning the strict paral-
part of Hellenism, that it is the first chapter of its history and no lelism between boys and girls. At several points in the lecture
longer a simple preface: ancient Greece is no longer looked upon as "Femininity" he insists that his observations, confirmed by those
a beginning but as an extension, or a Renaissance. In short, today's of women psychoanalysts, have run counter to all expectations (and
historians stress the continuity between the two periods rather than thus to every prejudice) in forcing him to admit, for example, that
the break. the little girl has no reason to envy the boy as far as his activeness
Between the old interpretation and the new we can see the same or aggressiveness is concerned; or, another surprise, that the girl
difference as that between Freud's reading and Melanie Klein's. While may wish to have her mother's child, or even to get her mother
Freud thinks he is stressing the break between the two periods, by pregnant. Indeed, don't the entire charm and attraction (Reiz) of
calling the first one preoedipal he is still taking the Oedipus complex analysis arise precisely from the surprises it produces with respect
as the telos of all development. It continues to dominate the preoed- to the most widely held opinions and prejudices?
ipal period: the Oedipus complex remains the final referent, just
I Ariadne is a maternal figure for Freud: "The legend of the Labyrinth can
as the preface to a book is a preamble to that book and cannot be
be recognized as a representation of anal birth: the twisting paths are the bowels
totally external to it. "The Oedipus complex, like the book, remains and Ariadne's thread is the umbilical cord" ("Revision of Dream-Theory,"
the standard for what is declared to be without a common standard. 22:7-3 0 , in New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis [I933J (1932)], p. 25).
Melanie Klein subordinates the Oedipus complex to preoedipal de-
velopment, .which, strictly speaking, should no longer bear that
name since in this case the Oedipus complex is no longer the referent,
the principle by which all development is understood (and this is as
true of girls as it is of boys): Melanie Klein reverses direction in
favor of the preoedipal period. But whether one takes the preoedipal
period to be a preface to the Oedipus stage or as the first chapter
of its history, whether one stresses discontinuity or continuity, the
gesture of dominance remains the same: in both cases one loses the
specificity, the radical strangeness of the totally other, one over-
comes the astonishing "surprise" that the discovery of feminine
sexuality elicited if one reinstates it within the process of a history
that must lead to the Oedipus complex in every case. Ifhe has indeed
discovered Mycenean civilization, Freud refuses to be Theseus, re-
fuses to plunge into the labyrinth, into the palace, with a "double-
bladed axe," to rescue Ariadne, the fiancee. Freud's heroic model

5 purely theoretical construct, a mere object of study: "Do not forget
An Exciting Enigma
These popular- opinions are the ones Freud claims to be denounc-
ing in the lecture "Femininity" as he follows a procedure closely
analogous to the one Descartes used to attack habitual prejudices.
In this way he hopes to arouse a new interest in woman, to surprise,
charm, and excite (Reiz) his audience. From the very beginning, as
if to apologize for taking up such a hackneyed topic, he stresses that
the subject of woman has always been interesting to men (Menschen),
more likely to rouse their interest than any other. Men and women
alike find it exciting, especially when a debate is in progress between
them, between male and female psychoanalysts! The question of
woman cannot help arousing debate; perhaps men need this conflict
about sex, this incessant war between the sexes, to continued to be
"excited." For if "throughout history people have knocked their
heads against the riddle of the nature offemininity" ("Femininity,"
p. II 3), this enigma is quite a singular one (even though it is the
prototype of every riddle): indeed, finding a solution seems impos-
sible, and even inappropriate-and not just for methodological or
theoretical reasons. It is by virtue of her sexuality that woman is
enigmatic, for sexuality is what constitutes that "great riddle" of
life' which accounts for the entire difference between men and
" 'cr.. ::Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (1937c; hereafter cited as
Analysis ), 23:2II-253, esp. p. 252.
An Exciting Enigma
women. This does not mean that Freud reduces woman to her sex-
uality: at the end of the "Femininity" lecture, he reminds his listeners
that women as individuals (if not as a species!) may equally well be
considered human beings ("Die einzelne Frau auch sonst ein men-
schliches Wesen sein mag"). 2 Woman as "femalesexuality'Lis. a
that I have only been describing women in so far as-their nature is
determined by their sexual function" ("Femininity," p. 135). Even
though he considers that function quite important, Freud neverthe-
less believes that what he has said on the subject of femininity is
"incomplete and fragmentary," and he recommends other sources
for further information: personal experience, poetry, biological sci-
ence. To be sure, as we shall see, this modest declaration may be
interpreted as a strategy, and perhaps Freud is once again doing
something quite different from what he is saying." Even so, it is
still the case that what interests him in woman is what constitutes
her difference, and that this differencelies in her sexuality-which
thus acquires a privileged status as the object of study.
MAN'S PRIVILEGE
This object is particularly obscure and enigmatic, first of all be-
cause it has been little studied previously, for purely methodological
reasons, or so it seems. The positivist rule requires one to start with
what is most immediately accessible to knowledge. Since it is man
(vir) who engages in scientific investigations, it is natural for him
to start with himself. Freud is no exception: man has served as his
point of departure and model. That is why at first he viewed woman
only as symmetrical to man-why, for example, he established a
2"Human being" is the term used in the Standard Edition to translate mensch-
tithes Wesen. Kofman prefers the French equivalent, itre humain, to the term
creatures, found in the translation by Anne Berman (Paris, 1936) and used by
Luce lrigaray. - Translator
'My Enjance de l'art demonstrates this with respect to Freudian assertions
on art.
[37]
 The Enigma and the Veil
4
strict parallelism between the boy's Oedipus complex and the girl's.
This "positivist" starting point, as always, led him to construct as
telos and arche what was a simple epistemological beginning; it led
him, following the example of Aristotle and Comte, to subordinate
woman to man hierarchically, to think of woman, as far as her sex
is concerned, as a lesser man. That is why it is not until his very
late writings that he acknowledges in woman a difference exclusive
of any parallelism or symmetry, and confronts the "Minoan-My-
cenean" riddle for its own sake. This does not, however, prevent
him from <:{)l1tinuiI1g, even then! to irlvoket.h~_ masculine model.
Thus we find that immediately after comparing the surprising dis-
covery of the girl's preoedipal period with the discovery of Minoan-
Mycenean civilization, at the very point where a methodological
revolution might be expected, Freud declares that in the study of
female sexual development he is about to undertake, "it will help
our exposition if, as we go along, we compare the state of things
in women with that in men" ("Female Sexuality," p. 227). Even
more paradoxically, in "The Economic Problem of Masochism,"
after stating that feminine masochism is more accessible to obser-
vation and less enigmatic than the masculine variety, that it can be
grasped in all its aspects, and that it is therefore going to be the
point of departure for this discussion, he takes man as the unique
example of the masochism he has calledftminine: "We have sufficient
acquaintance with this kind of masochism in men (to whom, owing
to the material at my command, I shall restrict my rernarksj.!"
Man enjoys a privileged status, then;" he is taken as model or as
"Cf., for example, "Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Dis-
tinction between the Sexes," p. 249: "In examining the earliest mental shapes
assumed by the sexual life of children we have been in the habit of taking as
the subject of our investigations the male child, the little boy. With little girls,
so we have supposed, things must be similar, though in some way or other
they must nevertheless be different. The point in development at which this
difference lay could not be clearly determined."
519:157-170 (1924C; hereafter cited as "Masochism"), p. 16I. We shall see
later on how the privileged status accorded the masculine model can also be
interpreted quite differently.
6Cf also "On the Sexual Theories of Children" (1908c; hereafter cited as
"Sexual Theories"), 9:207-226: "In consequence ofunfavourable circumstances,
both of an external and an internal nature, the following observations apply
chiefly to the sexual development of one sex only-that is, of males" (p. 21 I).
An Exciting Enigma
point of comparison even when the irreducible specificity of female
sexuality is acknowledged. For the latter does not in any event cease
to be obscure, strange, incomprehensible, less completely known,
more difficult to penetrate than the man's, which is much more
"logical," easier to interpret." In short, female sexuality is still cov-
ered by "a thick veil." Thus, with regard to the dissolution of the
; Oedipus complex: "How does the corresponding development take
place in little girls? At this point our material-for some incompre-
hensible reason-becomes far more obscure and full of gaps" ("Dis-
solution," p. 177).
Similarly, when he makes a general law of the primacy of the
phallus (the fact that in the infantile genital organization of both
sexes only one genital organ-the male organ-is involved), Freud
regrets that he can describe this state of affairs only in the male child:
"Unfortunately ... the corresponding processes in the little girl are
not known to US."8
In short, "it must be admitted ... that in general our insight into
these developmental processes in girls is unsatisfactory, incomplete
and vague" ("Dissolution," p. 179).
WOMAN'S INACCESSIBILITY
Freud gives several disparate reasons for the fact that psycho-
analysis has been slow to penetrate women. Not only is female
sexuality more complex than that of the male (it has to solve two
supplementary problems, changing both the woman's erogenous
zone and her object cathexis), it also offers greater "resistance" to
violation by science. It is less accessible to research, for several rea-
sons: woman has a lesser sexual life, she is in an atrophied condition,
as it were, owing to "civilization." Because of her education and
cultural repression, woman speaks less .freely about her sexuality than
man does. Society makes modesty or "shame" woman's funda-
mental virtue, requires her to adopt a "reserved" way of speaking
7Cf "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality."
a'The Infantile Genital Organization," 19:141-145 (1923e), p. 142.
 The Enigma and the Veil
that is detrimental to science. Freud's whole effort consists precisely,
through analysis, in attempting to pull women out of their reserve
by giving them the right, even the obligation, to speak: about every-
thing that comes into their heads, including what has always, from
I earliest childhood, been a forbidden topic. Girls' sexual curiosity,
indeed, has always been subject to more repression than boys'," and
such repression is the source of their intellectual inhibition, of their
supposedly inborn and indelible intellectual inferiority.
Because woman has been reduced to silence, because her sexuality
has necessarily been less "glaring" than man's, she has been "ne-
glected" by research, or else misinterpreted. Freud says so over and
over:
The significance of the factor of sexual overvaluation can be
best studied in men, for their erotic life alone has become
accessible to research. That of women-partly owing to the
stunting effect of civilized conditions and partly owing to
their conventional secretiveness and insincerity-is still veiled.
in an impenetrable obscurity. ["Three Essays," p. 15 I]
Homosexuality in women, which is certainly not less com-
mon than in men, although much less glaring, has not only
been ignored by the law, but has also been neglected by
psycho-analytic research. ["Psychogenesis," p. 147]
[Women's] upbringing forbids their concerning themselves
intellectually with sexual problems though they nevertheless
feel extremely curious about them, and frightens them by
condemning such curiosity as unwomanly and a sign of a
sinful disposition. In this way they are scared away from any
form of thinking, and knowledge loses its value for them.
9Cf., for example, "The Sexual Theories of Children." This text shows
how parents respond evasively to the questions children ask about their own
origin, scolding them (especially in the case of girls) for their desire to know,
shunting aside their curiosity by giving mythological information. Children
then suspect that grownups are keeping something forbidden for themselves,
and so they keep their own further research secret. For that reason, too, they
are led to produce false theories that will contradict older and more accurate
knowledge that has become unconscious and repressed.
An Exciting Enigma
The prohibition of thought extends beyond the sexual field,
partly through unavoidable association, partly automatically,
like the prohibition of thought about religion among men,
or the prohibition of thought about loyalty among faithful
subjects.... I think that the undoubted intellectual inferiority
!
of so many women can rather be traced back to the inhibition
of thought necessitated by sexual suppression. 10
As for this repressive education of women and its disastrous
consequences, one wonders whether Freud knew Nietzsche's won-
derful text "On Feminine Chastity"-a text considered misogynist
by some people, 11 just as Freud is considered "phallocratic"; in each
case, things are perhaps not quite that simple.
There is something quite astonishing and extraordinary in the
education of women of the higher class; indeed, there is per-
haps nothing more paradoxical. All the world is agreed to
educate them with as much ignorance as possible in eroticis,
and to inspire their soul with a profound shame ofsuch things,
and the extremest impatience and horror at the suggestion of
them. It is really here only that all the 'honour' of woman is
at stake; what would one not forgive them in other respects!
But here they are intended to remain ignorant to the very
backbone:-they are intended to have neither eyes, ears,
words, nor thoughts for this, their 'wickedness'; indeed
knowledge here is already evil. And then! To be hurled as
with an awful thunderbolt into reality and knowledge with
marriage ... : to have to encounter love and shame in con-
tradiction, yea, to have to feel rapture, abandonment, duty,
sympathy, and fright at the unexpected proximity of God
and animal, and whatever else besides! all at once!-There,
in fact a psychic entanglement has been effected which is quite
10" 'Civilized' Sexual Morality and Modem Nervous Illness," 9:J79-204
(1908d), pp. 198- J99·
"On this problem, seeJacques Derrida, Eperons: Les Styles de Nietzche (Paris,
J978), published in English as Spurs: Nietzche's Styles, trans. Barbara Harlow
(Chicago, 1979); and Sarah Kofman, "Baubo," in Nietzsche et la scene philoso-
phique (Paris, J979), pp. 263-304.
 The Enigma and the Veil
unequalled! ... Afterwards the same profound silence as be-
fore: and often even a silence to herself, a shutting of her eyes
to herself.... In short, one cannot be gentle enough towards
womenl'"
THE SUSPENDED TONGUE
Confronting this "profound silence" of women, which he com-
pares to "a locked door" or "a wall which shuts out every pros-
pect, "13 Freud tries to bring it to an end, if not through "gentleness"
toward women, at least by means ofa treatment that cannot proceed
without a simulacrum of gentleness, in transference, "the strongest
lever" (Studies, p. 282) for lifting the bolt, knocking down the wall,
stifling resistance, bringing into the open the secret that is buried in
the depths.
Because woman, in fact, lacks the right to speak, she may merely
have "secrets," "love secrets," which make her ill: hysteria is noth-
ing else. "From the beginning it seemed to me probabletEat Fraulein
Elisabeth was conscious of the basis of her illness, that what she had
in her consciousness was only a secret and not a foreign body.
Looking at her, one could not help thinking of the poet's words:
'Das Maskchen da weissagt verborgnen Sinn. '14 ••• " (Studies,
pp. 138-139). "The principal point is that I should guess the secret
and tell it to the patient straight out" (ibid., p. 281). Dora is ill
because she loves a man "secretely," because she reveals her "se-
crets" only to her cousin and to Frau K., confides only in a doctor-
the one person who will not be able to "guess her secret"-as she
finds herself anxious in front of anyone else for fear that he may
"guess," "tear" from her the shameful secret, the cause of her illness:
masturbation.
'2The joyfill Wisdom, trans. Thomas Common, vol. 10 of The Complete
Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Oscar Levy (London, (910), pp. 104-105 (sec.
7 1) .
13Studies in Hysteria, in Standard Edition, vol. 2 (1895d [1893-95]; hereafter
cited as Studies), pp. 283, 293.
14" 'Her mask reveals a hidden sense.' Adapted from Goethe's Faust, Part
I (Scene I)" (Studies, p. 139, n. I).
An Exciting Enigma
Because woman does not have the right to speak, she stops being
capable or desirous ofspeaking; she "keeps" everything to herself, and
creates an excess of mystery and obscurity as if to avenge herself,
as if striving for mastery. Woman lacks sincerity:" she dissimulates,
transforms each word into an enigma, an indecipherable riddle. That
is why the "patient's" narrative is always full of gaps, foreshortened,
defective, disconnected, incomplete, lacking in "links"; it is disor-
dered, comparable "to an unnavigable river whose stream is at one
moment choked by masses of rock and at another divided and lost
among shallows and sandbanks" ("Fragments," p. 16). It is as if the
pathogenic materials formed a spatially extended mass that had to
cross a narrow cleft, like a camel passing through the eye of a needle,
so that it arrived fragmented and stretched, as it were, in conscious-
ness (cf. Studies, p. 291).
The patients' inability to give an ordered history of their life
in so far as it coincides with the history of their illness ... has
the following grounds. In the first place, patients consciously
and intentionally keep back part of what they ought to tell-
things that are perfectly well known to them-because they
have not got over their feelings of timidity and shame ... ;
this is the share taken by conscious disingenuousness. In the
second place, part of the anamnestic knowledge ... disappears
while they are actually telling their story, but without their
making any deliberate reservations: the share taken by uncon-
scious disingenuousness. In the third place, there are invariably
true amnesias-gaps in the memory into which not only old
recollections but even quite recent ones have fallen-and par-
amnesias, formed secondarily so as to fill in those gaps....
That this state ofaffairs should exist in regard to the memories
relating to the history of the illness is a necessary correlate of
the symptoms. . . . In the further course of the treatment the
patient supplies the facts which, though he had known them
all along, had been kept back by him or had not occurred to
his mind. ["Fragment," pp. 16-18]
15Cf. the passage from "Three Essays" quoted above.

The psychotherapist has only to playa waiting game in order to
try to decipher a riddle that might well appear insoluble if, despite
her silence, the patient did not finally betray her own secret:
When I set myself the task of bringing to light what human
beings keep hidden within them, not by the compelling power
of hypnosis, but by observing what they say and what they
show, I thought the task was a harder one than it really is.
He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself
that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he
chatters with his finger-tips; betrayal oozes out of him at every
pore. And thus the task of making conscious the most hidden
recesses of the mind is one which it is quite possible to ac-
complish. [Ibid., pp. 77-78]
Because the patient's "insincerity" not only is unconscious but
also involves willfully holding back things she is perfectly well aware
of, the analytic treatment cannot be seen as a simple restitution of
women's right to speech; it is also an attempt to "tear" from them
their secret, to make them "admit" or "confess"-in short , an at-
~- . - .. - ..... --.--... -. . . .
tempt not to give them speech but to extort speech from them.
Woman is not only a patient, a hysteric; because she dissimulates,
sheis always also a criminal, and the psychoanalyst is a policeman
on the alert for the slightest clues that may betray her, or at best he
is a ftther confessor "who gives absolution, as it were, by a continuance
of his sympathy and respect after the confession has been made"
(Studies, p. 282). And ifhe no longer uses the constraint of hypnosis,
then it is by means of another constraint, an affective one this time
(that of transference), that he can manage to extort admissions, stifle
resistances, replace defensive motives with other, more powerful
ones, and, as the situation warrants, play the role of instructor in
cases where ignorance has led to fear, play the role of professor,
"the representative of a freer or superior view of the world" (ibid.).
He can instruct the patient by substituting frankness for her "insin-
cerity," by calling things by their names-''j'appelle un chat un
chat"16-though he pays the price oflooking like a criminal himself
16"1 call a cat a cat" ("Fragment," p. 48; in French in Freud's text).
The Enigma and the Veil An Exciting Enigma
to his colleagues, looking like a lubricious pervert for daring to
engage in such conversations with young girls. But then, "pour faire
une omelette il faut casser des oeufs. "17
On the other hand, he guarantees the patient that he will keep
the secret extorted strictly to himself, and that if for the benefit of
science he should be led to publish her case, he will change her name,
so as to avoid putting any lay reader on the scent; he will not turn
her over to the police, nor will he expose her to the unhealthy
curiosity of those doctors who read his presentations like romans a
clef, even if it is true that his case histories "read like short stories
and ... lack the serious stamp of science" (Studies, p. 160).
Thus Freud makes himself an accomplice of the hysteric, the
criminal, by dissimulating in his turn, by keeping the (professional)
secret, but on condition that the woman first agree to be his ac-
complice. When she consents to reveal her secret, to "abandon [her]
rejection" (Studies, p. 281), it is the same as consenting to collaborate
with the doctor and to recognize his word as the voice of truth:
"She suddenly confessed of her own accord that she had not told
the truth: what had occurred to her had not been 'colour' but 'incar-
. .
nation'-THE WORD I HAD EXPECTED. . . . This lack of straightfor-
wardness showed that it was at this point that resistance was greatest"
(Dreams, p. 375; emphasis added).
"A psychical resistance, especially one that has been in force for
a long time, can only be resolved slowly and by degrees, and we
must wait patiently.... We may reckon on the intellectual interest
which the patient begins to feel after working for a short time. By
explaining things to him, by giving him information about the
marvellous world of psychical processes, ... we make him himself
into a collaborator" (Studies, p. 282). "After we have worked in this
way for some time, the patient begins as a rule to co-operate with
us. A great number of reminiscences now occur to him, without
our having to question him or set him tasks" (ibid., p. 292). Con-
senting to collaborate with the doctor is finally what distinguishes
the hysteric from a true criminal. 18 So beware of the patient, the
17"To make an omelette, you have to break some eggs" (ibid., p. 49; in
French in Freud's text).
'8Cf. "Psycho-Analysis and the Establishment of the Facts in Legal Pro-
ceedings," 9:99-[ [4 (I9 06c).
 The Enigma and the Veil
woman, who refuses to collaborate, refuses to let "truth" be im-
posed! Beware of the woman who, through her "suspension" of
speech, spoils the psychotherapist's policeman-like pleasure, anal-
ogous to that of a reader of a serialized novel who is exasperated
when "immediately after the heroine's decisive speech or after the
shot has rung out, he comes upon the words: 'To be continued' "
(Studies, p. 297).
The indomitable women who refuse to open their mouths, those
"[ cavities] filled with pus, "19 because they do not accept the per-
nicious "solution" of their psychoanalyst, if they are not turned over
to the police like criminals, are at least to be abandoned, quickly
replaced by the analyst, who bestows his gentleness only on "nice"
women, on those who do know how to open their mouths, those
he finds "wiser" because they are better prepared to follow his
advice, accept his solutions. In the famous Irma dream, Freud sub-
. stitutes "her friend" for Irma: "For Irma seemed to me foolish be-
cause she had not accepted my solution. Her friend would have been
wiser, that is to say she would have yielded sooner. She would then
have opened her mouth properly, and have told me more than Irma"
(Dreams, p. I II).
I at once took her on one side, as though ... to reproach her
for not having accepted my 'solution' yet. I said to her: 'If
you still get pains, it's really only your fault.' ... It was my
view at that time (though I have since recognized it as a wrong
one) that my task was fulfilled when I had informed a patient
of the hidden meaning of his symptoms: I considered that I
was not responsible for whether he accepted the solution or
not-though this was what success depended upon. [Ibid.,
pp. 107-108 ]
It's always the ladies' fault. I, Freud, am irreproachable. The
dream is a thoroughgoing plea in favor of Freud's innocence: it piles
up reasons for excusing him, in a way reminiscent of the defense
"Studies, p. 305: "I have often in my own mind compared cathartic psy-
chotherapy with surgical intervention. I have described my treatments as psy-
chotherapeutic operations; and I have brought out their analogy with the opening
up of a cavity filled with pus, the scraping out of a carious region, etc."
An Exciting Enigma
of the man accused by his neighbor of returning a borrowed kettle
in a damaged condition (Dreams, pp. 119-120).
'I am not responsible [according to the dream's latent thoughts]
for the persistence ofIrma's pains; the responsibility lies either
in her recalcitrance to accepting my solution, or in the un-
favourable sexual conditions under which she lives and which
I cannot alter, or in the fact that her pains are not hysterical
at all but of an organic nature. ' The dream, on the other hand,
fulfilled all of these possibilities (which were almost mutually
exclusive), and did not hesitate to add a fourth solution, based
on the dream-wish. [Ibid., pp. 316-317]
Iffr"elld has such an urgent need to excuse himself, it is because
he knows perfectly well that he himself is the criminal. Not only
because he has not yet cured Irma, but, as another part of the dream
indicates, because he himself (a transgression attributed in both the
dream and the interpretation to his friend Otto) has infected her
with his symbolic-spermatic "solution"-trimethylamin-injected
with a dirty syringe. The term "trimethylarnin" brings to mind the
learned solutions he has thrown in his patients' faces: if Irma and
all indomitable women refuse to open their mouths and their gen-
itals, it is because Freud has already transformed each of these organs
into a "cavity filled with pus, "20 has closed the women's mouths
himself, has made them frigid, by injecting them with a learned,
malignant, male solution. What could they have left to say, to dis-
close, except that they have been infected by the person who is
claiming that they are ill, that they have been contaminated by the
person who, under the pretext of curing them, is compelling them
to collaborate, because he needs their complicity in order to believe
in the value of his "solution" himself, because he knows perfectly
2DFreud knew full well, however, that with this comparison he could not
help deeply humiliating the female sex: "The pride taken by women in the
appearance of their genitals is quite a special feature of their vanity; and disorders
of the genitals which they think calculated to inspire feelings of repugnance or
even disgust have an incredible power of humiliating them, of lowering their
self-esteem, and of making them irritable, sensitive, and distrustful. An ab-
normal secretion of the mucous membrane of the vagina is looked upon as a
source of disgust" ("Fragment," p. 84).
 The Enigma and the Veil
well that they are the only ones who know their own secret and
that a solution injected from the outside could only be inappropriate,
"unclean, "21 pernicious?
Thus although psychoanalysis may inveigh against the sexual
repression to which women are subject, although it may invite them
to shed their inhibitions and restore their right to speech, the remedy
it offers is at the same time a poison, since it can cure women only
by contaminating them, by forcing them to "collaborate," to es-
pouse the viewpoint of the other, of men, who are supposed to
possess truth. The psychoanalytic solution restores speech to woman
only the better to rob her of it, the better to subordinate it to that
of the master.
That is why there is no crime worse than silence, for it covers
women's sex with its "thick veil," renders it inaccessible, indomi-
table, implacable: terrifying (ef-frayante), in Blanchot's sense;" The
enigmatic woman neither speaks nor "betrays herself" through any
of her pores. It matters little to her if psychoanalysis withholds its
gentleness. She has no need of it, she is sufficient unto herself.
SHAME
And it is this self-sufficiency that is unhearable: because he "en-
vies" her unassailable libidinal position, man projects his own in-
sufficiency, his own "envy," onto woman. If woman is silent, if
she keeps a "thick veil". drawn over herself and her sex, she must
have her reasons, and good reasons, for wishing to remain enigmatic:
she has to hide that "cavity filled with pus," she has to hide the fact
that she has "nothing" to hide. By seeking to make herselfenigmatic,
woman is -only continuing the work begun by nature, which covered
over her sex with pubic hair. Woman, in inventing weaving, was
21For the interpretation of the Irma dream, see also Monique Schneider,
"Oedipe et la solution-dissolution," Critique, May 1979, concerning the read-
ings of this dream proposed by Jacques Lacan, Seminaire, bk. 2 (Paris, 1978),
p. 196, and Conrad Stein, La Mort d'Oedipe (Paris, 1977).
USee, for example, the discussion of fascination in Maurice Blanchot, The
Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln, Nebr., 1982), pp. 32-33.
An Exciting Enigma
only "imitating" nature. Thus near the end of his lecture on femi-
ninity Freud does not hesitate to attribute the invention of weaving
to penis envy (at the risk of being taken for a madman ohsessed by
an idee fixe):
Shame [Scham], which is considered to be a feminine char-
acteristic par excellence but is far more a matter of convention
than might be supposed, has as its purpose, we believe, con-
cealment of genital deficiency. We are not forgetting that at
a later time shame takes on other functions. It seems that
women have made few contributions to the discoveries and
inventions in the history of civilization; there is, however,
one technique which they may have invented-that ofplaiting
and weaving. If that is so, we should be tempted to guess the
unconscious motive for the achievement. Nature herself would
seem to have given the model which this achievement imitates
by causing the growth at maturity of the pubic hair that
conceals the genitals. The step that remained to be taken lay
in making the threads adhere to one another, while on the
body they stick into the skin and are only matted to-
gether. ["Femininity," p. 1]2]
In a gesture that is at the very least ambiguous, Freud asserts
that modesty, or "shame," is both a conventional virtue (more or
less linked to cultural repression) and a natural one, since, in her
invention of weaving, woman was only "imitating" nature: shame
is seen as the natural/conventional artifice used by women to mask
the natural-too natural-defectiveness of their genital organs. By
this artifice they can excite and charm men, who would otherwise
recoil in horror before that gaping wound that threatens to contam-
inate them, and who would then be condemned to homosexuality.
Feminine modesty is thus a trick of nature that allows the human
species to perpetuate itself, 23 it is the corollary of fetishism in men,
that spontaneous fetishism on the part of the little boy, prompted
by castration anxiety, who at the first sight of the little girl's genitals
23Cf. "Fetishism," 21:149-157 (1927e).
 The Enigma and the Veil
throws a veil over the lack of a penis by saying, "She has one, but
it's small; they've cut it off, but it will grow back."
Woman's physical vanity also has its source, then, in penis envy:
when nature is good enough to endow woman with an extra portion
of beauty in addition to pubic hair, then she has every chance of
seducing men; for this boon of pleasure, of seduction, that beauty
offers deflects attention from the horror inspired by the genital or-
gans (whose ugliness is indisputable) and makes ultimate pleasure
possible. Beauty alone reconciles horror and pleasure. Women too
get a boon: "they are bound to value their charms [ihre Reize] more
highly as a late compensation for their original [urspriingliche] sexual
inferiority [Mit!derwertigkeit]" (" Femininity," p. 1]2).
The good reasons women have for "veiling" themselves thus all
correspond with men's need for a certain fetishism. If woman makes
herself man's accomplice, it is because it is in her own interest as
well as his to do so: men and women alike benefit from the fact that
the feminine "riddle" is not solved. Woman's "ulterior motive"
remains penis envy, castration, fetishism. Such, at least, is what the
bulk of Freud's discourse tells us.
NARCISSISTIC WOMAN
One text, however, opens up an entirely different prospect. It
was written-and this is perhaps no accident-during a period when
Freud was particularly attracted to Lou Andreas-Salome.
The passage in question is found in the introductory text "On
Narcissism" (1914). Freud is in the process of showing that there
are fundamental differences between man and woman as to the type
of object choice. Man is characterized by object love of the attach-
ment type marked by sexual overvaluation of the object; this ov-
ervaluation is seen as springing from the originary narcissism
subsequently transferred to the sexual object. Love, and passion in
particular, according to Freud, have the effect of "an impoverish-
ment of the ego as regards libido in favour of the love-object" ("On
Narcissism," p. 88).
[50]
At! Exciting Enigma
Development of the [eminine type is an entirely different
story. A different course is followed in the type of female
most frequently met with, which is probably the purest and
truest one. With the onset of puberty the maturing of the
female sexual organs ... seems to bring about an intensifi-
cation of the original narcissism, and this is unfavourable to
the development of a true object-choice with its accompa-
nying sexual overvaluation. Women, especially if they grow
up with good looks, develop a certain self-contentment [eit!e
Selbstgeniigsamkeit] which compensates them for the social re-
strictions that are imposed upon them in their choice ofobject.
Strictly speaking, it is only themselves that such women love
with an intensity comparable to that of the man's love for
them. Nor does their need lie in the direction of loving, but
of being loved, and the man who fulfills this condition is the
one who finds favour with them. The importance of this type
of woman for the erotic life of mankind is to be rated very
high. Such women have the greatest fascination [Reiz] for
men, not only for aesthetic reasons, since as a rule they are
the most beautiful, but also because of a combination of in-
teresting psychological factors. For it seems very evident that
another person's narcissism has a great attraction for those
who have renounced part of their own narcissism and are in
search of object-love. The charm [Reiz] of a child lies to a
great extent in his narcissism, his self-contentment [Selbst-
geniigsamkeit] and inaccessibility [Unzuga'nglichkeit], just as does
the charm [Reiz] of certain animals which seem not to concern
themselves about us, such as cats and the large beasts of prey.
Indeed, even great criminals and humorists, as they are rep-
resented in literature, compel our interest by the narcissistic
consistency with which they manage to keep away from their
ego anything that would diminish it. It is as if we envied
[bmeideten] them for maintaining a blissful state of mind-an
unassailable libidinal position which we ourselves have since
abandoned. The great charm [Reiz] of narcissistic women has,
however, its reverse side; a large part of the lover's dissatis-
. faction, of his doubts of the woman's love, of his complaints
of her enigmatic nature [die Rdtzel im Wesen], has its root in
[5 I]
 The Enigma and the Veil
this incongruity [Incongruenz] between the types of object-
choice. [Ibid., pp. 88-89]
What makes woman enigmatic here is no longer some "inborn
deficiency," some sort of lack, but on the contrary her narcissistic
self-sufficiency and her indifference; it is no longer the woman who
envies man his penis, it is he who envies her for her unassailable
libidinal position, whereas he himself--one may wonder why-has
been impoverished, has been emptied of this original narcissism in
favor of the love object.
What is attractive, what accounts for all the charm of this nar-
cissistic woman, is not so much her beauty, even though that beauty
(which is no longer conceived here as a cover or .compensation for
a natural deficiency, but as acomp~nsatiQnfo~s.Q~!~iJl.htries) must
not be lacking in a woman if she is to be able to enjoy herself
narcissistically:" what is attractive in woman is that she has managed
to preserve what man has lost, that original narcissism for which
he is eternally nostalgic. It may thus be said that man envies and
seeks that narcissistic woman as the lost paradise of childhood (or
what he fantasizes as such);" and is condemned to unhappiness: for
if such a woman loves to be loved, she loves only herself, she is
sufficient unto herself, and leaves the man who loves her unsatisfied;
she always maintains "an enigmatic reserve," gives herself without
surrendering, and, when she gives herself, "the fruits of her giving
abide in her own bosom," as Goethe says in a passage quoted by
24Isn't beauty, according to Kant, for example, that which suffices unto
itself, is independent, enjoys its own fullness without lacking anything, is cut
off from every and external to itself? Finality without end? That is why a
beautiful woman cannot be considered comparable to that unearthed device
Kant speaks of, that concavity deprived of its handle which seems incomplete
but refers to the concept of the corresponding tool that always comes to com-
plete it. The beautiful woman is comparable rather to the beautiful tulip. The
woman, penis envier, could not be beautiful, in any event not with a "free
beauty," the height of beauty according to Kant, for she adheres, inasmuch as
she is hole, a gap, to the penis that always completes her, that is always there
even in its absence. In Freud's operation, the "cut" of the female sex could not
be a "pure" cut. On free beauty and adherent beauty in Kant, see Jacques
Derrida, "Le Parergon," in La Verite en peinture (Paris, 1978), pp. 127-1 35.
25Men are subject to "the spell of their childhood, which is presented to
them by their not impartial memory as a time of uninterrupted bliss" (Moses
and Monotheism: Three Essays, 23:3-137 [I939a (1937-39)), p. 7 1).
An Exciting Enigma
Lou Andreas-Salome in her Journal as she points out that when a
neurotic desires to become a woman, it is an indication that he is
getting better, for it is a desire to be happy: only in woman does
sexuality not entail renunciation. 26
By virtue of this unassailable libidinal position, women can be
compared with children, with great birds of prey and cats, with
great criminals as represented in literature, and with humorists. All
have one thing in common: men find them attractive and enviable
because they have been able to preserve their narcissism, their ter-
rifying inaccessibility, their independence, their indifference, their
high opinion of themselves, while setting aside everything that might
depreciate them. In short, they are fascinating because of their nar-
cissism, which constitutes the basis of all desire.
To compare women with children or cats" is banal enough (even
if Freud does not do so for the most usual reasons); less common
is the comparison with birds ofprey, 28 great criminals, and humorists.
These unusual comparisons give Freud's text Nietzschean over-
tones, and one may wonder whether the narcissistic woman de-
scribed here may not take her model from Nietzsche (ifonly through
the mediation of Lou Andreas-Salome);" from what Nietzsche would
call the affirmative woman. 30
Indeed, women are compared with cats in a number of Nietzsche's
texts, and for the same reasons as in Freud's: the cat is an independent
animal, indifferent to man, basically affirmative, a Dionysian animal
like tigers and panthers. For example:
lhThe Freud [oumal of LOll Andreas-Salome, trans. Stanley A. Leavy (New
York, 1964), p. 1I8 (March 14, 1913).
27Cf. Sarah Kofman, AlItobiogrijJUres (Paris, 1976), pp. joff,
"Here the German word is Raubtiere, which includes the large members of
the cat family as well as birds of prey. I refer to birds of prey because Girard,
whose reading of this text is discussed below, translates Raubtiere as "bird of
prey," which allows him to make a connection with Proust.
29Speaking of Lou, Nietzsche writes to Peter Gast (july 13, 1882): "She is
as shrewd as an eagle and brave as a lion, and yet still a very girlish child ... "
(Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Christopher Middleton
[Chicago, 1969), p. 186).
30" Affirmative," a Nietzschean term, and "narcissistic," a Freudian term,
are perhaps not irreconcilable, since we are dealing with a text dating from
1913, when Freud had not yet made a connection between narcissism and the
hypothesis of the death drive.
[53]
 The Enigma and the Veil
"The cat takes pleasure in a voluptuous feeling of its own power:
it gives nothing in return. "31
"That which inspires respect in woman, and often enough fear
also, is her nature, which is more 'natural' than that of man, her
genuine, carnivora-like, cunning flexibility, her tiger-claws beneath
the glove, her naiveti in egoism, her untrainableness and innate
wildness, the incomprehensibleness, extent, and deviation of her
desires and virtues. "32
"Man wishes woman to be peaceable: but in fact woman is es-
sentially unpeaceable, like the cat, however well she may have as-
sumed the peaceable demeanor" (ibid., sec. 131, p. 94).
And although (to my knowledge) Nietzsche does not compare
women with great birds of prey but rather with beasts of prey in
general, the bird of prey is still a "Nietzschean" animal par excel-
lence, the very symbol ofassertive force, such as that of the dominant
ones that do not fear to seize little lambs.:" (The animal is more
"masculine" than "feminine," it will be argued; to be sure, in the
sense that "virility" is for Nietzsche the very metaphor for assertive
force: but in this sense, women can be at least as "virile" as men.)
As for the great criminal in the Dostoevskian mold, he is the
prototype of the true free spirit, of the man who, as a member of
the invincible order of Assassins, has received in trust the following
essential principle, the ultimate secret: " 'Nothing is true, everything
is allowed' " (ibid., chap. 3, sec. 24, p. 195); he has thus called into
question faith in virtue itself Now woman is indeed in this sense a
great criminal, for there is no worse skeptic than woman: skepticism
is her philosophy (cf. JoyjUl Wisdom, sec. 64), "she does not want
truth-what does woman care for truth! From the very first nothing
is more foreign, more repugnant, or more hostile to woman than
truth" (Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 2]2, p. 183), truth is an authentic
attack on her modesty. 34
'IDiefriihliche Wissenschafi [The joyful wisdom], in Nachgelassene Fragmente,
Juli 1882 his Winter, 1883-1884, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, pt.
7, vol. I (Berlin, 1977), sec. I [30], p. 12.
"Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimrnern, vol. 12 of The Complete
Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Oscar Levy (London, 1923), sec. 239, p. 190.
"See The Genealogy of Morals, trans. Horace B. Samuel, vol. 13 of Complete
Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (1913), chap. I, sec. 13.
34Cf. The Twilight of the Idols, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici, vol. 16 of
An Exciting Enigma
Great criminals are also those who have a consistent narcissism,
"with which they manage to keep away from their ego anything
that would diminish it" (Freud, "On Narcissism," p. 89):
Lo! the pale criminal hath bowed his head: out of his eye
speaketh the great contempt.
'Mine ego is something which is to be surpassed: mine
ego is to me the great contempt of man': so speaketh it out
of that eye.
When he judged himself-that was his supreme moment;
let not the exalted one relapse again into his low estate! ...
An idea made this pale man pale. Adequate was he for his
deed when he did it, but the idea of it, he could not endure
when it was done.
Evermore did he now see himself as the doer of one deed.
Madness, I call this: the exception reversed itself to the rule
in him....
Many things in your good people cause me disgust, and
verily, not their evil. I would that they had a madness by
which they succumbed like this pale criminall"
The comparison between women and humorists seems more spe-
cifically "Freudian"; the humorist has in common with the great
criminal the fact that he has succeeded in conquering his ego and
holding it in contempt, thanks to his superego, and has thus been
able to fend off everything that might debase him, might penetrate
his defenses, such as fear or terror: humor is particularly suited for
freeing and exalting the ego.
" 'Look! here is the world, which seems so dangerous! It is noth-
ing but a game for children-just worth making a jest about!' "36
Yet that ego-enhancing intention served by humor, the comparison
Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, (19II), chap. I, "Maxims and Missiles,"
sec. 16. p. 3: "Truth? Oh, you do not know truth! Is it not an outrage on all
our pudeursi"
35Thus Spake Zarathustra, trans. Thomas Common, vol. I I of Complete
Works ofFriedrich Nietzsche, (191 I), Discourse VI, "The Pale Criminal," pp. 40-
42 .
""'Humour," 21:161-166 (1927d), p. 166.
[55]
 The Enigma and the Veil An Exciting Enigma

of the world with "a game for childre n," the last laugh that the
humor ist and Freud invite us to share- all these too cannot fail
to
evoke Nietzsche.
This text is also Nietzsc hean from anothe r point of view. Like
Nietzsche, Freud establishes a differeJlt~'!Ltyp!JJogy:37 the narcissistic
is
woman who fascinates man by her beauty and her indifference
only a type of woman , even if she is "the type of female most
frequen tly met with [and] probab ly the purest and truest one" ("On
Narcis sism," p. 88). To be sure, this type is fantasized by men
as
the very "essen ce" of woman hood, as the eternal feminin e; despite
its "incon gruity, " it corresp onds best with men's desires, since
it
ed outwar d,
represents the lost part of their own narcissism, project
so to speak: men's fascination with this eternal femini ne is nothin
g cause by virtue ofher "immo rality" she is a true crimin al who refuses
but fascination with their own double , and the feeling of uncann
i-
ness, Unheimllthkeit; that men experie nce is the same as what one
feels in the face of any double , any ghost, in the face of the abrupt
reappearance of what one though t had been overcome or lost forever.
The entire text attemp ts to disting uish differential types, just as,
in contrad istincti on to Jungia n monism , it never ceases to contras
t Thus putting an end to what may have seemed to be a relatio n
object love and narcissistic love. And yet beyond the open decla-
rations of dualism the text also tends to reduce object love to nar-
cissistic love, since object love is a simple transference of the origina
l of the reappearance of what he believed he had overco me in himsel
results from the
narcissism, since sexual overva luation of the object
simple transference to woman of one's overva luation of oneself, and
since that overva luation of the object, characteristic of object love,
is a veritable narcissistic stigma tum.
Freud does not yet openly assert, howev er, that narcissism is
indeed the basis for object love, for that would amoun t to recog-
nizing the profou ndly "immo ral" charac ter of all love. Thus, con-
trary to all expect ations, after showin g that "we" men envy and
admire women for their intact narcissism, Freud takes a step back-
ward, as if in fear of being too fascinated, and pronou nces, or pre-
tends to pronou nce, ajudgm ent of moral condem nation on woman
's
erotic life: he sugges ts that the reader may have imagin ed that
in
e
37Cf. Jacques Derrida, Eperons, and Sarah Kofman, "Baubo ," in Nietzsch
philosophique.
et la scene
the descrip tion of it he has just given, he was govern ed by a "ten-
dentiou s desire ... to depreciate women " ("Narc issism ," p. 89).
In what name might woman 's narcissism be apt to deprec iate
her? In what name but that of a certain ethic that identifies narciss ism
it
with an egoism that has to be overco me, and not only because
would be a fixation at or regression to an infanti le libidin al stage?
From the point of view of reactive moral forces, all the "Nie-
tzschean" comparisons destined to increase the appreciation of women
could in fact be reevaluated, reinter preted in a pl;Jorative sense apt
t.,o'_',<:!eJ?!<:£!ate''.Jle!:. from this point of view, if woman is a child,
is
it is because she is incapable of overco ming her "egois m," it
because, like an animal, she is seeking solely to satisfy herself , be-
all love for others, love of the attachm ent type, the only valoriz ed
form, which would cast her in the role, vis-a-vis man, of nurtur ing
mother . For the moral man of "resen tment, " woman would no
if
longer have anythin g worth envyin g, and to have admire d her,
only for a momen t, would only awaken feelings of guilt.
.of compli city with Nietzsc he or Lou Andrea s-Salom e, as if panic-
stricke n in the face of this fascinating, uncann y double , in the face
f,
narcissism and femininity, at this turning point in the text Freud
takes Bight, as in Genoa when at a comer of some back alley he
repeatedly kept encountering the prostitutes he was specifically trying
to avoid. 38
He Bees, draggi ng women with him in his retreat: he leads them
along the path of salvation, the path that, despite their basic nar-
cissism, can lead them to fully realized object love-t he path of
t
pregn'!.l1<;:Y· Pregna ncy is not presented, in this text, as the produc
of penis envy. The narcissistic woman is not capable of envy; the
child is concei ved as a part of the woman 's own self; the ruse of
nature or of ethics consists in leading the woman toward object love
in spite of her narcissism, even by means of this very narcissism:
woman can love someo ne other than herself on conditi on that that
38Cf. "The Uncann y," 17:219- 252 (19 19h ).

[56]
 The Enigma and the Veil
being represent a part of her own ego or what she herself has for-
merly been.
In the child which they bear, a part of their own body con-
fronts them like an extraneous object, to which, starting out
from their narcissism, they can then give complete object-
love. There are other women, again, who do not have to
wait for a child in order to take the step in development from
(secondary) narcissism to object-love. Before puberty they
feel masculine and develop some way along masculine lines;
after this trend has been cut short on their reaching female
maturity, they still retain the capacity of longing for a mas-
culine ideal-an ideal which is in fact a survival of the boyish
nature that they themselves once possessed. ["On Narcis-
sism," pp. 89-90 ]
~oviI1g the other, overvaluing the obj~ct~forWQ~authis.as.
loving according to the masculine type, this means becommgama.n.
But at the same time she can become a man only through the dIS-
placement of her purely feminine narcissism, as man himself ca~
I love another only through transference of his narcissism. The basis
Lof all love is thus indeed narcissism. Despite his et~cal reticenc~s
(or those of his potential reader), Freud does not hesitate to ad~lt
this with regard to that love which seems the most moral of all In
view of the "sacrifices" it calls for: the love of parents for their
children.
The child ... shall once more really be the centre and core of
creation-' His Majesty the Baby', as we once fancied ourselves.
The child shall fulfil those wishful dreams of the parents which
they never carried out-the boy shall become a great man
and a hero in his father's place, and the girl shall marry a
prince as a tardy compensation for her mother. At the most
touchy point in the narcissistic system, the immortality of the
ego, which is so hard pressed by reality, security is achieved
by taking refuge in the child. Parental love, which is so mov-
ing and at bottom so childish, is nothing but the parents' .
narcissism born again, which, transformed into object-love, un-
[58]
An Exciting Enigma
mistakably reveals its former nature." [Ibid., p. 91; emphasis
added]
If one looks closely, then, one sees what Freud is doing with his
declarations of principle, those of a dualism that is all the more
openly espoused because of his opposition to the monism of his
rival, Jung. "On Narcissism" thus indeed asserts the unsurpassable
nature of narcissism, even if in the same text, for "ethical" reasons,
the love called objectal turns out to be preferred, even if Freud
continues to distinguish, within objectal love, an object choice of
the narcissistic type and an object choice of the attachment type, as
if love for the woman who nurtures or the man who protects, a
love necessary for self-preservation, escaped narcissism. It is true
that such narcissism is no longer susceptible to the slightest com-
parison with Nietzschean self-assertion, which implies not the pres-
ervation but the surpassing of the self.
Thus we cannot subscribe to the analysis of this text proposed
by Rene Girard;" in which he proceeds as though Freud simply
misunderstood the narcissism of all love and denied that every man's
true object of desire were the intact narcissism that is always already
lost. To this end, Girard's interpretation of the part of the text in
which Freud draws attention to these self-sufficient, enigmatic
women, comparable to children, animals, criminals, and humorists,
is necessarily quite different from ours. Girard sees Freud as having
been "tricked" by women when he describes them this way: for
there can be no such thing as a self-sufficient woman, and to think
otherwise is sacrilege.
Woman can only "act as if" she were sufficient unto herself, as
a strategic measure, so that she may continue to charm and conquer
39In Plato's Symposium, Socrates, while defining love as the desire for im-
mortality, also inscribes narcissism within it and in so doing opposes all the
other interlocutors, especially Phaedrus and Agathon, who had insistently praised
the moral benefits of love, with its ability to inspire the highest sacrifices.
"Rene Girard, Des choses cachees depuis fa fondation du monde (Paris, 1978).
When this book appeared, I had already grasped the great importance of that
part of Freud's text, quoted by Girard as well, in which Freud compares women
with children, animals, and criminals, and which did not seem to have attracted
much attention previously. I should like to stress this convergence with Girard
despite our disagreement as to the correct interpretation of the text.
 The Enigma and the Veil
men. Freud must have been a victim of this strategy, of woman's
coquetry. Now
the coquette knows much more than Freud does about desire.
She is not unaware of the fact that desire attracts desire. In
order to be desired, then, one must convince others that one
desires oneself. This is in fact how Freud defines narcissistic
desire, a desire of the self for the self. Ifthe narcissistic woman
arouses desire, it is because by pretending to desire herself,
by offering Freud that circular desire that never goes beyond
itself, she presents an irresistible temptation to the mimesis
of others. Freud takes the trap into which he is falling as if
it were an objective description. What he calls the coquette's
self-sufficiency, her blissful psychological state, her unassail-
able libidinal position, all this is really a metaphysical trans-
figuration of the rival-model. ... If the coquette seeks to be
desired, it is because she needs to have masculine desires di-
rected toward her in order to sustain her own coquetry....
She is no more self-sufficient than the man who desires her
... but the success of her strategy allows her to maintain the
appearance of self-sufficiency, by offering her, as well as him,
a desire that she can copy. If the desire directed toward her
is precious to her, it is because it supplies the food required
by a self-sufficiency that would collapse if it were totally
deprived of admiration. [Pp. 393-394]
-her as assertive or DionySIan;·exactly, at l~ast he sees her as escaping
In other words, if Freud let himself be tricked by women, it is
because he misunderstood the mimetic essence of desire. He mis-
takenly distinguished objectal desire from narcissistic desire because
he did not grasp their common foundation: mimeticism, the orig-
inary mimetic rivalry. The latter implies that self-sufficiency is nec-
essarily deceitful, that it can only be part of a strategy of desire: we
have only to convince others of our self-sufficiency in order to be
able to believe in it ourselves. Like Jung, and in at least as speculative
a fashion, Girard consistently endorses a monist position. That is
why in his view Freud knew much less than the coquette about the
nature of desire, and less than Proust, who
[60]
An Exciting Enigma
admirably revealed the mimetic unity of all the desires that
Freud strove to divide into those deceptive categories of ob-
jectal desire and narcissistic desire. Proust knew that only one
desire exists, and that it is the same for all men.... Proust
knew perfectly well that there is no desire but desire for
absolute Difference and that this Difference is always abso-
lutely lacking to the subject.... The Proustian description
exposes the mythic character of narcissism. [Pp. 406, 4II,
412 ]
And Girard goes on to show how one can find in A fa recherche
du temps perdu all the metaphors of Freud's text on narcissism (the
child, the animal, the criminal, the humorist). But obviously "the
explanation of those metaphors is carried much further than in Freud.
Proust, as we cannot be reminded too often, knows that the aura
of self-sufficiency with which his desire endows the little band (the
girls in bloom 'within a budding grove') is not entirely real, has
nothing to do with some kind of regression toward an intact nar-
cissism at the time of puberty. Proust does not pontificate about
what might have happened at that time to the Sexualorgane of all
those little girls" (p. 41 I).
In discussing these "metaphors," Girard never evokes Nietzsche,
only Proust;" of whom Freud was surely not thinking at all. And
we can understand why. Li~,g.!:~~d_.t().~ietzsc_he,as we have
done, is a way ofemphasizing that in this text Freud thinks ofwoman
precisely as being entirely dijftrent fom the coq!Jette:if he does not see
resentment, penis envy, and hysteria, as not needing man's desire
in order to please and desire herself. As..a woman needing neither
lies nor coquettish strategie~ to. charm man: the enigma of woman,
for once, can be contemplated without the categories of appearance,
veil, fetishism, and castration, to which Girard's description un-
wittingly but inevitably brings it back. The coquette is in no way r
frightening or enigmatic, since it is very easy-Freud did not fail to
do it-to reduce her desire to the envy of the penis of the man she
is seeking to seduce. What is frightening is woman's indifference to
41 And he can invoke Proust only by translating Raubtier as "bird of prey."
[61]
 The Enigma and the Veil An Exciting Enigma

, "Acco rding to trustw orthy sources, Freud broke off all sexual
man's desire, her self-sufficiency (even if it is based on a fantasy
r this relations with his wife at a very early age. Zur Einfiihrung des Nar-
which is not the same thing as a strateg y or a lie):42 whethe a
zicissmus contain s the ingenu ous avowa l of his fascination with
self-sufficiency is real or only suppos ed to be real, it is what makes to think of
certain type of woman . This text leads me irresist ibly
woman enigma tic, inaccessible, impene trable. Especially since she
the misgui ded innoce nce of the bearde d old profess or in The Blue
neither simulates nor dissimulates anythin g, she exhibit s her plati-
Angel: in a close-up, the long legs of Marlen e Dietric h, all clad in
tude, or rather the beauty of her breasts. Men like Girard (or Freud black ... " (p. 400).
himself, in most of his other texts) are the ones who, because they
Girard unleashes all his verve and violence against Freud, whom
find woman 's self-sufficiency intolerable, conceive of it as a pure
he incauti ously confuses with Kant- as if that association could be
strateg em, a matter of appearances; they imagin e that her coquet ry, t
taken for grante d-and, more seriously still, he does so withou
her beauty , is a supple mentar y adornm ent destine d to deceive men, comple x charac ter of the text, or
taking accoun t of the twisted and
that "platit ude" itself is always at bottom a disguise for someth ing
even of its meanin g at the literal level. Accord ing to Girard , Freud
like penis envy, some "desire for the other."
characterized the attracti on that man, and Freud himself, experie nced
That is why, in Girard 's mistak en view, Proust knows a lot more
for coquet tes as incongruous. But Freud is not fascinated by "co-
about all this than Nietzsc he does, or at all events more than Freud.
- quettes ," by Celime ne figures (but simply , as we have seen, by the
But Girard never once wonde rs how Proust comes by all this knowl
"It is becaus e that's the way it is, project ed image of his double, by woman 's intact narcissism, the
edge. That does not interest him.
image of the childho od happiness that is always long lost), nor does
and not otherw ise" (p. 411)! Girard is interes ted only in making
he characterize as "incon gruous " an attracti on of that sort, which
Proust his accomplice against Freud -the homos exual Proust (but
seems to him, on the contrar y, perfectly compre hensib le if not le-
that doesn' t matter either, it changes nothin g, since "Prous tian ho-
gitimat e. Freud speaks only of the Inconyruene of types of object
mosex uality has no object, proper ly speaking; it always bears upon
o

choice, that is, of their noncon cordan ce in men and women , an

the model and this model is chosen as such because it is out of reach
lncongruens: that is the source of the unhapp iness of all passion .
. . . in a quasi-religious transce ndance " [po 410]) who has unders tood
If there is some incong ruity, it seems to me to lie rather in
perfectly the mimeti c nature of desire and serves as "mode l" for the
Girard 's critiqu e of Freud, in the suspicions that he brings to bear
interpretation of Freud's text: the supposed self-sufficiency of woman
against the "great moder n master of suspici on," against "that in-
is a simple fantasy on Freud's part that he did not perceive as such, to
ventor of psycho analysi s" who, accord ing to Girard , ought not
blinded as he was by his own desire for the "coque ttes": a quite
have "passe d lightly over an incong ruity [!] of that propor tion"
incong ruous desire in such a man of "Duty ," in "this hero of moral
(p. 396). Girard 's own incong ruity is sizable enough : he is not the
consciousness, the tough practit ioner of the categorical impera tive"
one who invente d psychoanalysis, after all, yet he claims to be
(p. 3(6).
turning it against Freud, against someo ne who, trouble d and blinded
atic.
"To the extent that it stems from narcissism, self-sufficiency is fantasm by his own desires, suppos edly did not see that female self-suffi-
self-suff iciency, an absolute narcissi sm, is for Freud a
The idea of an absolute
pure theoretical fiction: the illustration of what such a narcissism
might be is ciency was simply one of his own fantasies: "Desir e must be seri-
y
offered not by woman but by the child in the mother' s womb, or
by the myth ously cloudin g Freud's vision, in fact, for him to take as entirel
point of
of the original father in the primitiv e horde. But from the psychic
icient amount to the same real this Selbstgertiigsamkeit that the coquet te seems to him to enjoy
icient and beillg self-suff
subseq uent to the Pubertdtsentioickluno of her weibliche Sexualorgane"
view, believillgoneself self-suff
atic nature
thing. Girard claims to believe that Freud is unaware of the fantasm
a fantasy
of self-sufficiency and he thus makes of its suppose d "reality " both (p. 399).
One might perhap s wonde r why Girard is so frighte ned offemale
uette"
on Freud's part and the effect of a strategy and a lie on the part of the"coq
y" and "coquet te" are pure "labels, "
self-sufficiency, of those weibliche Sexualorgane; for that is what does
(though later on Girard adds that "strateg
not to be taken too literally).
[62] [63)
 The Enigma and the Veil
seem to be at stake in his whole polemic against Freud: "This self-
sufficiency is not of this earth, it is the last flickering of the sacred"
(p. 399; emphasis added). Freud, by revealing in such a suspect
manner his fascination with the coquette's presumed self-sufficiency,
was supposedly betraying his own deepest fantasy: to become "that
absolute and indestructible being that does violence to everything
around it" (p. 399) and that attracts all desires to itselflike magnets
(p. 398). That is why, for Freud, "narcissism is the libido itself,
which is the same thing as energy and power, energeia and dynamis.
All this works just like the Polynesian mana" (p. 399).
This narcissism is viewed as mythical, for behind the mirror of
narcissism, that solipsistic myth, the mimetic model and the struggle
of doubles are concealed. "The respect we owe Freud must not keep
us from taking a clear look at his text and spelling out what can be
deciphered of his own desire, once the factitious and artificial char-
acter of narcissism has been observed, the completely illusory char-
acter, finally, of that pseudo-discovery" (p, 40 0 ) .
In the last analysis (that of Girard, better informed than Freud
on the subject), the text is considered symptomatic of Freud's ri-
valrous eroticism fixated on woman. In spite of the explicit dene-
gations, this entire text is seen as profoundly "antifeminine." Of
course! But where antifeminism is concerned, Girard seems in any
event to be competing with Freud, for Girard, as if taking some
ritual precaution, designates the female genital organs only in Ger-
man, and congratulates Proust for having turned his back on the
Sexualorgane ofall those little girls, and for having succeeded so well
in transposing his homosexuality into heterosexuality in his work,
since in any case it all comes down to the same thing, since desire
is by nature undifferentiated-and sexual difference is null and void
with respect to the undifferentiating logic of mimetic desire.
What Girard does not forgive in Freud, that man of another age,
so naive, is in general terms his dualism, but more particularly his
~~ categorical insistence on sexual difference: "The charm of the text on
narcissism, the vivacity of its observations, the type of youthfulness
that emanates from it, all these derive from what it retains of the
beliefs of another age and of an almost naive faith in the difference
of the female sex" (p. 40 1) .
What he does not forgive is that Freud dared affirm what he,
[64]
An Exciting Enigma
Girard, calls women's "insolent inaccessibility" (ibid.). This little
word "insolent" is not an innocent supplement; it allows Girard to
replace Freud's term "envy" with the phrase "intense rancor" (the
feeling man is supposed to have toward the woman he desires) and
thus to affirm, with the help of these additions that distort the
original text, that Freud, rather than Girard himself, makes woman
an obstacle and a rival.
It may seem astonishing that Girard never once alludes to the
bulk of Freud's discourse, to the famous "penis envy" that in other
texts really does transform the woman into a "coquette," and trans-
forms her modesty and her beauty into veils designed to mask the
defectiveness ofher genital organs so that she can better arouse man's
desire. But to be sure, woman as penis envier would not be able to
inspire man's mimetic rivalry.
CRIMINAL OR HYSTERIC
The problem, for me, is this: Why was it unusual for Freud to
regard woman as self-sufficient? Why did he seem panic-stricken,
unable to bear the sight of his "double"? Why did he avert his eyes
from this inaccessible woman and at the same time turn back from
the most powerful advance of his discourse, turn aside from the
path that had been leading him toward an entirely different view of
woman and the enigma she presents? "On N_~_~<;i~~~sI11" opened Ul'_i
a possibility that both earlier and later texts neglected: that of con-
ceptualizing the enigma of woman along the lines of the great crim-
inal rather than the hysteric (though for Freud even the hysteric
always had something of the criminal about her). "Psycho-analysis
and the Establishment of the Facts in Legal Proceedings" in fact
compares and differentiates these two types of enigmas and, cor-
relatively, the psychoanalytic method and the judicial inquest. In
each case the problem is to discover something concealed, a "secret."
But whereas the criminal knows his secret and is trying to hide it,
the hysteric has a secret of which "he" is ignorant and which he is
hiding from himself. And yet the therapist has the same task as the
examining magistrate: "We have to uncover the hidden psychic
[65]
 The Enigma and the Veil
material; and in order to do this we have invented a number of
detective devices, some of which it seems that you gen~lemen of
the law are now about to copy from us" ("Psycho-analysIs and the
Establishment of the Facts in Legal Proceedings," P: 108).. ,
In the search for the "solution" to the riddle, the therapist s tas~
turns out to be made easier by the patient's "as~ista~ce," by hIS
conscious efforts against resistance, for he hopes m thIS way to be
cured (even though-Freud does not say so i~ t~s text--on the
unconscious level, on the contrary, resistance IS mcreased by the
anticipated benefit of the illness); the criminal, on the o.ther ha~d,
does not collaborate with justice, for "he would be workl~g agamst
his whole ego." In the judicial investigation, ~o:wever, It ~uffices
for the examiner to acquire an objective convrction regarding the
crime, whereas" our therapy demands that the patient himselfshould
arrive at the same certainty" (ibid., p. 112).
The problem, then, is to determine w~et~er .Freu~, as a new
Oedipus, completely unaware of his own cnml.n~hty, ~IS own ~em­
ininity, proceeds with his inquiry into the ~emmme em~ma as If he
<were dealing with a criminal or rather with a hystenc. Does he
admit that woman is the only one who knows her own se~ret: knows
the solution to the riddle and is determined not to share It, smc.e .sh~
is self-sufficient, or thinks she is, and has no nee~ ~or c~mpli~lty.
This is the path opened up by the text "On N,ar~lsslsm,. ~ .pamful
path for man, who then complains of woman s maccesslbihty, her
coldness, her "enigmatic," indecipherable character. Or ~oes Freud
proceed, on the contrary, as if woman were completely Ignorant of
her own secret were disposed to help the investigator, to collaborate
with him, per~uaded that she must b~, that s~.e is, ':~ll," t~at she
cannot get along without man if she IS to be cured? This path,
reassuring for man's narcissism, seems to be the one Freud ~hooses.
.~ It is as if Freud (and men in general) "knew," dream-fashIo~, t~at
women were "great criminals" but nevertheless strove, by bringing
about such a reversal as occurs in dreams, to pass them off as hys-
terics, for it is very much in men's interest that women ~hould sha~e
their own convictions, should make themselv~ accomplices to ,~en s
crimes in exchange for a pseudo-cure, a pOlson-remedy, a solu-
tion" that cannot help being pernicious since it restores speech to
[66]
Att Exciting Enigma
women only in order to model it on men's, only in order to condemn
their "demands" to silence.
And if Freud in his investigation can thus transform women into
hysterics while denying that he is indulging in any speculation,
insisting that he is relying on observation alone, it is because in the
course of history most women have indeed been men's accomplices:
don't most mothers seek above all to make their sons heroes, great
men? Don't they seek to be accomplices in their sons' crimes, at the
risk of their own lives? In this sense most women are indeed "hys-
terics." That is why even though the body of material Freud is
working on is limited to what his hysteric patients provide, he can
extend his "results" to so-called normal women in perfectly good
faith (?): between the first group and the second there can be no
more than a simple difference of degree. That is why, in the lecture
"Femininity," after opening up three possible paths for the girl's
development following the discovery of her castration-neurosis, a
"masculinity complex," and "normal.femininisy't-c-he says nothing,
finally, about the third path, for it differs from the first only in its
lesser degree of repression.
Thus it is as if Freud had "covered up" some of his knowledge,
"covered over" one solution with another more gratifying to men
if not to women (the end of the "Femininity" lecture stresses the
less than "friendly" character of the presentation that has just been
made ["es k/ingt auch nichtimmerfreund/ich"]), just as children wonder
where they come from-a fundamental question echoed in countless
riddles, most notably the one posed by the Sphinx-and invent false
"theories" that overlie their own earlier knowledge, which con-
formed much more closely with the "truth" (see, for example, "The
Sexual Theories of Children"). This is because in Freud's case, as
with children, the interests at stake are not at all "theoretical": the
task assigned to thought in both cases seems in fact to be that of
warding off some formidable danger. For the child, the question
and the answer are "the product of a vital exigency" ("Sexual The-
ories," p. 213), that of finding a way to mitigate the danger asso-
ciated with the arrival of newcomers likely to seize maternal affection
for themselves. But what exigency oflife might compel men to ask
themselves the woman question and find some "solution" for it?
 Tile Enigma and tire Veil
Does not the "vital exigency" here require both that man try to
respond to such an enigma and at the same time be unable to respond
"truly," so that he cannot help fmding false solutions (even though
he knows the riddle's answer, if it is true, as Hegel declares, that
unlike the symbol, a riddle always has a solution and that the person
who asks the question knows the answer even though some pro-
found interest keeps him from revealing it)?
STRONG SEX OR WEAK SEX?
Ii Men's speculation about woman, indeed, no more springs from
!i theoretical interest than children's does. Men wonder about her
1\ because she worries them, frightens them, gives them the impression
~ of a disturbing strangeness. This fear is fed by the fact that s~e seems
to them to be "different from man, for ever incomprehensible and
mysterious, strange and therefore apparently.hostile":43 "~as eib
anders ist als der Mann, ewig unverstandhch und gehelmmsvol
fremdartig und darum feindselig erscheint," writes Freud about the
primitive man who institutes the taboo of virginity, for when the
primitive sets up a taboo, it is because he fears a danger, and .:
generalized dread of women is expressed in ~ll these rules of avoid-
ance" (ibid. )-which can go so far as to forbid the name~ .of p~rs~ns
of the opposite sex to be uttered. What is true .of prir~lltlVeS IS Just
as true of civilized peoples: "in all this there IS nothing obsolete,
nothing which is not still alive among ourselves" (ibid., p. 199):
What man always fears is "being weakened by the woman, m-
fected with her femininity and ... then showing himself incapable,"
the prototype of this anxiety being "the effect whic~ coitus has. of
discharging tensions and causing flaccidity," and "the influence w~ch
the woman gains over him through sexual intercourse, the consid-
eration she thereby forces from him" (ibid., pp. 198-1.99~ ',
Woman thus appears as an enemy; she makes pnminve man
43"The Taboo of Virginity" ("Contributions to the Psychology of Lov:,"
Ill), Il:193- 208 (1918a [1917]): "Woman is different from man, for ever.Ill,:
comprehensible and mysterious, strange and therefore apparently hostile
(p. 198).
[68]
An Exciting Enigma
uneasy, as does everything that is new, incomprehensible, and un-
canny. I~ p~rticular, "minor differences" in people who are very
much alike m other respects are the ones that arouse the feeling of
strangeness and hostility: whence a certain number of taboos that
set woman apart, and in particular the taboo of virginity, as if
woman were most to be feared on the occasion of her first sexual
relations, on her wedding night."
..~his taboo of virginity, which may appear quite enigmatic to
civilized peoples, seems then to have a simple explanation: woman
is to be feared, she represents the "strong sex," man the "weak sex."
It is she who exerts "influence" and "power," she who dispossesses
men of their strength; it is in order to avoid this domination by
women and to reverse the roles in their own favor-as dreams do-
that men establish a whole series of taboos.
But to settle for this explanation would mean accounting for the
taboo at a very superficial level. As if gripped by panic and desire
in the face of the intolerable power of the female sex that he has
:V just demonstrated, Freud brings about a thoroughgoing reversal,
just as he has done in the text on narcissism, by proposing a "totally
different solution."
. Th~ deepest motive for the taboo of virginity-the one that orig-
mates 111 the deepest layers of the psyche-s-lies in woman's penis
envy, which originates in her castration complex: this "envy" is
what man fears, for it. unleashes a hostile bitterness in woman; be-
cause she feels "cheated" by nature or by her mother for being less
well endowed than man, she takes her revenge against man on their
wedding night-by castrating him in his tum. "A woman's immature
.se~ua1ity is discharged on to the man who first makes her acquainted
With the sexual act. This being so, the taboo of virginity is reasonable
enough and w~ can understand the rule which decrees that precisely
the man who IS to enter upon a life shared with this woman shall
avoid these dangers" (p. 206) .
. .~ow t?e taboo of virginity has not completely disappeared from
Civilized life. As proof, we are offered the dream of a disturbed
young bride, a dream that "betrayed spontaneously the woman's
....In nuit denoces, the French expression for "wedding night," the word noces
can also connote dissipation and debauchery. - Translator
 The Enigma and the Veil
wish to castrate her young husband and to keep his penis for herself"
(p. 205).45 Literature provides further proof, both in tragedies such
as Hebbel's Judith (the decapitation of Holophernes is interpreted as
a castration: "Judith is accordingly the woman who castrates the
man who has deflowered her" [po 207])46 and in such comedies as
Anzengruber's Das Jungferngift (Virgin's Venom), whose title "re-
minds us of the habit of snake-charmers, who make poisonous snakes
first bite a piece of cloth in order to handle them afterwards without
danger" (p. 206). These are the only proofs Freud offers....
By making "penis envy" the basic motive underlying the taboo,
Freud brings a necessary "solution" to the "vital exigency of life, "
for it in fact effectively allows men to surrender to women's ma-
nipulations without danger: the entire operation of this text consists
in ridding the woman-snake of her dreaded power by endowing her
with a simple "immature sexuality." The name of this operation is
castration: Freud undertakes it at the very moment when he claims
to be exposing the woman's desire to castrate her young husband
in order to acquire his penis. It isas if men and Freud were trying
to overcome the poisonous snake that woman has always repre-
sented for them, to get hold of her power for- therDieIye~~Y'hile
projecting their own weakness onto her.. In this view, it is woman
whose sexuality is immature, woman who suffers from penis envy,
woman who is the weaker sex; it is man who is the stronger sex,
who has nothing to envy in woman, who has simply to protect
himself against her "bitterness."
We may wonder, then, whether women's desire for vengeance
indeed grows out of bitterness against nature, that ungrateful step-
mother, or whether it does not stem rather from bitterness against
men and their culture, which has always removed them from their
seat of power. For if man so dreads women, takes $0 many ritual
precautions against them, is it not because he knows his own guilt?
~) and if.he so fears castration, is it not because he first be~an by
,Ii castrating t h e m ? ' "
Lou Andreas-Salome was not mistaken. Concerning "The Taboo
of Virginity" she wrote to Freud:
"Freud settles for providing an interpretation of this dream: it would have
been useful to know the dream's manifest text.
"Cf Sarah Kofman, "Judith," in Quatre Romans analytiques (Paris, 1974).
An Exciting Enigma
It occurred to me that this taboo may have been intensified
by the fact that at one time (in a matriarchal society) the
,:oman may have been the dominant partner. In this way,
like the defeated deities, she acquired demonic properties, and
w~s fear~d as an agent of retribution. Also her defloration by
deity, pnests, etc. points back to a time when she was not
the "private property" of the male, and in order to achieve
this she had to shake off the shackles of her impressive past-
which may still play its part as the earliest positive basis for
the precautionary measures of the male. 47
THE SUBLATION OF MOTHERS
The most humiliating judgment that can be passed on a reasonable
being: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
-Immanuel Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties
These conclusi~ns remain valid even though historically speaking
(contrary to the VIews of Freud, Lou Andreas-Salome, Nietzsche,
and a.ll the others in the nineteenth century who had read Bachofen),
ma~narchy ~as:I1ever existed as such, and even though, at the sym-
bolic level, it IS always the father that has held the power: since
maternity leaves no room for doubt, it does not need the social
confirmation that is required by paternity, which is always a matter
of belief, ofdeduction, always subject to being called into question. 48
. "Paternity is a pl.!relysocialrelation"; because it is dissociated from
47Andreas-Salome to Freud, January 30, 1919, in Sigmund Freud and Lou
Andreas-Salome Letters, ed. Ernst Pfeiffer, trans. William and Elaine Robson-
Scott (New York, 1972), p. 89.
. 4BCf. Moses and Monotheism, pp. I I 3- 114: " ... it came about that the rna-
tnarchal social order was succeeded by the patriarchal one--which of course
mvolved a. revolutio.n in the juridical conditions that had so far pr~vailed. A~
echo of this ~evolutlOn seems still to be audible in the Oresteia of Aeschylus.
Bu~ this turnmg from the mother to the father points in addition to a victory
of intellectuality over sensuahty-that IS, an advance in civilization, since ma-
ternity IS pr~ved by the evidence of the senses while paternity is a hypothesis,
based o~ an mference and a premise. Taking sides in this way with a thought-
process in preference to a sense perception has proved to be a momentous step. "
[7 1 ]
 The Enigma and the Veil
procreation. it has had to be reinforced of necessity from the ~utset
by society, which in the course of its "progress" has only continued
to aggrandize the figure of the father and to increase his powers.i"
If for this reason the mother has never really been the supreme
authority, she has nevertheless played this role at the fantasmatic
level; she has always been that formidable deity possessing the power
oflife and death over man. To endow woman with an "immature"
or incomplete sexuality is indeed to castrate the Mother, she who
for the child is a phallic mother, androgynous like that Egyptian
goddess Mut, who had the he?d of a vulture: "her body.was female,
as the breasts indicated, but it also had a male organ 10 a state of
erection" ("Leonardo," p. 94)·
The Freudian "solution " which in his theory confers upon man
anci'f;ther the p~~is and th; phallus, is the inverse of the {<!ntasmatic
omnipotence that the child confers. upon the mother.~.it.iswhat o~ght
to make it possible to cut the umbilical cord, to triumph over im-
mediate belief in the senses, to carry out both the passage from
mother to father and the passage from the senses to reason, and
thereby to accomplish the "progress" of civilization--even if the
mother's death (or at least her castration) has to follow.
Two of Freud's dreams corroborate the view that at the level of
Freud's own fantasies the mother is indeed the figure of the inac-
cessible woman, fearsome and all-powerful: forbidden. His dream
of his mother's death associates her with an Egyptian god who has
the head of a sparrow hawk; this may just as well be Mut the an-
drogynous vulture goddess, Mut the phallic mother, die Mutter.
The dream of the Three Fates (Dreams, pp. 204-208) assimilates
her to one of the three Fates who spin human destinies: it is the
mother who gives life and the first nourishment to the living crea-
ture. It is she who is the object of his earliest desire: "Love and
hunger, I reflected, meet at a woman's breast. A young man who
was a great admirer of feminine beauty was talking once---sO the
story went--of the good-looking wet-nurse who had suckled him
when he was a baby: 'I'm sorry,' he remarked, 'that I didn't make
better use of my opportunity' " (ibid., p. 204). The maternal breast
49Cf. Jean-Joseph Goux, "Matiere, difference des sexes," in Matiere et pulsion
de mort (Paris, 1975)·
An Exciting Enigma
is truly an "inn" and a windfall." as the dream associated with
Daudet's Sapho confirms (ibid., pp. 285-289 and 233), but, because
it arouses a forbidden incestuous desire, it is also the supreme danger:
having sexual relations with the mother is as fearsome as having
them with a prostitute (who is only a mother substitute, after all);
the mother figure is an ambivalent representation of supreme se-
curity and ultimate risk, life and death, gentleness and sensuality,
virgin and whore. It is only through the effect of splitting that each
of her attributes is cut off from its opposite; but dreams reassociate
what has been dissociated under the effect of repression or denial.
Thus the dream connected with Sapho, which Freud associated in a -
note with the one about the Three Fates, has to do with the danger
inherent in having sexual relations with people "of humble origin
and a dubious past" (Dreams, p. 286), whom he has interpreted as
being associated with the wetnurse and the mother: "It was just as
though the child at the breast was being given a warning parallel to
the one which Daudet had given to young men [that they avoid
girls with a dubious past]" (p. 289). The dream of the Three Fates,
which at the level of manifest content is a "hunger dream" (p. 233:
Freud went to bed tired and hungry after a journey, which would
explain why "the major vital needs began to announce their presence
in [his] sleep" [Dreams, p. 204]), connects the need for food with
the child's nostalgia for the maternal breast and uses an innocent
tendency to conceal a more important one that cannot be brought
freely into the open on its own. One of the thoughts governing the
dream is a wistful regret at having let slip a good opportunity, namely,
the mother (a good opportunity only in the fantasy of deferred
. action), and regret at having failed, out of guilt and castration anx-
iety, to enjoy life to the full. The moral of the dream is carpe diem:
" 'One should never neglect an opportunity, but always take what
one can even when it involves doing a small wrong. One should
never neglect an opportunity, since life is short and death inevita-
ble' " (p. 207).51
50 At least it is "dreamed" this way in the time of "deferred action": "I was
in the habit of quoting this anecdote to explain the factor of 'deferred action'
in the mechanism of the psychoneuroses" (Dreams, pp. 204-2°5).
SlThis moral lesson also appears in She, the novel by Rider Haggard that
Freud mentions in The Interpretation of Dreams: "[This strange sight] hath its
 An Exciting Enigma
The Enigma and the Veil
of
What the mother , Moira, teaches is that every gift, every share
To this dreame d carpe diem, the mother , by definition, is always the gift of life is always at the same
of life, has to be paid back, that
oppose d, teaching her son on the contra ry to defer the realization t
time a gift of death, that Mothe r Nature never gives (herself) withou
his desires: the "moth er" has never been present, has never gone own bosom ."
; reserve, that "the fruits of her giving abide in her
along with her son's desires, has never been a "good opport unity"
dream, a myth, proj- The dream of the Three Fates thus identifies the Mothe r with
pure, origina l enjoym ent [jouissance] is a pure
the Nurse, with the Seductress and with Death, which "The Theme
I
ected into the past, into the time of deferre d action, as is also the
of the Three Casket s" much later (1913) would call "the three in-
idea of nature as sponta neity withou t prohib itions. The mothe r asks
evitabl e relations that a man has with a woma n-the woma n who
her son to wait for dinner to be ready. Far from being a represe ntation s
of b~ars him, the woman who is his mate and the woman who destroy
of untram meled sponta neity, she stands for law and necessity:
him; or ... the three forms taken by the figure of the mothe r in the
time, Death, difference. is
course of a man's life--th e mothe r herself, the belove d one who
A figure of necessity, Parca, Moira, or Ananke, she is the one who receive s
chosen after her pattern , and lastly the Mothe r Earth
who silently teaches her child to resign himsel f to the inevitable, him once more. "53
unacceptable, and stupefy ing necessity of Death:
The "theme of the three caskets" is the "return " in the form of
theory of what had been manifest as a concrete image in the dream.
When I was six years old and was given my first lessons by
The son had only to put into general and learned formul as ("Du
my mother , I was expect ed to believe that we were an made
bist der Natur einen Tod schuld ig") what his mothe r had been
of earth and must therefo re return to earth. This did not suit
setting before his eyes since his earliest childho od.
me and I expres sed doubts of the doctrin e. My mothe r there-
In "The Tb~Ille of the.Thr<::~~ Casket s" Freud gives back to his
upon rubbed the palms of her hands togeth er-jus t as she did
~other what he has borrow ed from her; this text is a debt of grat-
in making dumpli ngs, except that there was no dough be-
Itud~ to her. ~ere Freud pays tribute to nature. In one sense he gives
tween them- and showe d me the blackish scales of epidermis
up hIS own life here so as to "save" the Mothe r, to leave her in the
produc ed by the friction as a proof that we were made of
earth. My astonis hment at this ocular demon stratio n knew
no bounds and I acquiesced in the belief which I was later to hereafte r cited as "Thoug hts")' p. 289).
hear expressed in the words: 'Du bist der Natur einen Tod Is not the mother' s visual demons tration just that spectacle of death
which
death, in
schuld ig.' [Dreams, p. 205)52 she offers the son because it is impossi ble to look death, one's own
the face, and because the idea of death is tolerable only in re-presen
tationi Hence
of the Fates,
. the necessity of taking the path of the mother or the myth, that
"It is an inevitab le result
may bring! of takm~ the path of theatnca hty or of art in general:
lesson. Trust not to the future, for who knows what the future of all this that we should seek in the world of fiction, in literatur
e and in the
and endeavo r not to escape the dust which seems alone ... the
Therefo re, live for the day, theatre, compen sation for what has been lost in life.... There
to be man's end" (p. 219). e ourselve s
necessary conditio n can be fulfilled which makes it possible for us to reconcil
52"We were of course prepared to maintai n that death was the With death" ("Thou ghts," p. 29 1).
to pay the
outcom e of life, that everyon e owes nature a death and must expect Here is the econom ic and cathartic function of mimesis. See in
this con-
In reality,
debt-in short, that death was natural, undenia ble and unavoid able. nection, Philippe Lacoue- Labarrh e, La Cesure du speculati] (Paris,' 1977) and Le
We showed
howeve r, we were accusto med to behave as if it were otherwi se. SUJct de lao p~~losopJ:!e ,(Paris, 1979), in particul ar the chapters titled "La Scene
it from life.
an unmista kable tendenc y to put death on one side, to eliminat e est pn~l1t1ve and L ~cho du sujet." Cf. also Bob Fosse's fum All That Jazz,
we attempt
... It is indeed impossi ble to imagine our own death, and whenev er In which only the staging of death allows the
dying man to say to death/th e
that we are in fact still present as spectato rs.... At
to do so we can perceive mother; "Come ."
in another
bottom no one believes in his own death, or, to put the same thing ""The Theme of the Three Caskets ," 12:291-301 (r913£-' hereafte
r cited as
own immor-
way, ... in the unconsc ious everyo ne of us is convinc ed of his "Casket s"), p. 30 r.
300 [1915b;
tality" ("Thoug hts for the Times on War and Death," 14:275-
 The Enigma and the Veil
position of primacy. The tribute consists in fact in the eternal wis-
dom he draws from his analysis (in particular that of King Lear),
namely: that one must renounce love, choose death, come to terms
with the need to die; it is precisely,~his wisdom ~h;lt JtiSIDQtber
taught him, demonstrated before his very eyes, by means of an
image, and the text declares it to be a simple return to the wisdom
of the original myth, more or less camouflaged in later myths and in
literature, though this original myth is itself a later construction
based on literature.
To affirm the priority of the myth and its truth is to recognize
how much is owed by speculation, by rational, masculine theory-
that of psychoanalysis-to the visual demonstration produced by a
woman, the mother; it is to recognize that this celebrated "progress
of civilization" could not have been accomplished without the per-
ceptible mediation of the mother. The pedagogical order is as rig-
orous as the natural order, it governs the necessary passage through
the senses and through myth, through maternal education." this latter
anticipates the science to come, in which men merely formulate,
formalize, what women have always known though they have been
unable to say it, only to show it, reduced as they have been to silence
(in the dream the mother does not speak), reduced to taking the
place of death in culture. To wish to escape from this pedagogical
order, to do without the passage through the mother, the senses,
and myth, is as vain as to claim to have escaped being born through
the maternal canal; and that is as absurd as the most absurd death,
the death that escapes the natural order of generations. It amounts
in effect to wishing for self-conception, and thus to cause the mother
to die before giving birth, or else to cause the son to be born before
the mother: this absurd overturning of the generational order, if it
were possible, would only entail an irremediable sense of guilt and
would leave one inconsolable, just as the disturbance of the natural
"The idea that all education necessarily begins with myth and that this myth
is told by women, mothers, is already found among Plato's teachings in the
Republic (bk. Ill). And even when Plato substitutes a "true" philosophical con-
tent for a deceptive poetic content, good theology for bad, it remains no less
the case that the very earliest education of the guardians of the city continues
to be passed on by women, even if they are now charged with transmitting a
"content" reflected by the philosophers (who may in the ideal city, strictly
speaking, be women as well as men).
An Exciting Enigma
order of death (for a son to die before the mother, for example, or
a daughter before the father) is intolerable for the survivor, for if
one can resign oneself to the inevitability of death in general-that
is, to one of the Moirai, Atropos--one cannot submit to the second
ofthe three sisters, Lachesis, the one who designates" 'the accidental
that is included in the regularity of destiny' " ("Caskets," p. 29 8).
For this chance element, this accident, through its absurdity and its
injustice, eludes all dominion, all wisdom, any "relevant" formu-
lation or formula of consolation. And that is what Freud has never
been able to bear, and his mother, the first of the Three Fates, never
taught him to resign himself to it: the idea that he himself might
die before his mother was intolerable to him, as was the reality of
the death of one of his daughters, and worse still, that of one of his
grandsons. If one can be taught to accept the common lot, the
ineluctability of death, death's absurdity is nonetheless resistant to
all education, to any mastering sublation.
Purporting to do without the mother, to carry out her "murder,"
is thus absurd and can only hasten the death of the son, nullifying
all his science. Freud could not tolerate that.
"The Theme of the Three Caskets," a text contemporary with
"On Narcissism" (and by no mere coincidence), thus acknowledges
the great debt the son's science owes to the mother; it displays her
irreplaceable, fascinating (in Blancher's sensej " omnipotence, and
compares her with those "great Mother-goddesses of the oriental
peoples ... [who] all seem to have been both creators and de-
stroyers-both goddesses oflife and fertility and goddesses ofdeath"
("Caskets," p. 299).
Correlatively, in Nietzschean fashion-the Nietzsche of The Birth
of Tragedy-the irreplaceable character of myth is recognized: myth
as the source of all truth, in literature as in psychoanalysis. To be
sure, most of Freud's other texts also assert that psychoanalytic
knowledge proves to have been "anticipated" by myth or poetry.
But in an Aristotelian (and no longer Nietzschean) gesture, Freud
then invokes anticipation the better to master it: 56 myth indeed
"knows," but its way of knowing is halting, childlike, confused,
"See Blanchot, Space of Literature, pp. 32-33.
56Cf. Sarah Kofman, Quatre Romans analytiques.
[77]
 The Enigma and the Veil
imagistic, inarticulate, unconscious, and it has to be heightened by-
and seen in the light of-adultJL.nalytic knowledge in order t~ a.ccede, .
properly speaking, to Truth; Mytl1 holds truth as a potentiality [en\
puissance], but that mythic f6'ftC1Pui~sance]becomes me~ningful only \
when en~cted. through the formations and formulations of psy- \
choanalytic saence.
Between "The Theme of the Three Caskets" and the other texts
we have been dealing with, there is a shift of emphasis. "The Theme
of the Three Caskets" stresses the anticipatory omnipotence of myth,
the omnipotence of the mother, unique and original source of all
truth; here science is a simple return to what she has always "taught."
The other texts, on the contrary, emphasize the necessary "subla-
tion" of mothers (who are always lost, like Eurydice) and of myths
through the knowledge of the sons that they confusedly anticipate.
In the first case one is giving back all the mother's gifts, one is
returning to her womb as to the sole fecundating source: the dream
of the Three Fates recalls that the university where Freud spent "the
happiest hours of [his] student life, free from all other desires"
(Dreams, p. 206), is the alma mater that dispenses spiritual nourish-
mentr" In that university he only relearned from a professor who
accused a person (Knodel) of having plagiarized his works what his
mother, one of the Fates, had already "shown" him while kneading
dumplings (Knodel): histological knowledge concerning the epider-
mis. In this case, it is the mother who bears and sustains her son
like a nursling, as in the dream associated with Sapho, In the other
case, the son, now an adult, "lifts up" [reLeve] the mother, it is he
who supports her now with the full power ofhis arms and his reason.
In the same way, in Daudet's novel Sapho, which is more elaborate
than the dream associated with it, it is the man who carries the
woman of humble origins with whom he has had sexual relations;
57 Freud quotes Goethe (Dreams, p. 206 and n. 3):
So wird's Euch an der Weisheit Briisten
Mit jedem Tage mehr geliisten.
Thus, at the breasts of Wisdom clinging,
Thou'lt find each day a greater rapture bringing.
[Faust, pt. I, sc. 4, trans. Bayard Taylor]
Att Exciting Enigma
as Lear, similarly, carries Cordelia. In this case an authentic do-
mesticating inversion of the oneiric type takes place: Freud's dream
is that the power of the theoretical should dominate the ~yth,' over:"
come the omnipotence of the mother and of Death, give the son
and the father an extra portion of power-which could not be other
.~ than symbolic-in order to escape the necessary and original dom-
ination of the mother/death. J3t.:It is th~I1).Qther/death sl1bl;lt..~bk?
That "sublation" [releve, Aujhebung] of which all philosophy has
dreamed can be no more than a lovely dream. The second portion
of the dream of the Three Fates fulfills this desire for mastery, it
carries out an authentic reversal of power. The father, absent
throughout the first part, appears in the second as the rival of the
son, who is trying to "appropriate for himself' his father's property
by putting on his father's clothes, adorning himself with his feathers.
A whole chain of associations leads to the idea of plagiarism. In order
to gain the goodwill of the one from whom he may have feared
some vengeful castration, the son this time pays his debt to his father,
gives him back his feathers, and by way of damages and interest
grants him as a boon a supplementary phallus, that of the mother,
whom he abandons (she who in this operation has lost feathers) to
her sad "penis envy." The dream concludes, in fact, with the rec-
onciliation of the two rivals: "We then became quite friendly with
each other" (Dreams, p. 204). The fmal complicity between father
and son repeats and counterbalances the initial complicity between
mother and son. And just as the latter complicity alone made possible
"the murder of the father" and therefore the infantile sexual inves-
tigation and the later intellectual inquiry, so the former ought to
. permit "the murder of the mother" (if such a thing were possible)
and the triumph ofa science that has "brokem" [coup'0.~ithits mythic
origins, that has cut [coupe] its umbilIcal cord-rsuch is the episte-
mological break [coupure] Freud dreamed of....
Son and father Freud, reconciled, turn together to their castrating
manipulations. But this does not necessarily occur in a manner char-
acterized by perfect joy (Freude). One detail of the dream, in fact,
signifies that their symbolic power is perhaps as fragile as the flecks
of epidermis that are detached from the skin and prove our earthly
mortality. The "name of the father, " symbol of the symbolic, crum-
bles into dust: vulnerability with respect to the proper name under-
 The Enigma and the Veil
lines the fact that its permanence and its perenniality are merely
nominal and conventional, the inverse of castration, just as the joy
(Freude) exhibited by the name of Freud at once masks and reveals
the bitterness of belonging to the all too terrestrial "race" of the
circumcized: "Der Jude ist fiir die Freude und Freude ist fiir den
juden.'?" This name
had been the victim of feeble witticisms ... on countless oc-
casions. Goethe, I recalled, had remarked somewhere upon
people's sensitiveness about their names: how we seem to
have grown into them like our skin. He had said this in con-
nection with a line written on his name by Herder:
'Der du von Gottern abstammst, von Gothen oder vom
Kote.'-
'So seid ihr Gotterbilder auch zu Staub.'
[Thou who art the offspring of gods or of Goths or of
dung.-
So you too, divine figures, have turned to dustl]"
This double gesture on Freud's part turns up everywhere: on the
one hand, the acknowledgment of the (fantasmatic) maternal om-
nipotence transformed into a Fate or a great goddess; on the other
hand, a dream of turning this power to the profit of man, who runs
up against the real "resistance" of the mother (her mediation is
irreplaceable and she is unsublatable) and against the fragility of the
symbolic, which makes Freud's domesticating solution fictional and
merely "theoretical."
In connection with another of his dreams (Autodidasker) , Freud
recalls that Professor Breslau asked him one day how many children
he had: " 'Three [girls] and three [boys]: they are my pride and my
treasure.'-'Well, now, be on your guard! Girls are safe enough,
58"The Jew is made for joy and joy for the Jew" (Letters of Sigmund Freud,
ed. Ernst L. Freud, trans. Tania and James Stern [New York, 1960], p. 21).
"Dreams, p. 207 and n. 3. The Standard Edition there points out that the
first of these lines is indeed Herder's but that the second is a free association
by Freud, taken in reality from Goethe's Iphigene auf Tauris. I thank Cynthia
Chase for bringing this note to my attention.
[80]
An Exciting Enigma
but bringing up boys leads to difficulties later on' "(Dreams, p. 301).
Now this remark was in line with concerns felt by Freud's own
wife regarding the education of their sons: "Evidently this second
diagnosis, on the future of my boys, pleased me no more than the
earlier one, according to which my patient was suffering from a
neurosis.... In taking the story of the neurosis into my dream, I
was substituting it for the conversation about upbringing, which
had more connection with the dream-thoughts, since it touched so
closely upon the worries later expressed by my wife" (ibid., p. 302).
This dream reveals Freud's wish to be wrong in fearing for his
sons, the hope that Professor Breslau had produced a faulty diagnosis
concerning both his patient and his sons. Now, what can be so
terrifying for his sons if not sexual lift, which, because of woman,
leaves man only one alternative: organic or functional difficulty,
general paralysis or neurosis? What Freud dreads is that his sons may
be ruined by women. He would like to be wrong, would like the
professor and his own wife to be wrong, but this is simply a dream
wish. He knows that they are all in fact quite right.
Three girls and three boys, as in a fairy tale, three Fates, three
fearsome and fascinating fairies who are "safe enough" (!) to bring
up but who, like real witches, would indeed threaten to dominate
and contaminate their three brothers if their father failed to step in;
ifhe did not attempt to expurgate through his analyses, his catharsis,
the evil inherent in the feminine sex;" if he did not try to reduce
their power, at least a little, with a wave of his magic wand;?' if, in
order to "save" his sons, he did not adopt, despite his denials, the
"tendentious desire to depreciate" women. Is it not at the price of
.this explicit project alone that civilized man can accede to joy and
to his full sexual powers? "As soon as the condition of debasement
is fulfilled, sensuality can be freely expressed, and important sexual
capacities and a high degree of pleasure can develop.... The curb
put upon love by civilization involves a universal tendency to debase
sexual objects. "62 ' •._ .' ..'
60See in this connection Monique Schneider, Le Feminin expurge (Paris,
1979).
6'Cf. "The Theme of the Three Caskets," in which Freud identifies psy-
choanalysis with a magical operation.
62"On the Universal Tendency to Debasement in the Sphere of Love,"
II:I79-I90 (19I2d; hereafter cited as "Debasement"), pp. 183, 187.
t
[81]
 The Enigma and the Veil
PENIS ENVIER, PROSTITUTE, HOMOSEXUAL, FETISHIST
How can the castrating move that endows woman with an in-
complete sexuality and overturns her power in favor of man be
identified with the castrating move that debases women in order to
restore full sexual capacity to man? In other words, can the woman
penis envier described in Freud's theory-fiction be equated with the
prostitute? And if so, doesn't the prostitute who facilitates the sexual
relations of civilized men indeed constitute the great danger Freud
feared for his sons? Can Freud then propose prostitution as a solution
to the sexual life of civilized men (since a certain degree of psychic
impotence characterizes the love life of every civilized man)?
At first glance, there seems to be no way to identify the "penis
envier" with the prostitute: if the latter attracts men, the former
repels them. Indeed, the horror inspired by woman's genital organs,
those of the mother, is linked precisely to the perception of an
incomplete sexuality, the observation of the lack of a penis: the texts
never stop reiterating this quite clearly, though "The Uncanny"
("Die Unheimlichkeit," 1919) is slightly ambiguous in that it attrib-
utes the uncanny to the return of the repressed, to the reappearance
of what was once heimlich, of that place where everyone began,
dwelling in complete peace and Heimlichkeit: "It often happens that
neurotic men declare that they feel there is something uncanny about
the female genital organs. This unheimlich place, however, is the
entrance to the former Heim [home] of all human beings, to the
place where each one of us lived once upon a time and in the be-
ginning.... The prefix 'un' is the token of repression" (p. 245)·
Everywhere else, in "The Infantile Genital Organization" (19 2 3)
as in "Fetishism" (1927), the horror (Grauen) inspired by woman,
the misogyny, the general depreciation of the female sex are attrib-
uted to the castration anxiety that arises at the moment when the
lack of a penis is perceived, particularly when it is discovered that
the mother herself does not possess that precious organ. This horror
is comparable to the horror aroused by Medusa's head, the Greek
symbol of terror (that most archaic of emotions), the very figure of
.thkjerrifying..se.x: 2 f t he mother, all the more frightful in that it
isolates the effect of horror from that of pleasure. Freud, who has
Ferenczi to thank for the connection between woman's genitals and
An Exciting Enigma
Medusa's head,63 adds as his own personal contribution the idea that
it is the mother's sex that turns out to be on display in this symbol.
In "The Infantile Genital Organization," at the point where he is
quoting Ferenczi, he adds in a note: "I should like to add that what
is indicated in the myth is the mother's genitals. Athene, who carries
Medusa's head on her armour, becomes in consequence the unap-
proachable woman, the sight of whom extinguishes all thought of
a sexual approach" (p. 144, n. 3). And in "Medusa's Head'Y"
"'The terror of Medusa is thus a terror of castration that is
linked to the sight of something. Numerous analyses have
made us familiar with the occasion for this: it occurs when a
boy, who has hitherto been unwilling to believe the threat of
castration, catches sight of the female genitals, probably those
of an adult, surrounded by hair, and essentially those of his
mother. ... This symbol of horror is worn upon her dress by
the virgin goddess Athene. And rightly so, for thus she be-
comes a woman who is unapproachable and repels all sexual
desires-since she displays the terrifying genitals of the
Mother. [Pp. 273-274]
The depreciation of woman, her sexual "debasement," far from
facilitating intercourse, stifles all thought of closeness; woman in
general becomes unapproachable, a forbidden Mother who repels
all desire: the terror provoked by the genital organs is always linked
to the desire for and the fear of incestuous relations, for if the father
has already castrated the mother, his accomplice, he may equally
6'In "Revision of the Theory of Dreams," in New Introductory Lectures 011
Psycho-Analysis, 22:7-30 (I933a [1932)), this motifofterror is related to that of
the spider, symbol of the phallic mother, this time according not to Ferenczi
but to Abraham.
64This text was never published by Freud, perhaps because he did not dare
uphold this interpretation of an isolated symbol when he had neither provided
it with a "serious" genesis (the text attributes it only to the "strongly homo-
sexual" tendencies of the Greeks) nor managed to establish a parallel with other
myths, this time according to a method no longer genetic but comparative,
structural. The text ends, in fact, as follows: "In order seriously to substantiate
this interpretation it would be necessary to investigate the origin of this isolated
symbol ~~ horror in Greek mythology as well as parallels to it in other my-
thologies (p. 274). I, Freud, am more serious than Ferenczi.
 The Enigma and the Veil
well castrate the son-that is the danger against which "there [rises]
in rebeIlion the portion of his narcissism which Nature has, as a
precaution, attached to that particular organ" ("Fetishism," p. 153)·
The terror is never simply provoked by the castration of the other,
the mother, it is always also castration anxiety for oneself (if only
through identification with the mother). The conviction that the
woman/mother has no penis thus draws man away from woman
and predisposes him to homosexuality. It is no accident, according
to Freud, that we owe the symbol of Medusa's head to the Greeks:
"Since the Greeks were in the main strongly homosexual, it was
inevitable that we should find among them a representation [Dar-
stellung] of woman as a being who frightens and repels because she
is castrated" ("Medusa," p. 274).65
It seems indeed that in the face of this horror man has only two
solutions, homosexuality or fetishism; far from being "pathologi-
cal," either one, under these conditions, would be the normal destiny
of the masculine libido. Under these conditions, what becomes ab-
normal is heterosexuality. We then have the problem of understand-
ing how many men, if not all, manage to overcome their horror
and even experience pleasure in sexual relations with a woman.
Because to deal with this issue would perhaps lead him to doubt the
views he has just presented, Freud without further ado refuses to
address it.
Probably no male human being is spared the fright of cas-
tration at the sight of a female genital. Why some people
become homosexual as a consequence of that impression,
while others fend it off by creating a fetish, and the great
majority surmount it, we are frankly not able to explain. It
is possible that, among all the factors at work, we do not yet
know those which are decisive for the rare pathological re-
sults. We must be content if we can explain what has hap-
pened, and may for the present leave on one side the task of
"'The French translation uses the phrase depar leurforte tendance homoscxuelle,
"owing to their strong homosexual tendency." One wonders, however, what
"a homosexual tendency" might mean, since everywhere else Freud shows that
homosexuality is not a specific tendency but one of the possible destinies of a
bisexual libido.
An Exciting Enigma
explaining why something has not happened. ["Fetishism, "
pp. 154- 155]
He does not explain, at least "for the present," he says. One may
wonder, indeed, whether Freud is not providing an "explanation"
without admitting it, and whether belief in "penis envy" is not the
solution he is proposing for this riddle. For if penis envy implies
the absence of a penis and the castration of woman, it is also a way
of affirming that man's penis remains intact. Woman's penis envy
thus also provides man with reassurance against his castration anx-
iety; the horror inspired by Medusa's head is always accompanied
by a sudden stiffening (Starrwerden) , which signifies erection. "He
is still in possession of a penis, and the stiffening reassures him of
the fact" ("Medusa," p. 273). Things that arouse horror in them-
selves "serve actually as a mitigation of the horror" (ibid.; emphasis
added): penis envy, one might say, plays the same role as the hair
on Medusa's head, so often represented by serpents substituted for
the penis, the absence of which is the essential cause of horror. Penis
envy is seen as equivalent in a way to the symbolic multiplication
, of man's penis. And if horror in the face of woman's genital organs
always has as its apotropaic counterpart the erection of the male
organ, man's display of his penis as if to say, "I am not afraid of
you. I defy you. I have a penis" (ibid., p. 274), we can then un-
derstand how what was supposed to draw man away from woman
is always at the same time what brings him closer to her. Woman's
genital organs arouse an inseparable blend of horror and pleasure;
they at once awaken and appease castration anxiety.
• Because it signals the fact that man still possesses intact the penis
that woman no longer has (she once had one, but her father cut it
off), because it signals woman's loss ofomnipotence, woman's penis
envy increases man's power and allows him to overcome the in-
hibiting horror: as if "penis envy" restored woman's value as sexual
object by exhibiting-negatively, as it were-man's still intact and
complete sexuality.
Woman's penis envy is certainly the best solutionforFreud, the
solution that makes it possible to dispense with the dangerous so-
lution of recourse to prostitutes, those women of humble birth
sufficiently debased to exalt man's sex and to banish any association
[85]
 The Enigma and the Veil
with incest, though the figure of the whore results from a simple
splitting in two of the maternal figure and love for the whore rep-
resents only one of the ways a particular fixation of the boy's love
for his mother may turn out, though this choice of an object ap-
parently so different from the maternal object in fact unquestionably
betrays a maternal prototype: the whore is a simple substitute for
the mother and she retains all the mother's characteristics, just as
"after a protracted labor, [the skull of a newly born child] always
takes the form of a cast of the narrow part of the mother's pelvis.Y"
Penis envy also makes it possible to dispense with the homo-
sexual solution, which, if generalized, would lead to the extinction
of the human race. It spares man, fmally, from the fetishist solution,
a solution that triumphs over the threat of castration by offering
protection against it in the form of a fetish that is "a substitute for
the woman's (the mother's) penis that the little boy once believed
in and-for reasons familiar to us-does not want to give up" ("Fet-
ishism," pp. 152-153). This solution, in fact, is simply a compro-
mise, for if fetishism makes love life easier by supplying the woman
with a penis, in fantasmatic fashion, the very nature of the fetish
leaves room for doubt as to the woman's castration or noncastration,
and thus as to the potential castration of the man. The fetish in fact
results from a real compromise and from a split between denial and
affirmation of castration: the fetishist, like the child, at once main-
tains and abandons the belief that the woman (the mother) has a
phallus. "In the conflict between the weight of the unwelcome per-
ception and the force of his counter-wish, a compromise has been
reached, as is only possible under the dominance of the unconscious
laws of thought" (p. 154). This compromise is sometimes visible
in "the construction of the fetish itself," in that "supplementary
column'"" that is undecidable by nature,68 though this "undecidability"
M"A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men," II:165-175 (19 IOh ),
p. 169·
67This expression is used by Jacques Derrida in Glas (Paris, 1974), pp. 232ff.
6BDerrida shows in Glas how it may be possible "to reconstruct from Freud's
generalization a 'concept' of fetish that can no longer. be con~ined withi?, the
traditional opposition Ersatz/non Ersatz, or even WIthin OppOSItIOn at all. He
sees Freud's text as in this respect mixed: it contains both decidable and un-
decidable statements as to the very nature of the fetish. What he calls the "sheath
argument" introduces undecidable statements within determined statements,
[86]
An Exciting Enigma
is revealed most notably when the fetish is "doubly derived from
contrary ideas" and is for that reason particularly durable:
This was so in the case of a man whose fetish was an athletic
support-belt which could also be worn as bathing drawers.
This piece of clothing covered up the genitals entirely and
whereas Freud was presenting this whole development as a simple consequence
of his definition of the fetish as a simple substitute for the penis. In fact, it
seems to me that from the outset Freud affirms that he is "prepared to expect
the same solution in all cases offetishism" ("Fetishism," p. 152): when Derrida
affirms that "the smallest degree of consistency of the fetish presupposes some
connection with opposed interests," and thus inscribes it within a general econ-
omy of the undecidable, he seems to be in full agreement with Freud. Since
there can be no fetishism without a compromise between castration and its
denial and because the fetishist split-this is what distinguishes it from psy-
chosis-always preserves the two positions, the fetish can in no case be a simple
Ersatz of the penis: if there were really a decision in favor of one of the two
positions, there would no longer be any need to construct a fetish. The "sheath
argument" and the other examples quoted by Freud in favor of "undecidability"
do not seem to me to be mixed; furthermore, they are the only examples quoted,
and however "refined and subtle" they may be, they are presented not as
exceptions to a rule but as arguments weighing in favor of the fetishist's divided
stance, the split that alone makes possible the incompatible affirmations both of
castration and of its denial, These weighty arguments, moreover, are not de-
signed to "ballast a speculative hypothesis," as Derrida says, for Freud is taking
the speculative path not with respect to the fetishist split but with respect to
the distinction between neurosis and psychosis. Freud recalls that on this subject
and elsewhere, he was mistaken in venturing to follow such a path: "I had
reason to regret that I had ventured so far" ("Fetishism," p. 155). He leaves
that most regrettable speculative path precisely when he returns to the description
of fetishism, which he sees as grounded in a positive manner on observation
alone: "Returning to my description of fetishism, I may say that there are many
and weighty additional proofs of the divided attitude of fetishists to the question
of the castration of women" (ibid., p. 156). Ifit is true that there is "an economic
speculation on the undecidable," the Freudian economy required here no re-
course to speculation. Is it by chance, then, that Derrida speculates in Glas
about a pseudospeculation on Freud's part (at least ifone limits oneselfto Freud's
literal discourse)? This analysis, first set in small print in one column, taken up
a few pages later in large print in a second column, appears to me to be essential
to the overall economy of Glas, of its generalized fetishism; it makes it possible
to distinguish the erection on every page of a "supplementary column," sup-
plementary to the column of a fetish that is being parodied. It makes it possible
to establish a relationship between the "fetish" and the colossal, from the outset
always double. On the generalized fetishism of Glas, see Sarah Kofman, "Ca
cloche," in Les Fins de l'homme (Paris, 1981), pp. 89-II6.
 The Enigma and the Veil
concealed the distinction between them. Analysis showed that
it signified that women were castrated and that they were not
castrated; and it also allowed of the hypothesis that men were
castrated, for all these possibilities could equally well be con-
cealed under the belt-the earliest rudiment of which in his
childhood had been the fig-leaf on a statue. [Pp. 156-57]
That the fetish is never a simple unequivocal substitute for the
penis is shown by all the examples Freud gives: the fetishist who
"reveres" his fetish (as a penis) often "treats it in a way which is
obviously equivalent to a representation of castration. This happens
particularly ifhe has developed a strong identification with his father
and plays the part of the latter, for it is to him that as a child he
ascribed the woman's castration" (p. 157). In this case, the division
appears in the separation the fetishist establishes between his real
conduct (he reveres the fetish) and his fantasmatic conduct, a split
that reveals the ambiquity of the fetish.
In other cases, the fetishist shows mingled affection and hostility
for his fetish, so that the denial or acknowledgment of castration
are more or less easy to recognize; that is the case with the haircurter."
In him the need to carry out the castration which he disavows
has come to the front. His action contains within itself the
two mutually incompatible assertions: 'the woman has still got
a penis' and 'my father has castrated the woman'. Another
variant, which is also a parallel to fetishism in social psy-
chology, might be seen in the Chinese custom of mutilating
the female foot and then revering it like a fetish after it has
been mutilated. It seems as though the Chinese male wants
to thank the woman for having submitted to being cas-
trated. [Po 157; emphasis added]
Because in every case the fetish is indeed an undecidable com-
promise, ambiguous (analogous in this respect to the undecidability
of the bisexual hysterical symptom, which makes it impossible to
6"Freud uses the French term, coupeur denattes: "a pervert who enjoys cutting
off the hair of females" ("Fetishism," p. 15711). -s-Translator
[88]
An Exciting Enigma
choose between the hysteric's masculinity and femininity-a situ-
ation that resistance exploits to the utmost), because above and
beyond the logic of identity and the logic of the contradiction of
secondary processes, it does not cease to reconcile "incompatible"
assertions, the fetish allows the fetishist to play on all registers ac-
cording to the more or less complex needs of his constitution. But
like all other compromises, the fetish can never be totally satisfying
for either of the two positions, castration or its denial. Derrida's
Glas made this abundantly clear: when one speculates on the un-
decidable, one can only lose; equivocation and ambivalence entail a
permanent oscillation between the two hypotheses, an oscillation
that could be brought to a halt only by an absolute split between
the two tendencies and the complete disappearance of one of them,
the one based on the reality of castration. But in that case we would
no longer have fetishism but psychosis. This means that the fetishist
solution can be no more generalizable than that of neurosis or psy-
chosis: only the Freudian solution, that of granting woman an in-
complete sexuality envious of man's penis, makes it possible at once
to recognize woman's castration and to overcome one's own cas-
tration anxiety. It is as if the father had castrated the woman and
had given the mother's phallus to the son, in the guise of a "sup-
plementary column." Good for every purpose. Thanks to this col-
umnar supplement, this duplication of his sexual power or of his
genital organs, when confronted with woman's sex man should no
longer be panic-stricken, as if "the Throne and Altar [were] in dan-
ger" ("Fetishism," p. 153). (This panic is the source of the spon-
taneous fetishism of the child and, later, of the adult.)
"THE THRONE AND ALTAR ARE IN DANGER"
A panic fearful not only by virtue of its sexual consequences but
also because it threatens to keep the adult, like the child, in a state
of dependence with regard to the father, thus with regard to "throne"
and "altar," preventing him from ever achieving the intellectual
independence necessary for any great discovery, any progress, any
heroism: to be a hero--to be able to solve riddles-implies aban-
[89]
 The Enigma and the Veil
doning all faith and belief, "killing" the father and sleeping with
the mother, without fear of castration or
- death. That is why Oedipus II
alone was a true hero, had a limitless, Dionysian passion for knowl-
edge, for he did not fear-at the risk of being blinded, being castrated
himself-full knowledge of the "secrets of nature," did not fear to
violate all of nature's laws.
The man who needs the support of a supplementary column,
the man who has not overcome the fear of castration and has not
come to terms with the idea of incest with the mother, cannot "in
truth" know the secrets of nature, cannot kill the father and become
a great man. . his father that he was also able to free himself from the yoke of
The case of Leonardo da Vinci can serve as a control. HIS love
for his mother led him to identify with his father, to seek to triumph
over him, to rebel against him, and so to accomplish his remarkable
investigative work. Thus the man who boldly stated that" 'he who
APPEALS to authority when there is a difference of opinion works with his
memory rather than with his reason' ... became the first modern natural
scientist, and an abundance of discoveries and suggestive ideas re-
warded his courage for being the first man since the time of the
Greeks to probe the secrets of nature while relying solely on ob-
servation and his own judgement" ("Leonardo," p. 122; Freud's
italics; emphasis added). But this intellectual independence with re-
spect to the father is the converse of submission to mother/Nature,
source of all truth:
But in teaching that authority should be looked down on and
that imitation of the 'ancients' should be repudiated, and in
constantly urging that the study of nature was the source of all
truth, he was merely repeating-in the highest sublimation
attainable by man-e-the one-sided point of view which had
already forced itself on the little boy as he gazed in wonder
on the world. If we translate scientific abstraction back again
into concrete individual experience, we see that the 'ancients'
and authority simply correspond to his father, and nature once
more becomes the tender and kindly mother who had nour-
ished him. In most other human beings-no less to-day than
in primaeval times-the need for support from an authority
of some sort is so compelling that their world begins to totter If
[90 ]
An Exciting Enigma
that authority is threatened. Only Leonardo could dispense
with that support; he would not have been able to do so had
he not learnt in the first years of his life to do without his
father. His later scientific research, with all its boldness and
independence, presupposed the existence of infantile sexual
researches uninhibited by his father, and was a prolongation
of them with the sexual element excluded. [Pp. 122-123;
emphasis added]
It is because from childhood on Leonardo was not intimidated by
dogmatic religion. Psychoanalysis teaches that "young people lose
their religious beliefs as soon as their father's authority breaks down"
(p. 123). Leonardo's profound wisdom, like Freud's, lies in "the
resignation of the human being who subjects himself to Ananke, to
the laws ofnature, and who expects no alleviation from the goodness
or grace of God" (pp. 124-125).
And yet Leonardo did not go so far as Oedipus did. He attempted
to penetrate the secrets of nature only in a "sublimated" fashion: his
research remained aloof from all sexuality, and while he manifested
great boldness in other areas, he avoided all sexual topics (thus
demonstrating his repression), and his" 'excessive instinct for re-
search' " was no help in depicting the sexual act, which he repre-
sented very awkwardly and inaccurately. 70
His mother's love, and his for her, allowed him to withdraw
from all authority but hers: the mother remains untouchable, Nature
remains the source of all truth, and it is only a matter of imitating
lier-as women do. The rule of the imitation of Nature is the limit
that Leonardo's creative genius encountered. While he managed to
rid himself of the influence of paternal authority, he preserved intact
his beliefin the benevolence and omnipotence of Nature, that "gran-
diose sublimation" of the mother, of the phallic-vulture mother, as
if he could get along without paternal support only by continuing
to lean on the maternal column, thus as if he had not altogether
overcome castration anxiety.
"Freud says this only in a footnote (p. 70, n. 3, added in 1919), in which
he is quoting Dr. R. Reider.
 The Enigma and the Veil
Leonardo occupies an intermediary position between Oedipus
and Dostoevsky. The latter only rarely managed to overcome his
"panic" in the face of throne and altar, and thus could not be a truly
great man deserving of humanity's gratitude:
After the most violent struggles to reconcile the instinctual
demands of the individual with the claims of the community,
he landed in the retrograde position of submission both to
temporal and spiritual authority, of veneration both for the
Tsar and for the God of the Christians.... Dostoevsky threw
away the chance of becoming a teacher and liberator of hu-
manity and made himself one with their gaolers. The future
of human civilization will have little to thank him for. 71
Because of his oedipal guilt, Dostoevsky finally gave in to his "little
father" the tsar, and in the area of religion he never ceased to oscillate
between faith and atheism, as the fetishist oscillates between denial
and affirmation of the mother's castration, and for the same reasons:
the narcissistic impossibility of calling back into question the value
of the phallus, and only of the phallus, that penis with which be-
nevolent and tender Nature has endowed her sons, provoking the
"envy" of her daughters, who are very "sensitive to the damage"
she has done them.
BEDROCK
In this "heroic" series, the place Freud occupies seems to be very
near Leonardo's. As in Leonardo's case, for Freud the father's murder
is the inverse of a submission to Mother Nature. Although he aban-
dons all beliefin the religious illusion, he resigns himself and submits
to Necessity, to the great goddess Ananke, who is not only tender
71"Dostoevsky and Parricide," 21:175-194 (1928b [1927]), p. 177. On Leon-
ardo as a Freudian figure of the hero, on Dostoevsky as the hero manque, see
the fine article by Marie Moscovici, "Mise en pieces du pere dans la pensee
freudienne," in Confrontations I (1979). Moscovici does not, however, relate
heroism to the triumph over fetishism.
An Exciting Enigma
and benevolent but also destructive and deadly:" the mother who
is so much loved and respected is, as for Leonardo, a phallic mother.
Like Leonardo, Freud identifies his mother with a vulture and in-
scribes within his theory every child's belief in a phallic mother; and
although he knows perfectly well that a woman has no penis, he
gives her a desire for one that is equivalent to woman's recognition
of man's phallic omnipotence; he works things out so that woman
feels scornful of herself, of her mother and all other women. "Her
love was directed to her phallic mother [and not to acastrated mother]; ... as
a result of the discovery of women's lack of a penis they are debased
-.in value for girls just as they are for boys and later perhaps for men"
("Femininity," pp. 126-127). He arranges things so that woman
herself rejectsjemininity. This rejection, common to woman and man,
was seen not, as Adler thought, as a consequence ofsocial repression,
but as an insurmountable biological fact, the bedrock every analysis en-
counters, itsnecessary limit. It betrays the same castration complex,
differently expressed, in both sexes (woman's positive desire to pos-
sess a male genital organ, her penis envy; man's rebellion against
any passive attitude with regard to another man, the masculine
protest). This is the source of the principal resistances to transference
in man and of serious depressive crises in woman, crises during
which she is sure that the analytic treatment will do her no good,
that she is unchangeable. And, strictly speaking, she is not wrong:
We can only agree that she is right, when we learn that her
strongest motive in coming for treatment was the hope that,
after all, she might still obtain a male organ, the lack of which
. was so painful to her. ... We often have the impression that /
with the wish for a penis and the masculine protest we have
penetrated through all the.psychological strata. and have.reached
bedrock, and that thus our activities are at an end. This is
probably true, since, for the psychical field: the biological
field does in fact play the part of the underlying bedrock. The
n".With [its] forc~s nature rises up against us, majestic, cruel and inexorable;
she bnngs to our mind once more our weakness and helplessness. which we
thought to escape through the work of civilization" ("The Future of an Illu-
sion," 21:3-56 [I927c], p. 16).
 The Enigma and the Veil
repudiation offemininity can be nothing~ls~th;}n;} biological
fact, a"part of the great riddle of sex. ["Analysis," p. 252]
In the last analysis, the enigma of female sexuality comes down
to this: How could life/nature have wanted such a creature as woman,
a castrated creature, an abominable creature who arouses horror in
men and women alike? Could such a creature, as Aristotle thought,
be anything but a pure "waste product" of Nature? Only Life itself
may be able to answer these questions: in the end the solution to
the riddle belongs not to psychoanalysis but to_~i5~lggy. That is the
final word of the lecture "Femininity" and the last word of one of
Freud's very last texts, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable."
Freud gives way in the face of another agency, Life or Nature, he
gives way before the mother who alone holds the secret, the solution
to the riddle; and only the man who has no fear of the incest
transgression can go looking for it there. Oedipus alone was able
to answer the riddle of the Sphinx, the enigma of femininity, by
going to steal from the very womb of Mother Nature her most
inviolable secrets: he alone ran the risk of matricide (Jocasta hangs
herself after the act of incest, and the Sphinx falls into the abyss).
But at the same time Oedipus is a mythical hero, for in fact neither
the mother's death nor her sex (can they be separated?) can be con-
templated directly without some representative mediation.
Thus Freud, like Leonardo, does not push on to that impossible
goal, does not pursue his investigation to the very end; female sex-
uality is the "bedrock, " the liwit that analysis as a whole encounters
precisely because of the taboo against incest. To respon4"truly"to
the riddle offemale sexuality would have been in one way or another
to dis-c~ver the Mother, to commit incest. Because Freud cared too
much for his mother, that source of life and truth, to run the risk
of causing her death, because he was too conscious also of that risk
to be a true hero (Oedipus was unconscious);" he could only aban-
""The rational grounds for heroism rest on a judgement that the subject's
own life cannot be so precious as certain abstract and general goods. But more
frequent, in my view, is the instinctive and impulsive heroism which knows
no such reasons, and flouts danger in the spirit ofAnzengruber's Steinklopferhans:
'Nothing can happen to me' " ("Thoughts," p. 29 6).
An Exciting Enigma
don to other agencies" the task of responding to the feminine enigma.
,1.
ocf·- That is why the only responses he himself gives are false solutions
that camouflage the mother's sex, conceal what he has always known
as in a dream, mask the-dreamed-of'relations with the mother. "Penis
envy" is one of the~~~~_!;rf,~.Q..s.QI~tj9JlS:" that serve as a cover-up. It
is like that supplementary mask that Oedipus called for after daring
to look upon the unfathomable depths of Nature: the very .m..~k of
~lin4ness. It is this fear of incest and its matricidal consequences that
explain as well why Freud hesitated to publish his writings on the
subject of female sexuality, to expose his secrets, just as it explains
in essence, as we have seen, the delayed appearance of The Inter-
pretation ofDreams. Greek and Jewish traditions con verge here in the
way they both relate discovery as knowledge to discovery as un-
veiling. Aletheia, truth, is for the Greeks an unveiling, and it~'
represented as a naked goddess. But at the same time, since Truth
is a woman, it remains untouchable, forbidden, is never completely
unveiled: rather than violate her modesty, the metaphysicians prefer"
to relegate her to an intelligible sky in which she can no longer be
reached, or even contemplated; all this-at least since Nietzsche-
is well known. The Jewish tradition of the Zohar sets every sexual
sin in relation to the unveiling of maternal nudity (binah). The same
term also signifies knowledge, understanding: the word binah is used
to say "Adam knew Eve": committing a sin, discovering/unveiling
the mother, eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge always go hand
in hand.
To solve a riddle (Rdtsel)-which is precisely the task of the
psychoanalyst, whether he is interpreting a dream, a symptom, or
a work of ares-is always to bring to light something that has been
c~ncealed because of a sexual taboo, it is always to discover (auf
decken), to unmask (ent-Iarven), to undo the threads that cover over
and separate desire from its direct expression. It,istQ"1Jnrl!ye1."~abc
spinnen, theiny~ers.<:: Qft.ht: task performed by the spid,er,symbol of
the phallic 'mother, who ~o~irsall"hoies" with her phallic cloth,
"It was impossible to unravel this,tis.slJe of phantasy thread by thread,"
Freud wrote with reference~t~oneof the Rat Man's dreams, a dream
"This abandonment in some respects brings to mind Leonardo's abandon-
ment of his canvases, which for the most part remained unfinished.
75ef. Sarah Kofman, L'Enjance de l'art, pp. 79ff.
 The Enigma and the Veil
compared to an epic poem in which sexual desires toward the drea-
mer's mother and sister, like the latter's premature death, are related
to the father's punishment of the little hero," The text, any text, is
always a tissue that, for fear of castration, disguises a terrible and
most tempting nudity: the "emperor's new clothes" of Hans Chris-
. tian Andersen serve for Freud as the paradigm of every dream; the
dream is a tissue that, like an impostor, covers with a precious and
invisible cloth that which must not be perceived, the king's nudity,
the latent content. Only the "good and loyal subjects," those who
do not fear castration, can see nudity without being frightened; they
alone are capable of unmasking, of bringing to light in the manifest
content a forbidden latent content, of exposing maternal nudity
without horror: the feminine riddle is the paradigm of every riddle.
That is why, if you are a young doctor and are led in the interest
of your science to uncover the cadaver of an old woman, you cannot
help feeling guilty, as if you were transgressing the incest taboo and
committing parricide and matricide in the process. This in any case
is the way Freud explains why a religious doubt took hold of a
young man when the dead body of an old woman was exposed.
The body evidently reminded him of his mother.
That is the explanation irresistibly forced upon us by his
affectionately phrased description of the 'sweet-faced dear old
woman' .... We may suppose, therefore, that this was the
way in which things happened. The sight of a woman's dead
body, naked or on the point of being stripped, reminded the
young man of his mother. It roused in him a longing for his
mother which sprang from his Oedipus complex, and this
was immediately completed by a feeling of indignation against
his father. His ideas of 'father' and 'God' had not yet become
widely separated; so that his desire to destroy his father could
become conscious as doubt in the existence of God and could
seek to justify itself in the eyes of reason as indignation about
the ill-treatment of a mother-object.... The new impulse,
which was displaced into the sphere of religion, was only a
76"Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis," 10:153-249 (1909d), p. 207,
n. 1.
An Exciting Enigma
repetition of the Oedipus situation and consequently soon
met with a similar fate. It succumbed to a powerful opposing
current. 77
This interpretation seemed so "irresistible" to Freud that he at
first believed that the young man had of his own accord stated in
his letter that the old woman had reminded him of his mother; but
such was not the case. That "sweet-faced dear old woman," as one
may legitimately think, simply reminded Freud ofhis own cherished
mother, whom he had seen in a childhood dream, at the age of
seven or eight, "with a peculiarly peacejul, sleeping expression on her
features" (Dreams, p. 583), and who had awakened indissolubly in
him both sexual desire and death anxiety for her.
It is perhaps this childhood dream that best explains both the
fact that Freud sublimated his incestuous desire into a desire for
sexual research, into a desire for research dealing essentially with
sexuality, and the fact that he left the answer in abeyance, the fact
that in the last analysis he kept the feminine riddle intact.
Not without toying with it a good deal, not without first con-
ducting, like Oedipus and armed with his Oedipus complex, an
investigation that could only be turned back against him, could only
lead him off onto a siding, a dead end, that of speculation. For in
spite of his denegations, it is in fact the speculative path that he .
takes, the only possible one, the only one that will let his unrea-
sonableness pass for reason, the only one that will bring to triumph
as truth the idee fixe that obsesses him.
n"A Religious Experience," 21:169-172 (1928a [1927]), pp. 170-171.
 PART TWO

Freud Investigates
 1

The Interest in
the Enigma of Woman

Freud pursues this investigation most particularly in his lecture

"Femininity":" his inquiry is framed, at the beginning and end of
the text, by a double appeal to poetry that warrants examination.
After stating a general truth of the sort used to begin college essays-
"Throughout history people have knocked their heads against the
riddle of the nature of femininity" (p. II3)-Freud cites the poet
Heine as a witness:

Haupter in Hieroglyphenmiitzen,
Haupter in Turban und schwarzem Barett,
Peruckenhaupter und tausend andre
Arme, schwitzende Menschenhaupter ... 2

'At the end of the text the reader is referred back to poetry as if to
a potential complement intended to make up for the deficiencies of
'Luce lrigaray was the first to draw attention to the phallocratic character
of this text. I shall arrive at a similar conclusion while offering a quite different
reading, one that emphasizes the complexity of the Freudian undertaking.
2Heinrich Heine, Nordsee [Second Cycle, VII, "Fragen"], translated in
"Femininity," p. II3, n. I, as:
Heads in hieroglyphic bonnets,
Heads in turbans and black birettas,
Heads in wigs and thousand other
Wretched, sweating heads of humans ...
 Freud Investigates
the psychoanalytic investigation. In this supplementary role It IS
situated on the same level as (biological) science and personal ex-
perience: "If you want to know more about femininity, enquire
from your own experiences of life, or turn to the poets [Dichter),
or wait until science can give you deeper and more coherent infor-
mation" (p. 135).
Psychoanalysis needs to be supplemented, for the results it offers
are incomplete, fragmentary, and not always easy to accept. "That
is all I had to say to you about femininity. It is certainly incomplete
and fragmentary and does not always sound friendly [Es ist gewiss
unvollstandig und fragmentarisch, klingt auch nicht immer freund-
lich]" (p. 135). Incomplete since Freud has pursued his investigation
from the starting point ofobservations gathered on the couch, basing
his work on statements made by women who are more or less
reserved, more or less sincere, more or less hysterical. Fragmentary
since this investigation has dealt only with a theoretical object, fe=i
male sexuality, which can by no means be all there is to the subject i
.-J
of woman.
Finally, these results are not always easy to accept, for they do not
deal very gently with women, especially where their superego is
concerned.
If, 0 women, you are not satisfied by the answers offered by
psychoanalysis, which is seeking only to know the truth and not to
please you, you can always console yourselves by reading the poets,
who seek above all not to pursue knowledge but to give you pleasure.
Up till now we have left it to the creative writer to depict
for us the 'necessary conditions for loving' which govern
people's choice of an object, and the way in which they bring
the demands of their imagination into harmony with reality.
The writer can indeed draw on certain qualities which fit him
to carry out such a task: above all, on a sensitivity that enables
him to perceive the hidden impulses in the minds of other
people, and the courage to let his own unconscious speak.
But there is one circumstance which lessens the evidential
value of what he has to say. Writers are under the necessity
to produce intellectual and aesthetic pleasure, as well as certain
emotional effects. For this reason they cannot reproduce the
[102]
The Interest in the Enigma of Women
stuff of reality unchanged, but must isolate portions of it,
remove disturbing associations, tone down the whole and fill
in what is missing. These are the privileges of what is known
as 'poetic licence'.... In consequence it becomes inevitable
that science should concern herself with the same materials
whose treatment by artists has given enjoyment to mankind
for thousands of years, though her touch must be clumsier
and the yield of pleasure less. These observations will, it may
be hoped, serve to justify us in extending a strictly scientific
treatment to the field of human love. Science is, after all, the
most complete renunciation of the pleasure principle of which
our mental activity is capable. ["Object Choice," p. 165]
After all this, if poetry aims above all to please and not to speak
the truth, how can it "make up for" the deficiencies of psycho-
analysis? How can it fill in the gaps if it is basically seeking to
camouflage and "remove disturbing associations"? Poetry cannot be
"superior" to psychoanalysis and to its "scientific" treatment of
amorous life except for those who seek not knowledge but pleasure
and distractions-those who are ruled by the pleasure principle alone.
This means that the double appeal to poetry in "Femininity" has 71
to be interpreted as part of a strategy: Freud is openly declaring the
limits of psychoanalysis so as to gain the upper hand over the agen-
cies that until then have claimed to hold the solution to the feminine
enigma: above and beyond his declarations, what the text does shows,
on the contrary, the insufficiencies of personal experience, of poetry,
. and of biology. The text reveals that poetry is basically a decoy
force that "operates for knowledge" as long as it is reappropriated
by psychoanalysis and subordinated to its truth. And though Freud
states in all modesty that the results he is offering amount to very
little (Das ist alles), that they are fragmentary and incomplete, he
also shows that this fragmentary viewpoint, that of sexuality, has
an enormous "influence" over all the rest, and that this remainder-
which attaches woman to the human race-s-also depends, in the last
analysis, on sexuality; the "fragment" indeed seems, in fact, to en-
compass the whole, and Freud's recourse to agencies destined to
make up for the deficiencies of psychoanalysis seems to be super-
[ 10 3]
 Freud Investigates The Interest in the Enigma of Women

fluous, his modesty feigned and tactical: as always;" Freud only might interpret that gesture, indeed, in a Nietzschean sense: to speak
pretends to be giving way to the specialists (specialists in female of a riddle of femininity and to try to solve that riddle are a strictly
sexuality, in this case) whose "truths" he exhibits the better to crit- masculine enterprise; women are not concerned with Truth, they
icize or deconstruct them. Between these two purely strategic ap- are profoundly skeptical; they know perfectly well that there is no
peals to agencies external to psychoanalysis, Freud pursues his such thing as "truth," that behind their veils there is yet another
investigation, attempting to pose and to resolve the enigma of veil, and that try as one may to remove them, one after another,
II. woman.
truth in its "nudity," like a goddess, will never appear. Women
After stating that humanity in general (die Menschen) has always who are truly women are perfectly "flat." Mulier taceat de muliere!
pondered the riddle (die Ratse!) of femininity, he distinguishes men For "truth," that metaphysical lure of depth, of a phallus concealed
(die Manner), who cannot help worrying over such an enigma (they behind the veils, that lure is a fetishist illusion of man: a woman
have more than an intellectual interest in solving this problem), from who gets involved with truth, with solving riddles, is a "degenerate"
women (die Frauen), who, because they themselves constitute this woman, reactive and hysterical. But the watchword Mulier taceat de
riddle, cannot help being interested in it: it is a matter of common -muliere is not Freud's; he addresses himself to women, precisely
knowledge that men and women alike are preoccupied with this because he knows that most of them are more or less hysterical, and
puzzle, and that is why Freud, addressing himself to a mixed public- for that reason complicitous with masculine discourse. And because
Meine Dame und Herren!-is sure of having the attention of his au- he needs that complicity.
dience. Far from excluding part of this audience-women-at the
outset in order to speak exclusively "among men," as Luce Irigaray
claims, he is trying, on the contrary, to establish complicity with
the women analysts so as to clear himself of the suspicion of "an-
tifeminism." And if, as Freud shows, what is at stake is of more
than theoretical interest, for men and women alike, it goes without
saying that women could not be excluded. Finally, to exclude
"women" would be to admit that they are simply the opposite of
\ men, whereas the entire lecture aims at eradicating that opposition
Lin favor of bisexuality, a bisexuality that presumably constitutes the
whole enigma in what men call "the riddle of femininity": "some
portion of what we men call 'the enigma of women' may perhaps
be derived from this expression of bisexuality in women's lives"
("Femininity," p. 131).
Thus nothing-in the text justifies Luce Irigaray's reading (ac-
cording to which Freud, like Aristotle, deprives women of the right
to the logos and to the phallus alike). We have seen that things are
I not that simple. And even supposing that Freud wished to speak
"among men" of the enigma of femininity (which is not the case),
that would not suffice to condemn him as a "metaphysician." One

31 pointed out Freud's gesture with respect to art in L'Enjance de l'art,

[ lOS]

2 he encounters has a genital apparatus like his own. The first problem
The Immediate Certainty
of Difference
Speaking, then, to "men" and "women" alike, Freud plays upon
all the strangeness of that banal and conventional formula: "Ladies
and Gentlemen." In what appears familiar to everyone-the op-
position between the two sexes-he introduces something enig-
matic, something strangely troubling; he jars the categories of
masculine and feminine that are based on ordinary evidence, on a
certainty that nothing seemed capable of disturbing. Following
Cartesian procedure, he casts doubt on primary evidence and upsets
spontaneous certitudes. Spontaneously, indeed, men recognize the
male/female opposition as if it went without saying, and the habit
of making such a distinction leads to belief in its necessity. "When
you meet a human being, the first distinction (Utlterscheidutlg) you
make is 'male or female?' and you are accustomed to make the
distinction with unhesitating certainty" (p. II3). (Seizing upon the
word voir, which appears inappropriately in the French translation
["En rencontrant un etre humain, vous voyez immediatement s'il
est homme ou femme"; cf. the original German: "Mannlich oder
weiblich ist die erste Unterscheidung die Sie machen, wenn Sie mit
anderen menschlichen Wesen zusammentreffen"], Luce Irigaray ex-
claims over the term, wonders just how one can see the difference,
and attributes to Freud the belief in this "evidence" at the very
moment when he is in the process of criticizing it.)
[106]
The Immediate Certainty oj Difference
Freud deconstructs that common, popular opinion! by showing
that the "primary" evidence is not at all primary: only the habit of
making this distinction leads us to forget or repress the fact that
during childhood no distinction is made between the "two" sexes.
The child, in any event the little boy, does not doubt that everyone
that concerns a child in the development ofhis instinct for knowledge
"is not the question of the distinction between the sexes but the
riddle of where babies come from" ("Three Essays," p. 195).
If we could divest ourselves of our corporeal existence and
could view the things of this earth with a fresh eye as purely
thinking beings, from another planet for instance, nothing
perhaps would strike our attention more forcibly than the fact
of the existence of two sexes among human beings, who,
though so much alike in other respects, yet mark the differ-
ence between them with such obvious external signs. But it
does not seem that children choose this fundamental fact in
the same way as the starting-point of their researches into
sexual problems.... A child's desire for knowledge on this
point does not in fact awaken spontaneously, prompted per-
haps by some inborn need for established causes.... The first
of [the sexual] theories starts out from the neglect of the
differences between the sexes. ["Sexual Theories," pp. 211-
212, 215Y
t"It is popularly believed that a human being is either a man or a woman"
("Three Essays," p. 141).
2Later we will see for what strategic reasons, particularly in "Some Psychical
Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes" (1927), Freud
showed himself to be "more hesitant" on the order to be established among
the questions that children raise. In a note (p. 252, n. 2) he observed: "This is
an opportunity for correcting a statement which I made many years ago. I
believed that the sexual interest of children, unlike that of pubescents, was
aroused, not by the difference between the sexes, but by the problem of where
babies come from. We now see that, at all events with girls, this is certainly
not the case. With boys it may no doubt happen sometimes one way and
sometimes the other; or with both sexes chance experiences may determine the
event."
 Freud Investigates
And it is indeed because in childhood sexual difference is ignored
that sexual symbols in dreams, for example, are generally ambig-
uous, have a double meaning." The opposition between masculine
and feminine is thus not a primary one, and even though public
opinion treats these concepts as if they were unambiguous," they
are in fact extremely complex. It is this complexity that Freud strives
to bring to light, going against the absolute certainty of common
sense, by appealing to anatomical science.
3
lCf. The Interpretation of Dreams, pp. 358-359.
"Cf a note added in 1915 to "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,"
pp. 145- 1 46.
The Indecision and Aporia Introduced
by the Science of Anatomy

Science in fact makes it possible to shake that certainty, for it is

much less affirmative. It shares the popular conviction on only one
point: what is male (miinnlich) is the masculine sexual product, the
spermatozoon, and that which carries it; what is female (weiblich) is
the ovum and the organ that shelters it. As for everything else, it
is impossible to take a categorical position, for in fact in both sexes
we find analogous organs that represent two forms of a single ar-
rangement. The so-called secondary sexual characteristics are incon-
sistent and exist in the two sexes in variable proportions: in each
sex there are traces (Spuren) of the genital organ of the "opposite"
sex, in a rudimentary state, either lacking in any function or else
adapted to a different function. On this basis science concludes that
-there was an original bisexuality that was later oriented toward
monosexuality while leaving remainders, traces of the "opposite"
sex in an atrophied or stunted state. I As confirming evidence, in

'After translating the statement that "Teile des mannlichen Geschlechtsap-

parats sich auch am Korper des Weibes finden [portions of the male sexual
apparatus also appear in women's bodies]," the French translation omits the
phrase "wenngleich in verkiimmertem Zustand [though in an atrophied state]"
("Femininity," p. II4). Luce Irigaray renders this as "bien qu'en etat de de-
generescence [though in a state of degeneration]," which allows her to stress
the pejorative character of Freud's discourse: women are seen as "degenerated"
men. She forgets, however, that the term verkiimmert is applied to men as well,
for Freud adds "and vice versa."

[108]
 Freud Investigates
other texts Freud cites pathological cases. In hermaphrodritism sexual
determination is difficult: the genital organs are at once male and
female; in some rare cases, the organs of both sexes coexist side by
side. And because there is only a difference of degree between the
pathological and the normal, "the importance of these abnormalities
lies in the unexpected fact that they facilitate our understanding of
normal development" ("Three Essays," p. 141).2
Anatomical science, owing to these observations, makes it pos-
sible to question popular opinion, the immediate certainty of a de-
cisive opposition between the sexes: because the science of anatomy
mixes up sexes and genders, it is troubling. It deprives each sex of
the certainty of its own identity and purity. It necessitates a com-
pletely different viewpoint. By pinpointing cQ!JJii~ion+jt confuses
those who think of the two sexes as two opposing species, those
who introduce a difference in nature where there is only a simple
quantitative difference, only a question of more or less, a gradual
difference that precludes seeing the two sexes as two radically distinct
and opposed entities. An individual is neither male nor female but,
in variable proportions, both at once; he or she is endowed with an
L_. ambiguous dual sexuality. And because the masculine and the fem-
inine are not two distinct "species," the homosexual cannot be viewed
in turn as a third distinct species. (Although Freud falls back on the
Aristophanean myth from the Symposium to confirm his thesis of
bisexuality," his concept is in fact radically opposed to that of the
poet who mythically establishes a radical distinction between three
sexual species and three types of object relations: heterosexuals, male
homosexuals, and female homosexuals. Had Freud really read the
Symposium, or did he only know it by way ofJohn Stuart Mill?)
At this point in the lecture he establishes an authentic symmetry
between man and woman: bisexuality is claimed to be equally valid
for both sexes, the difference between individuals is asserted to be
quantitative, the proportion of masculinity and femininity in each
2See also Civilization and Its Discontents, p. I05, n. 3; "Man is an animal
organism with (like others) an unmistakably bisexual disposition. The individ-
ual corresponds to a fusion of two symmetrical halves, of which, according to
some investigators, one is purely male and the other female. It is equally possible
that each half was originally hermaphrodite."
'Cf. "Three Essays," p. 136 et passim.
[IIO]
Indecision and Aporia
individual is said to be eminently variable. Later on, however, and
in other texts as well, this symmetry is shattered in favor of (to the
detriment of?) woman. At no point does Freud question the con-
sequences of bisexuality in the development of boys; it is asserted
that bisexuality is IrlQI.~p(Ono.!1n~ed in women than in men; that
psychic hermaphroditism depends on physical hermaphroditism more
in woman than in man: in woman, "bodily and mental traits be-
longing to the opposite sex are apt to coincide" ("Psychogenesis,"
p. 154). Inversion is accompanied by a transformation of the other
qualities of mind, drives, and character traits only in woman; in
man, "the most complete mental masculinity can be combined with
inversion" ("Three Essays," p. 142).
This difference between woman and man is attributed to the fact
that man possesses a single predominant genital zone whereas woman
has two of them, and the fact that in its essential aspects infantile
female sexuality normally has a masculine character, whereas infan-
tile male sexuality does not, in symmetrical fashion, have a feminine
character:
There can be no doubt that the bisexuality, which is present,
as we believe, in the innate disposition of human beings,
comes to the fore much more clearly in women than in men.
A man, after all, has only one leading sexual zone, one sexual
organ, whereas a woman has two: the vagina-the female
organ proper-and the clitoris, which is analogous to the male
organ. We believe we are justified in assuming that for many
years the vagina is virtually non-existent and possible does
not produce sensations until puberty.... In women, there-
fore, the main genital occurrences of childhood must take
place in relation to the clitoris. Their sexual life is regularly
divided into two phases, of which the first has a masculine
character, while only the second is specifically feminine. Thus
in female development there is a process of transition from
the one phase to the other, to which there is nothing analogous
in the male. ["Female Sexuality," pp. 227-228]
The affirmation of bisexuality thus amounts to affirming the
original predominance of masculinity (in both sexes); what becomes
[I II]
 Freud Investigates Indecision and Aporia
enigmatic, then-and this is the riddle of femininity-is the devel- linity or fetTtin!I1ity is anunknowncharacteristic which anatomy
opment into womanhood of a little girl who has first been a little cannot layhold of' ("Femininity," p. 114).
boy. This development becomes problematic; the passage from one Atthe same time, since the science of anatomy cannot be allowed
predominant zone to another is never assured. the last word, Freud pursues his inquiry by turning to another agency,
The thesis of bisexuality, when it is asserted to be valid for both ps}'~()logy.
sexes, makes it possible to establish between them a simple difference
of degree, but the restrictions that are formulated lead in fact to the
establishment of a hierarchy in favor of man, who possesses the
higher degree of masculinity and by that very token becomes the
canon and the standard for the other sex; he alone is apt to receive
ontological determinations. Difference in degree, like opposition by
nature, always tells against women.
For strategic reasons, however, at the beginning of the text, in
order to dissipate the immediate obviousness ofa decisive opposition
between the sexes, Freud emphasizes an original bisexuality com-
mon to both sexes. The appeal to science is not his last word: science
does not offer a solution to the riddle, it only introduces doubt and
aporia, for it asserts in contradictory fashion both bisexuality and
the production by each sex of a specific sexual product. "Apart from
the very rarest cases, only one kind of sexual product--ova or se-
men-is ... present in one person" ("Femininity," p. 114). The dif-
ferences in the proportions of masculinity and femininity no longer
play any role at all here: whatever may be the individual quantitative
variations, there is in each case only a single type of sexual product.
Is this the same as saying, with Luce Irigaray, that for Freud as
for science this is what counts, this process of "reproduction/pro-
duction" of sameness? That with respect to the thesis of bisexuality,
which upsets the assurance of a simple sexual identity, this fabri-
cation of a single product is reassuring, is like the fixed point to
which Descartes clings at the moment of his hyperbolic doubt? This
affirmation runs counter to the entire text: far from seeking certainty
and decisiveness, Freud here is appealing to science in order to shatter
the pseudocertainties of popular opinion, in order to bring popular
opinion up short. His recourse to science does not have as its goal
the quest for security; on the contrary, it aims at plunging into
aporia: "You are bound to have doubts as to the decisive significance
of those elements and must conclude that what constitutes mascu-

[113]

4 onto the old words masculine and ftminine in their most traditional,
Psychology:
Its Sterility and Impotence
Ordinary psychology, too, is powerless to solve the riddle.
Adopting a standard positivist approach, like Auguste Comte, Freud
criticizes psychology essentially for its sterility; it contributes noth-
ing new. On the one hand it reiterates conventional opinions, and
on the other it reasons by analogy with anatomy, on which it is
modeled. Imitating conventional habits of thought in its responses,
it distinguishes "feminine" and "masculine" behavior and transfers
bisexuality to the psychic arena, since it recognizes that a member
of a given sex may manifest feminine behavior in one circumstance,
masculine behavior in another. But in so doing it fails to establish
a distinction of the psychological order; it is incapable ofgiving a new
content to the concepts of masculinity and femininity. "Sie konnen den
Begriffen mannlich und weiblich keinen neuen Inhalt geben," "You
cannot give the concepts of 'masculine' and 'feminine' any new
connotation" ("Femininity," p. 114). This passage does not appear
in the French translation (or in Irigaray's); it is essential, however,
since it implies that ordinary psychology gives the words feminine
and masculine a purely conventional meaning that wrongly takes
anatomy as its model. As for Freud, his entire effort consists in
giving these concepts a purely psychical meaning and in substituting
for the repetitive and conventional determinations of psychology a
new, completely original and fertile determination: a psychoana-
lytical one. He still uses the old words but he gives them new mean-
[114]
Psychology: Its Sterility and Impotence
ings. Because he does not introduce a new, technical term, Freud
can be understood and can have an impact on the old meaning: he
retains the term but he manages to displace the meaning, to modify
the concept. Yet in this very process he risks being misunderstood,
being criticized (as Luce Irigaray has not failed to do) for holding
most metaphysical sense at the very point where he is attempting
to reevaluate them, at the moment when he is seriously complicating
the conventional schema that identifies m~~l;:!Jline wij:hactil!.L~nd
feminine with passive. It is this identifi,qtiQIl.thatFreudis striving
to deconstruct in order to propose someentirely different deter-
rmnati~ns that are sPeqfiCally psychoanalytic. The French transla-
tionher~ is seriously defective and is perhaps responsible for the
outrageous views attributed to Freud. It suggests, in effect, that
Freud agrees with the popular way of thinking that identifies mas-
culinity with activity and femininity with passivity. "Vous employez
le mot 'viril' dans le sens d"actif et le mot 'feminin' dans le sens de
'passif,' non sans raison d'ailleurs" (Berman trans., p. 156; emphasis
added). But the German text reads "Nun, es ist richtig, dass eine
solche Bezeihung besteht. " The Standard Edition renders the passage:
"When you say 'masculine', you usually mean 'active', and when
you say 'feminine', you usually mean 'passive'. Now it is true that a
relation of the kind exists" ("Femininity," p. 114; emphasis added).
The Nun in German announces an aber ("but") that introduces im-
portant restrictions, a few lines later, to the popular assertion. It is
true, then, that such a relation exists. It exists !l.t the.leueLo.JaUul.lr
anatomy: the male sex cell is mobile and a~tive, the ovum isimmobile
-and-passive. "Ftiftnermore,'tne sexual behavior of elementary or-
ganisms'serves as a model (vorbildlich) for the behavior of individuals
of both sexes during intercourse: "the male pursues the female for
the purpose of sexual union, seizes hold of her and penetrates into
her" (ibid.). To be sure, this Vorbild is not very clear: is it to be
understood as a biological model inscribed in the body and func-
tioning unconsciously? Freud offers little by way of explanation on
this point: what is important for him is simply to show the nones-
sential nature of such a relation. Indeed, ifby basing one's argument
on anatomy one wrongly identifies the masculine with activity, as
popular psychology does, one reduces the nature of masculinity (from
[115]
 Freud Investigates
the psychic point of view) to aggression. "You may well doubt
_ whether you have gained any real advantage from this" (ibid., p. liS).
The comparative method-this was also Cornte's basic weapon in
his polemic against psychology-in fact makes it possible to assert
that inmost animal species "the females are the stronger and more
aggressive and the male is active only in the single act of sexual
union" (ibid.). Overturning the most widespread opinion, Freud
emphasizes paradoxically that for him activity in the male, far from
being the distinguishing mark, is only a limited phenomenon related
to the moment of sexual aggression; activity in general is charac-
teristic of females: spiders, for instance. Luce Irigaray does not fail
to stress Freud's willingness to evoke female aggressiveness by com-
paring it with that of the spider, that most repugnant of creatures,
unworthy of serving as an example, whereas she does not hesitate
at the same time (cf. the borrowed kettle argument) to criticize Freud
for identifying the feminine with passivity, an identification that the
spider example is specifically intended to dispel. On the other hand,
it may appear curious (if activity and aggressiveness are characteristic
of women) that the spider is a symbol of the phallic mother. Is Freud
in this case bowing to the common convention ofidentifying activity
and masculinity? Or by attributing a phallic aspect to woman is he
not rather specifically attempting to break with the common cate-
gories and blur the lines that separate masculinity and femininity?
to muddle all the gender distinctions? ,<. i
This in any case is the task he is seeking to accomplish by calling
upon the comparative method. This method makes it possible to
reverse all the roles: if the female in the animal world is shown to
be "phallic, " more aggressive than the male, the male in tum fulfills
functions that seem to us, wrongly, to be specifically feminine (so
exquisit weiblich erstheinen, "which strike us as feminine par excel-
lence"). Rearing and caring for the young are not necessarily the
province of females: the male sometimes devotes himself to these
tasks all by himself, or at least the tasks are shared.
If you pass now from animals to men, you can see analogous
phenomena. In the area ofhuman sexuality, you cannot help noticing
how inadequate it is to confuse masculine behavior with activity,
feminine behavior with passivity. For example, the mother is in
every respect active toward the child: one may say with equal justice
[II6]
Psychology: Its Sterility and Impotence
that she nurses the child or that the child nurses her-an example
that will strike you as odd if you mistakenly confuse sexuality with
genitality. You will then be able to accuse Freud of confusing the
question of sexual difference with that of the parental role, of iden-
tifying women with mothers, and of excluding any consideration
of pleasure, as if suckling at the breast produced no sort of pleasure
at all. In any event, it is not a question here of showing that women
are active only in sexual life, but that they are active in a more
general way in all areas, and consequently that the anatomical model,
the one on which popular psychology is based, is a very inadequate
model, capable only of leading to erroneous analogical reasoning,
Uberdeckungsfehler. The reasoning by analogy that takes as its model
(Vorbild) the sexual behavior of elementary organisms decreases in
validity as one moves away from the sexual arena proper: in pursuit
of very diverse goals, certain women are capable of deploying a
high degree of activity (grosse aktivitiit), "great" and not "excessive"
(debordante) activity, as we find in the translation of which Luce
lrigaray avails herself (when she can no longer deny that Freud
recognizes activity in women) in order to assert that Freud is mock-
ing the "activism" of certain women, a level of activity that might
be exercised only by favor of a subservient docility on the part of
man, and that this would be a curious example of bisexuality. To
be sure, Freud does emphasize that only men capable of deploying
a large dose of passivity (ein hohes Mass von passiver GejUgigkeit ent-
wickeln) can stand to live with such women, but he does so only in
order to reverse the common positions yet again: it is man who is
endowed with a large dose of passivity and woman with a grosse
Aktivitiit, and the one is the symmetrical counterpart of the other.
If there is mockery with regard to women, there is parallel mockery
with regard to men. But most important, we do not have here an
example of bisexuality. You cannot believe this precisely because you
are already convinced, unlike Freud, that passivity coincides with
femininity and activity with virility. In which you are wrong, and
it is not I but Freud who says so: "If you now tell me that these
'[,facts go to prove precisely that both men and women are bisexual
. in the psychological sense, I shall conclude that you have decided
in your own minds to make 'active' coincide with 'masculine' and
'passive' with 'feminine'. But I advise you against it. It seems to me
 Freud Investigates
__to serve no useful purpose and adds nothing to our knowledge"
, (ibid.);' The thesis of bisexuality is not present simply to reintroduce
the metaphysical position, which, making a speculative distinction
between two radically opposed sexes, attributes activity to the one
(the male) and passivity to the other (the female); based on the
comparative method and on observation, this thesis, on the contrary,
blurs all the oppositions and denounces the classical thesis as de-
pending on an analogical reasoning that is erroneous and sterile
because it is purely speculative. Would one move closer to a reso-
lution of the enigma by characterizing woman, from the psycho-
logical point of view, not by passivity, to be sure (since observation
invalidates this), but by a tendency toward J.l.<l~~~y~.ai!!1s (Bevorzugung
passiver Ziele)? One might think so: in this case woman's pseudo-
activity would only be a means to achieve a passive aim. Must we
see in the intervention of this new notion an attempt on Freud's part
to "save," in spite of everything, what is at stake, the opposition
between activity and passivity as characteristic of the one between
masculinity and femininity? In this case Freud would be "only com-
plicating" the economy of the active/passive relations without
changing anything basic and he would once again be inclined to
stress the fact that man is the procreator, that sexual production/
reproduction can be credited to activity alone, and that woman is a
mere receptacle." But why would Freud want to "save" what is at
stake in precisely the opposition he is seeking to deconstruct? Why
would one want once again, at any price, to confuse him with
Aristotle (and a simplified Aristotle at that) despite what his text
says unequivocally at the literal level? For this notion of "giving
preference to passive aims" is raised only to be criticized. It comes
'Luce Irigaray, undoing the order of Freud's argumentation, maintains that
all the same, despite the "activism" that he stresses in woman, activity is still
left for the most part to man: during intercourse. At the very point where
Freud insists on the limited nature of male activity, she turns this minimal
activity into Activity itself Irigarav's "reasoning," which is contradicted by
the entire text, can be summarized as follows: 0 Freud (the Freud I would like
you to be, the better to criticize you):
• You take away all activity from women.
• You endow women with hyperactivity.
• In any event, it is man that is essentially active, according to you.
lCf Speculum.
[II8]
Psychology: Its Sterility and Impotence
from that same popular psychology that is based on the anatomical
model; it is not proposed as a solution. Indeed, if the anatomical
model and the model of sexual life (Vorbildlichkeit des Sexuallebens)
which is its more or less perfect replica give women in varying
degrees a more or less pronounced tendency to passive behavior and
aims, these are not the only factors that come into play: social or-
ganization also tends to place women in passive situations, and one
must not underestimate this influence.
Does this mean that Freud, dependent on the metaphysical op-
position between nature and culture, biology and society, doubly
determines women in regard to her passive aims? "There is one
particularly constant relation between femininity and instinctual life
which we do not want to overlook. The suppression of women's
aggressiveness which is prescribed for them constitutionally and
imposed on them so<i~ .. " (ibid., p. II6). It seems to me rather
that the appeal tosocial organization-in a vagl1e and general way,
to be sure-is presented in order to complicate the simple schema
of popular psychology which posits a strictly biological determin-
ism; that is why the appeal, at the end of the lecture, to "biology"
to fill in the gaps left by psychoanalysis cannot be understood in a
simple way; that is also why" Analysis Terminable and Intermin-
able," which stresses the rejection of femininity as an insurmount-
able biological fact, like the bedrock found under all the other layers,
does not merely assimilate this rejection with that of passivity. A
very important note regarding Adler's expression "masculine pro-
test" emphasizes that this term must not mislead us "into supposing
that what the man is repudiating is his passive attitude [as suchl--
what might be called the social asp.e~(oljCmininity. Such a view is
contradicted by an observation that is easily verifiable-namely that
such men often display a masochistic attitude-a state that amounts
to bondage-towards women. What they reject is not passivity in gen-
eral, but passivity towards a male" ("Analysis," p. 252, n. I; emphasis
added).
By bringing social organization (in general) into playas one of
the factors behind the passivity of feminine behavior, Freud wants
to mark the fact that it could not be constitutive of woman's nature
as such, and to suggest that popular psychology, which makes of
this passivity a defining characteristic of woman, is not a science
 Freud Investigates
but an ideology determined by a social organization that has a vested
interest in having the passive attitude of women passed off as a
natural phenomenon. The appeal to "the influence ofsocial customs"
("Femininity," p. 116), despite its vague and general character, has
the effect of putting an end to the clarity of popular evidence (which
is that of psychology and the whole metaphysical tradition) and of
voluntarily introducing an enigmatic obscurity: "all this is still far
from being cleared up" (ibid.).:' For reasons connected with her
constitution and especially because of the requirements of society,
woman is thus obliged to repress her aggressiveness, to tum it back
upon herself, and strongly masochistic tendencies come to be formed
in her as a result: woman is not by nature deprived of aggressiveness,
she simply discharges this aggressiveness in a peculiar way by turn-
ing it against herself instead of discharging it elsewhere.
Can we finally have discovered the solution to the riddle? Can
masochism be the defining characteristic of woman, as is commonly
maintained? "M~~o£hi~lll' as people say, is truly feminine" (ibid.).
So people say. But Freud does not say so, or if he does, it is in an
entirely different sense." For one also encounters a great many mas-
ochistic men, and if you admit that masochismis thedefining char-
acteristic of women, in order to escape from the dilemma you are
then obliged to declare that these men have feminine character traits,
which is begging the question: it in no way "contradicts" Freud that
there are masochistic men! There, on the contrary, is an argument
that allows him to reject masochism as a solution to the enigma and
to blur once again the limits of masculinity and femininity. There
again, you can say that a masochistic man is "feminine" only if you
suppose-but this is precisely what would have to be demon-
strated-that femininity and passivity are identical.
That is why, when Freud exposes the nature of the so-called
feminine masochism in "The Economic Problem of Masochism,"
he paradoxically takes as his only example the case of a patient of
the masculine sex: owing, he says, to the material at his disposal.
As we have seen, the choice of this example may be interpreted as
-'Thus it is not, as lrigaray declares, the lecturer who is overwhelmed by
the problem here, incapable of confronting "the dark continent of femininity."
"Here again lrigaray attributes to Freud the notion that he is discussing.
"People say this, and I, Freud, say so too," she writes.
[120]
Psychology: Its Sterility and Impotence
the mark of a permanent epistemological priority granted to the
masculine model, but also as the sign of a displacement that Freud
is effecting on the popular prejudice that makes masochism a char-
acteristic trait ofwomen. Although he retains the old term "feminine
masochism," although he even declares that this masochism is the
expression of woman's being, he erases the limits between the fem-
inine and the masculine and introduces a concept entirely different
from that of ordinary psychology: feminine masochism depends on
the primary erogenous masochism, on the pleasure produced by
pain, and those who succumb to it are women every time." What
men avoid is not passivity in general, but only passivity toward men.
Put in other terms, what men fear is castration by the father. "What
they reject is not passivity in general, but passivity towards a male.
In other words, the 'masculine protest' is in fact nothing else than
castration anxiety" ("Analysis," pp. 252-253, n. I).
Tb~ rejecti_~tl~J~_'1}J'l~n.[tyj~f! ndi!(tjqnno!olIumjl!ity but 0fcastration.
a specific~liy psychoanalytic concept that Freud substitutes for the
celebrated "passivity" of popular psychology and metaphysics. The
entire lecture "Femininity" has as its goal the introduction of that
concept in the place of the contaminated notion of passivity. So long
as one does not go beyond this metaphysical notion, one cannot
progress so much as a single step. The detour by way of psychology
will have been of no use at all; there is no getting around it, the
riddle of femininity (das Rdtse! der Weiblichkeitt cannot be solved by
psychology.
'Cf " 'A Child Is Being Beaten': A Contribution to the Study of the Origin
of Sexual Perversions," 17:177-204 (191ge).
• "The French translation, clefdu mystire (key to the mystery), is unacceptable.
[121 ]

5 femininity, the path of the neurotic (hysterical) woman, the path of j
Psychoanalysis:
The Child Becomes a Woman
THE ORIGINAL BISEXUALITY
In this obscurity of bewilderment, this extreme confusion that
has been the outcome of the investigation so far, since the limits
between masculine and feminine have been eradicated and the tra-
ditional criteria of activity and passivity rejected, psychoanalysis
appears to be the only way out: it will be the source of "light,"
provided that the problem can be posed in terms quite different from
those used in the past. Light can be shed if we learnhow the differ-
entiation between the two sexes comes about:'weare so used to it we
tend to forget the surprising character of that differentiation, the
fact that it allows us to distinguish between animate and inanimate
nature. Within this general area, Freud elects to study the specific
topic-and it is complicated enough in itself--of the differentiation
of the feminine sex as such from an original bisexuality: it is no
'<c longer a matter of describing woman's essence (was das Weib ist)-
a hopeless metaphysical task suited to poetry-but of trying to find
out in standard positivist fashion how the cllild\V.ithbisexu_~.Uefld­
encies becomes a woman. Woman as such, as eternal essenc~,·does not
exist, she is the (possible) product of a specific constitution and
history that vary with the individual. One is not a woman, one is
not born a woman, one becomes a woman. Which also implies that
one may never complete the process, that it can be carried out to
[122]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
varying extents; that in those we call "women, " because they possess
"feminine" genital organs, there is thus always a greater or lesser
degree of "masculinity"; and that there are different types of women
according to whether they end up accomplishing their female destiny
more or less perfectly, according to the various paths they may
follow from their bisexual point of departure: the path of "normal"
masculine overcompensation (that of the woman who is never able I
to accept her "feminine destiny"). The fact that there thus are-at}
least=threepossible.pathsimplies..a gap between psychical and an-
atomicaldejerminants, since though women start from identical
"female" genital organs (supplying a single sexual product, the
ovum), their psychic behavior varies, they do not all turn out to be
exactly the same "type." If "anatomy is destiny," to use the phrase I
Freud borrowed from Napoleon, this destiny does not prevent each i/
woman from having her own destiny, in terms of drives, in ac-'
cordance\Vit~ her ownpersonalhistory. "Women" psychoanalysts,
for example, are exceptional women, more "masculine" than "fem-
inine," who could in no way be "concerned" by the lack of friend-
liness in Freud's discourse respecting those people called "women."
Bisexuality keeps us from simply deciding which sex we are dealing
with; like all undecidables, it makes it possible to operate on all
fronts as the cause requires. By using the thesis of bisexuality as a
double-edged sword (it allows him both to break down the meta-
physical opposition of "pure" masculinity and femininity and to
continue to keep masculinity in its traditionally privileged position),
in his theory Freud "mimics" the hysteric, whose symptoms serve
precisely to confirm his thesis of bisexuality. The hysterical symp-
tom, in fact, is the expression of a double unconscious fantasy: the
patient simultaneously-and contradictorily, in terms of a logic of
consciousness-plays both roles, masculine and feminine. This si-
multaneity allows what is at stake to be both concealed and dis-
played. The hysteric engages in a multiple identification, always
plays a double game that makes him impenetrable and impregnable.
The undecidable bisexual hysterical symptom is particularly resistant:
for example, a patient holds her dress tight against her body with
one hand (as a woman) while with the other hand she tries to pull
it away (as a man). During her "attack" she represents and conceals
[ 12 3]
 Freud Investigates
in a "graphic"-and thus economical-manner the unconscious bi-
sexual fantasy, and she plays upon it.
We need not then be surprised or misled if a symptom seems
to persist undiminished although we have already resolved
one of its sexual meanings; for it is still being maintained by
the-perhaps unsuspected-c-one belonging to the opposite sex.
In the treatment of such cases, moreover, one may observe
how the patient avails himself, during the analysis of the one
sexual meaning, of the convenient possibility of constantly
switching his associations, as though on to an adjoining track,
into the field of the contrary meaning. 1
In the act she puts on (for herself), in that "crisis" whose object
is to ward off a Krisis, the hysteric is like the masturbator who tries
to experience both the woman's and the man's sensations in the
situation he conjures up for himself: all such cases, and they are
quite common, confirm the supposedly bisexual constitution of the
human being. The hysterical symptom implies the return ofa fragment
ofinfantile sexual activity that was repressed during the development
toward femininity. A fragment of typically masculine activity: the
more girls show boyish tendencies in their prepubertal years, the
more excessively they repress their "masculine" sexuality at puberty.
This repression leads to a particular predisposition to neurosis, es-
pecially of the hysterical type. The hysterical crisis reinstates in woman
her lost, overly repressed masculinity: "In a whole number of cases
the hysterical neurosis merely represents an excessive accentuation
of the typical wave of repression which, by doing away with her
masculine sexuality, allows the woman to emerge.Y"
The sexuality of female children, is, as we know, dominated
and directed by a masculine organ (the clitoris) and often
behaves like the sexuality of boys. This masculine sexuality
has to be got rid of by a last wave of development at puberty,
'''Hysterical Phantasies and Their Relation to Bisexuality," 9:157-166 (1908a),
p. 166.
'''Some General Remarks on Hysterical Attacks," 9:229-234 (l909a [1908]),
P·234·
[ 12 4]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
and the vagina, an organ derived from the cloaca, has to be
raised into the dominant erotogenic zone. Now, it is very
common in hysterical neurosis for this repressed masculine
sexuality to be reactivated and then for the defensive struggle
on the part of the ego-syntonic instincts to be directed against
it.:'
Hysteria 'is thus like an accident along the "woman's" path in
the process that is to lead her from bisexuality to femininity: a more
or less inevitable accident, brought about by the duality of the erog-
enous zones to which she finds herself subject and by the necessity,
at a particular moment in her development, to pass from the one
to the other. This passage cannot occur unobstructed; it is hindered
by a desire to remain fixated within a zone of sexual pleasure that
has proved reliable. Hence the magnitude of the repression, its ex-
cessiveness, and the hysteria: the massive return of what seemed to
have been abolished but had never really been given up, the rein-
stallation in the self, as it were, of the lost erogenous zone. Hysteria
is the neurotic analogue of melancholic psychosis, since both are
caused by a loss, in the one case that of an erogenous zone, in the
other that of an object.
Because of the prohibitions to which woman has too often yielded,
the hysterical crisis that both displays and conceals her bisexuality,
and in particular her masculinity, is the only way open to her by
which she can experience sexual pleasure in two ways at once. The
crisis reveals that the hysteric does not want to let go of anything,
in effect, and that development toward so-called normal femininity
is repressive because it is restrictive. But who imposes the norm
here? And is the norm unisexuality, the complete abandonment of
one zone in favor of another? Is it not the hysteric who, because she
has taken pleasure altogether too much in the masculine fashion in
her childhood, is compelled to repress masculine sexuality totally
in order to continue to experience pleasure in another way? And
who can no longer enjoy her masculinity except neurotically, in the
hysterical crisis, as a result? Isn't the norm the maintenance of the
'''The Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis," 12:313-326 (193Ii), pp. 325-
326.
[ 12 5]
 Freud Investigates
double pleasure? And yet, if there is to be femininity, it "is necessary
that" the passage from one erogenous zone to the other be accom-
plished. But this passage implies not a complete repression of clitoral
sexuality-as the potential hysteric achieves it-but its simple.sub-
()r~ill~a,~ion to.vaginal.sexuality. It is not a question of abolishing the
one in favor of the other, but of overturning the hierarchy in favor
of the vagina. Normal adult femininity remains bisexual. Masculine
clitoral pleasure is even the condition for properly feminine vaginal
pleasure: it serves as a means for exciting the contiguous genital
areas, and in this respect it is comparable to the "kindling" (ein Span
Kleinholz) that is used to light a harder wood. There is sometimes
a certain period before this transmission takes place during which
the young woman is not sensitive to pleasure. Such a lack of sen-
sitivity may become chronic when the clitoris refuses to transmit
excitations, chiefly because of excessive activity during the infantile
period.... When erogenous excitation is transmitted from the cli-
toris to the vaginal orifice, a change in the leading erogenous zone
occurs in the woman, a change on which the future of her sexual
life depends, whereas man maintains the same zone from childhood.
With this change in the leading erogenous zone, with the thrust of
repression during puberty that seems as though it is seeking to
suppress the character of sexual masculinity in the little girl, we find
the conditions that predispose women to neuroses and particularly
to hysteria. These conditions depend closely on the essence of fem-
ininity (Wesen der Weiblichkeit). (See "Three Essays," p. 221.)
Bisexuality is the norm, and it is also the condition of women's
predisposition to neuroses. Men for their part are less exposed to
hysteria, for their bisexuality is less pronounced than that of women,
precisely because from childhood on they keep the same erogenous
zone and thus do not have to solve the difficult problem of the
transfer from one zone to another. At this point one may well ask
how masculine bisexuality is manifested. It is true that Freud does
not inquire into the little boy's development into manhood; this
does not imply, however, that he denies the existence of masculine
bisexuality, nor does it imply, either, that he admits that no pro-
hibition weighs upon man's bisexual tendencies (whereas asserting
the repression of woman's masculine desires seems to aim at "keep-
ing her apart from any participation in symbolic elaboration" [Luce
[126]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
Irigaray]). Masculine bisexuality is undeniable at the level of object
choice, for if man generally retains a single libidinal object, the
mother (whereas here again woman, in order to become what she
is, will have to carry out a transference from mother to father), he
may make a homosexual object choice. Now homosexuality implies
bisexuality as the condition that makes it possible, the homosexual
being the very image of bisexuality in terms of his body and even
his psychic makeup (timidity, shyness, need for protection), al-
though one cannot establish any parallelism, especially in men, be-
tween physical and psychical hermaphroditism, or derive the latter
from the former. Homosexuality implies bisexuality, for it is like a
compromise between two tendencies, one leaning toward men, the
other toward women; the invert indeed does not so much pursue
an object belonging to the same sex as he pursues a sexual object
that combines the two sexes in one, provided that it possess the
anatomical characteristics of man (the male genital apparatus).
Homosexuality and heterosexuality both imply the bisexuality of
which they are limitations in a specific direction, either pathological
or normal. It is society, not Freud, that decides here what is "nor-)
mal" and what is not; Freud only notes an equal attachment, in the;
beginning, to masculine or feminine objects, such that heterosex1
uality, instead of going "without saying," being natural and normay
is as problematic as homosexuality.
Psycho-analysis considers that a choice of an object inde-
pendently of its sex-freedom to range equally over male and
female objects-as it is found in childhood, in primitive states
of society and early periods of history, is the original basis
from which, as a result of restriction in one direction or the
other, both the normal and the inverted types develop. Thus
from the point of view of psycho-analysis the exclusive sexual
interest felt by men for women is also a problem that needs
elucidating and is not a self-evident fact based upon an at-
traction that is ultimately of a chemical nature. A person's
final sexual attitude is not decided until after puberty and is
the result of a number of factors, not all of which are yet
known; some are of a constitutional nature but others are
accidental.... In inverted types, a predominance of archaic
[ 1 2 7]
 Freud Investigates
constitutions and primitive psychical mechanisms is regularly
to be found. Their mostessential characteristics seem to bea coming
into operation ofnarcissistic object-choice anda retention ofthe erotic
significance of the anal zone. ["Three Essays," pp. 145-146,
n. I; emphasis added]
Under these conditions, the "cure" for a homosexual is not to
become heterosexual, for that would simply amount to exchanging
one limit for another that would have the single advantage of being
recognized as normality itself: the cure is the reestablishment of
~ complete bisexual functioning. The goal of psychoanalysis must be
to reestablish in everyone, men and women alike, the power to
experience sexual pleasure in dual fashion, "diabolically," beyond
the limitations imposed by the social morality that tends to impose
unisexuality as a norm, frustrating for one sex the pleasure expe-
rienced by the other. In this sense, a "pure" heterosexual is as "sick"
as a homosexual, even though, for social reasons, it rarely turns out
that patients on the couch ask to be cured of their heterosexuality.
The removal of genital inversion or homosexuality ... is in
my experience never an easy matter. On the contrary, I have
found success possible only in specially favourable circum-
stances, and even then the success essentially consisted in
making access to the opposite sex (which had hitherto been
barred) possible to a person restricted to homosexuality, thus
restoring his full bisexual functions. After that it lay with him
to choose whether he wished to abandon the path that is
banned by society.... One must remember that normal sex-
uality too depends upon a restriction in the choice of object.
In general, to undertake to convert a fully developed homo-
sexual into a heterosexual does not offer much more prospect
of success than the reverse, except that for good practical
reasons the latter is never attempted. ["Psychogenesis,"
p. 151]
Psychoanalysis learns not only that heterosexuality could not be
the psychic norm (although it is indeed the social norm) but that
there is no such thing as pure heterosexuality. The so-called normal
[128]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
individual always presents, alongside an avowed, manifest hetero-
sexuality, a 1l10~eQLkss'.um:.QnSg()llsjJ:ltellth9InOSexuality, and in
"a very considerable measure" (ibid., p. 171). Homosexuality is not
a "third sex" created by "nature in a freakish mood" (ibid.), nor
are masculinity and femininity two opposite types.
Three sets of features determine homosexuality. Up to a point
they vary independently ofeach other and are susceptible to different
permutations in different individuals. They are the somatic sexual
traits (physical hermaphroditism), the psychic sexual traits (mas-
culine or feminine position), and the mode of object choice. Their
independence of each other is less clear in women, where physical
and psychic marks of the opposing sexual natures coincide more
frequently than in men ("Psychogenesis"). This independence im-
plies that we have to take a bisexual disposition into account but
that we do not know its anatomical substratum, even though this
substratum seems more important in women than in men, women
also having been considered in our entire tradition as more "natural"
than men, more dependent upon their bodies. Nevertheless, what
is important here is the assertion that the characteristics are inde-
pendent ofeach other: "The theory ofbisexuality has been expressed
in its crudest form by a spokesman of the male inverts: 'a feminine
brain in a masculine body'.... There is neither need nor justification
for replacing the psychological problem by the anatomical one"
("Three Essays," p. 142). This assertion allows Freud to give bi-
sexuality a specifically psychoanalytic character, to make it his
"thing," to make a claim to paternity of the notion thus reeval-
uated-even as he recognizes, in a gesture he makes frequently, that
it was not invented by him. In the "Three Essays" he insistently
includes note after note in an effort to indicate the real "inventor"
of that notion, in order to make it possible to pay a debt in that area
just when he is in the process of ridding himself of the debt. A note
written just after Freud has referred to the bisexual disposition as a
way of explaining inversion should be read in its entirety:
It appears (from a bibliography given in the sixth volume of
the Jahrbuch fir sexuelle ZwischenstuJen) that E. Gley was the
first writer to suggest bisexuality as an explanation of inver-
sion. As long ago as in January, 1884, he published a paper,
[ 129]
 Freud Investigates
'Les aberrations de l'instinct sexuel', in the Revue Philoso-
phique. It is, moreover, noteworthy that the majority of au-
thors who derive inversion from bisexuality bring forward
that factor not only in the case of inverts, but also for all
those who have grown up to be normal, and that, as a logical
consequence, they regard inversion as the result of a disturb-
ance in development. Chevalier (1893) already writes in this
sense. Krafft-Ebing (1895, 10) remarks that there are a great
number of observations 'which prove at least the virtual per-
sistence of this second centre (that of the subordinated sex)'.
A Dr. Arduin (1900) asserts that 'there are masculine and
feminine elements in every human being (cf Hirschfeld, 1899);
but one set of these--according to the sex of the person in
question-is incomparably more strongly developed than the
other, so far as heterosexual individuals are concerned.... '
Herman (1903) is convinced that 'masculine elements and
characteristics are present in every woman and feminine ones
in every man:', etc. [Added 1910:] Fliess (1906) subsequently
claimed the idea of bisexuality (in the sense of duality of sex)
as his own. [Added 1924:] In lay circles the hypothesis of
human bisexuality is regarded as being due to O. Weininger,
the philosopher, who died at an early age, and who made the
idea the basis of a somewhat unbalanced book (1903). The
particulars which I have enumerated above will be sufficient
to show how little justification there is for the claim. [Po 143,
n. I]
In the original note he accumulates the names of the" claimants"
as if to confirm his own discoveries and to protect himself behind
a host of scholars, even though a close reading shows that their
claims were not quite the same as his, either because they did not
distinguish between physical and mental bisexuality or because they
made no distinctions in the way they treated male and female bi-
sexuality. It is noteworthy, and symptomatic, that Freud quotes
neither Fliess (who comes in only in 1910) nor Weininger (who does
not appear until 1924). The belated references to these men, added
as if out of guilt, reveal that what is at stake for Freud is perhaps
indeed disposing ofFliess the father figure and distinguishing himself
[130]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
clearly from Weininger, that speculative type, that insane man who
committed suicide. It scarcely matters who came up with the idea;
what is essential is to use it in a way that will not be unreflective,
truly to make something of it-his own thing.
To use it, for example, as a defensive weapon against the ac-
cusations of "speculative folly" that women bring against him, to
use it for or against women, to use it to explain the various outcomes
of the drives, the difficulties that women experience in becoming
women, and, in the final analysis, the rejection of femininity by life
as a whole.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SEXUALITY:
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GIRLS AND BOYS
The task, then, is to study how the little girl's feminine destiny
is accomplished, starting from her original bisexuality. The girl's
development toward normality is "more difficult and more com-
plicated" than the boy's, "since it includes two extra tasks, to which
there is nothing corresponding in the development ofa man" ("Fem-
ininity," p. 117). The girl's task is all the more difficult in that her
anatomical makeup does not determine everything at the outset, for
"the constitution will not adapt itself to its function without a strug-
gle" (ibid.) and yet everything will be definitively settled before
puberty.
If we set up a parallelism between girls and boys, we do not
need psychoanalysis to observe differences from the very beginning:
an anatomical difference in the shape of the genital organs and other
distinctive physical signs; a mental difference in the organization of
the drives which makes it possible to perceive what feminine nature
(Wesen des Weibes) will later become. Generally speaking, the little
girl is less aggressive, less stubborn, less self-sufficient (selbstgeniig-
sam); she seems to have a greater need for affection, which makes
her more dependent and more submissive. Thus there is more and
less in every girl: less in the way of sadistic and narcissistic affir-
mation; more in the demand for love and in obedience. This "more"
is itself simply the inverse of the "less," and it is the corollary of
[13 I]
 Freud Investigates
the girl's deficiencies: at this level all her advantages, properly in-
terpreted, only betray her "drawbacks." If she gains control over
her excretory functions more quickly, it is quite probably just a
consequence of her submissiveness; if she triumphs earlier over her
infantile drives, it is so she can hold onto her mother's love by
presenting her with urine and feces, those first of all gifts. Further-
more, one has the impression that at any given age the little girl is
more intelligent, livelier, better disposed with respect to the outside
world, and that at the same time she experiences stronger objectal
cathexes.
To be sure, one does not need psychoanalysis to demonstrate
these differences. For this reason, Freud wonders whether they are
really based on significant observations. After mentioning them and
classifying them in an order that does, however, imply psychoan-
alytic theory (for example, he distinguishes between differences that
are sadistic-anal in origin and those that stem from narcissism), Freud
cancels out all those differences, declaring them inconsequential with
respect to the goal he is pursuing: "These sexual differences are not,
however, of great consequence: they can be outweighed by indi-
vidual variations. For our immediate purposes they can be disre-
garded" (ibid.). His immediate purpose is to emphasize, on the
contrary, the initial near-identity of girls and boys. However, Freud
salvages one difference--the only one, that of the girl's intellectual
precocity-and holds onto it: "In any case there is no question that
girls cannot be described as intellectually backward" (ibid.)." Why,
given that he is obliterating all difference, does he stress the irre-
ducible character of the little girl's intellectual precocity? It is cer-
tainly not because he would be "embarrassed" by this accessory
precocity (according to Luce Irigaray, such embarrassment would
lead him to wipe out all difference rather than allow the girl any
superiority whatever). On the contrary, it is important to him to
insist on this initial superiority on the girl's part, the better to take
it away, later, from the woman. To show not that woman's intel-
lectual inferiority is indelible because it is natural and -anginal, as
the philosophers claim, but that it is a consequence-ofthe girl's
'The translation of riickstiindig as arrieree (backward), a term exploited by
Luce Irigaray, seems mistaken to me.
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
sexuald~yd.R.P.1l1~DJ,_ oLth<::,JIlOrl:;. or l~s,strQng.n.:p.rcssion of her
sexual curiosity owing to the parental (social) prohibitions that fall
mofe-l,J.:e:ayil)(g!1 the girl than on the' boy; that it is a consequence,
too, of the different way the Oedipus complex is resolved in the
two sexes, and thus of the difference between their superegos and
their respective capacities for sublimation.
-Because it is really the question ofwoman's intellectual inferiority
that arouses the feminists against him, it is also important, for stra-
tegic reasons, to begin by safeguarding the girl's intelligence. I,
Freud, do not speculate, I always bow to observation, and where
little girls are concerned, observation uncontestably demonstrates
their intellectual superiority. All other observations are uncon-
firmed, and the other differences may be neglected to the benefit of
a more important sexual similarity: "Both sexes seem to pass through
the early phases oflibidinal development in the same manner" (ibid.).
THE IDENTITY OF THE SEXES IN THE EARLY PHASES
OF LIBIDINAL DEVELOPMENT
The oral phase is not mentioned, as if it were self-evident that
boys and girls behave alike during this stage. On the other hand,
the sadistic-anal phaseoffers some surprises with respect to the popular
pseudo-observations evoked earlier in which girls were seen as less
aggressive than boys. In contrast to ordinary forms of observation,
Freud calls upon psychoanalytic observation, especially as practiced
. by women analysts, who are not under suspicion of bias and "mas-
culine" prejudices. With reference to children's games, these analysts
have shown that girls' aggressive impulses are by no means less
abundant or less violent than boys'; in this area, girls have no reason
to envy boys (nichts zu wiinschen uhrig lassen [CW, 15:125]). If you
want to set up a competition between girls and boys, you parents
who so readily compare the respective developments of your chil-
dren, and in so doing set up a state of war or rivalry between the
two sexes very early on, then contrary to your own expectations,
you who are full of prejudices and who project the future woman
in the child, you will be forced to recognize that girls do not let
[133]
 Freud Investigates
themselves be outstripped by boys; from this point of view, girls
do not experience any lag (ZurUckbleiben der Aggression [ibid.]). The
lesser aggressiveness on girls' part is not a natural phenomenon
bound up with some feminine essence, it is the product of girls'
overall development, of their entire education: woman has a passive,
not an aggressive, destiny that is the necessary corollary of her
development into womanhood.
As for the phallic stage, from the very beginning the similarities
count for more than the differences. Here you cannot conceive of
the little girl as different from the little boy, for "we are now obliged
to recognize that the little girl is a little man" ("Femininity," p. 1I 8:
"Wir miissen nun anerkennen, das kleine Madchen sei ein kleiner
Mann" [ibid., pp. 125-126]). Indeed, it is because she is first of ali-
a little man that she runs into a developmental problem that the
boy, who is already a man, does not face. Ssa.rting not so much J order to reinforce a power that was in danger of crumbling with
from an original bisexuality as from an original quasi-masculinity,
how does one become a woman? And why is it necessary to" become
one if, as "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" asserts, life abhors
femininity and in each of the "two" sexes femininity is repudiated?
If the affirmation of an original bisexuality is the condition that
makes it possible to pass from the masculinity of the phallic stage
to a phase that is seen as "properly" feminine, the affirmation of
the quasi-identity of the two sexes in the three earliest phases makes
the affirmation of this bisexuality.srricrly.rheorerical. To be sure,
bisexuality makes it possible to obliterate the metaphysical oppo-
sition between femininity and masculinity, but this obliteration fa-
vors the dominance of a single sex, the male sex, which for its part
never has to overcome any original femininity whatever. Despite
the initial affirmation of an original bisexuality common to both
sexes, a single sex, the male sex, in fact predominates: the penis is
always the leading erogenous zone-for both sexes. And Freud's as-
sertion is strengthened by his simultaneous discovery of the little
girl's radical otherness, the Minoan-Mycenean civilization behind
the Greek: as if loudly proclaiming the primacy of the phallus had!l
to cover up and finally abolish the surprising, frightening, and fas-
cinating character of female sexuality in its difference.
The transformations that can be followed from one text to an-
other are symptomatic in this respect. The "Three Essays on the
[134]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
Theory of Sexuality" (1905) state that the early stages are charac-
terized by a perverse polymorphous sexuality: the component in-
stincts develop independently of each other until the genital stage,
when they are subordinated to the primacy of the genital zone. The
later texts, especially from "Infantile Genital Organization" (1923)
on, introduce a supplementary stage--the phallic stage--which even
before the genital stage proper implies the primacy of the phallus.
This supplementary stage, added to serve the cause (man's), then
compels Freud, who does not hesitate to contradict himself, to re-
work the "Three Essays," adding footnotes that indicate the new
modifications, but not the reasons for all these supplements (he
merely alludes in vague terms to the progress of knowledge). And
because the addition of this supplementary stage receives no expla-
nation as such-in fact, it is superimposed on everything else in
the discovery of the "wholly other" nature of female sexuality-
Freud, quoting Abraham, makes a characteristically suspect appeal
to his last resort, biology:
The only difference [between the pregenital organizations and
the final form taken by sexual life after puberty] lies in the
fact that in childhood the combination of the component in-
stincts and their subordination under the primacy of the gen-
itals have been effected only very incompletely or not at all.
Thus the establishment of that primacy in the service of re-
production is the last phase through which the organization
of sexuality passes. ["Three Essays," p. 199]
Readers of my Three Essays on the Theory ofSexuality [1905d]
will be aware that I have never undertaken any thorough
remodelling of that work in its later editions, but have retained
the original arrangement and have kept abreast of the advances
made in our knowledge by means of interpolations and al-
terations in the text. In doing this, it may often have happened
that what was old and what was more recent did not admit
of being merged into an entirely uncontradictory whole.
Originally, as we know, the accent was on a portrayal of the
fundamental difference between the sexual life of children and
[135]
 Freud Investigates
of adults; later, the pregenital organizations of the libido made
their way into the foreground.... Finally, our interest was
engaged by the sexual researches of children; and from this we
were able to recognize the far-reading approximation ofthefinal
outcome ofsexuality in childhood . . . to the definitive form taken
by it in the adult.... To-day I should no longer be satisfied
with the statement that in the early period of childhood the
primacy of the genitals has been effected only very incom-
pletely or not at all. The approximation of the child's sexual
life to that of the adult goes much further and is not limited
solely to the coming into being of the choice of an object.
Even if a proper combination of the component instincts un-
der the primacy of the genitals is not effected, ... interest in
the genitals and in their activity acquires a dominating sig-
nificance which falls little short of that reached in maturity.
At the same time, the main characteristic of this 'infantile
genital organization' is its difference from the final genital or-
ganization of the adult. This consists in the fact that, for both
sexes, only one genital, namely the male one, comes into
account. What is present, therefore, is not a primacy of the
genitals, but a primacy of the phallus. ["Infantile Genital
Organization," pp. 141-142]
And, in a note added to the "Three Essays" in 1924:
At a later date (1923), I myself modified this account by
inserting a third phase in the development of childhood, sub-
sequent to the two pregenital organizations. This phase, which
already deserves to be described as genital, presents a sexual
object and some degree of convergence of the sexual impulses
upon that object, but it is differentiated from the final or-
ganization of sexual maturity in one essential respect. For it
knows only one kind of genital: the male one. For that reason
I have named it the 'phallic' stage of organization (Freud,
1923e). According to Abraham [1924], it has a biological pro-
totype in the embryo's undifferentiated genital disposition,
which is the same for both sexes. [Pp. 199-200, n. 2]
[136]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
Tl!e:. more he disCOY.e.rsdifference>- themore he abandons. strict
1'4..
parallelism and symmetry. between girls and boys, the more he
shores up the initial "identity" and proclaims .the.primacy, of the
phallus. So that whether identity (symmetry) or difference is af-
fi~ed, it always amounts to sameness, and tothe privileging of the
masculine model, which continues to impose itself on Freud at a
time when, after the revolutionary discovery of the wholly other,
he ought to have been proceeciwg with a methodological revolution.
Thus as of 1920-23 he ceaselessly proclaims difference, announces
his abandonment of strict parallelism and symmetry, while at the
same time he continues to give his account (Darstellung) of female
sexuality the "benefit" of lengthy discussions of male sexuality,
which remains the referent and standard for what is said to lack any
common standard.
Thus in "Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Dis-
tinction between the Sexes" (1925), he first recalls his past "errors":
"In examining the earliest mental shapes assumed by the sexual life
of children we have been in the habit of taking as the subject of our
investigations the male child, the little boy. With little girls, so we
have supposed, things must be similar, though in some way or other
they must nevertheless be different. The point in development at
which this difference lay could not be clearly determined" (p. 249).
Then he goes on to present the Oedipus complex in the little boy
at considerable length before approaching the girl's, which "raises
one problem" (p. 25 I), to be sure, but which remains dependent on
the masculine model.
Similarly, in "Female Sexuality" (1931), after declaring that the
idea of a close parallelism between male and female sexual devel-
opment is henceforth to be abandoned, he adds: "It will help our
exposition if, as we go along, we compare the state of things in
women with that in men" (p. 227). If, in the phallic stage, the little-r'
girl is a little man, then it becomes in fact "profitable" to begin the
discussion of her sexuality with a discussion of the little boy's.
The little boy, then, at this stage gives himself voluptuous sen-
sations thanks to his little penis, and this state of erection is accom;-
panied by representations of sexual intercourse. Earlier texts do not
associate infantile masturbatory activity with fantasi~s of t~e prir:na1
scene. "Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical DlstmctlOd
[137]
 Freud Investigates
between the Sexes" (1925) asserts that the child discovers the genital
zone as a source of pleasure while experiencing the pleasure of suck-
ing: "The genital zone is discovered at some time or other, and there
seems no justification for attributing any psychical content to the
first activities in connection with it" (pp. 251-252). Similarly, mas-
turbation in the phallic stage is not related to the object cathexes of
the Oedipus complex.
Why does Freud stress here the existence of an accompanying
representation of sexual relations? Is it to abolish the notion that
there may be simple pleasure at the level of the sexual organ before
the phallic stage? Is it to link masturbatory enjoyment more closely
with the Oedipus complex, which occurs in the phallic phase," and
thus to the threat of castration? This "addition" seems to me in fact
to take on its full importance in relation to the little girl's mastur-
batory pleasure: if this pleasure arises only during the phallic phase,
the little girl can have no experience of pleasure other than this
"improper" one of the "masculine" type. The comparison with the
little boy aims here, in fact, at totally assimilating the girl's enjoy-
ment with the boy's, at showing that both sexes are at this point
entirely ignorant of the "female" sex organ, of the existence of the
"properly feminine" vagina, which has not yet been "discovered."
It is a matter of demonstrating-but it is really a way of begging
the question-that in the phallic stage, because this stage has been
reached, there can be only a single, phallic type of pleasure, even if
anal or vestibulary sensations should occur. And in any event, even
supposing that such sensations exist, given that we are dealing with
the phallic stage-Freud provides no other justification-they can
play no important role. You have to acknowledge this, get it quite
firmly into your heads: during the phallic phase, it is really the clitoris
that constitutes the leading erotogenic zone. Now what is the clitoris
but the equivalent of the penis (Penisiiquivalent)? The girl masturbates
like the boy, derives pleasure from her clitoris as he does from his
little penis. The clitoris is a little tiny penis, even smaller than the
boy's small one, which in tum is much smaller than the paradigmatic
one belonging to the father (or the mother).
The little girl's clitoris turns out to be at three removes from the
SCf. "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex" (1923).
[138]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
paradigmatic paternal penis: in Platonic terms, it is situated at the
!
lowest level, that of the simulacrum. The "size" of the penis serves j
as a criterion for establishing the hierarchy. Because the girl has a
very small penis, she is at this stage simply a very small man, a
lesser man: but that is what had always been postulated. As a simu-
lacrum, the clitoris is not a simple penis equivalent, which would
imply only a functional identity of the two organs, both yielding
the same type of masturbatory pleasure because they would be ho-
mologous on the anatomical level: "The leading erotogenic zone in
female children is located at the clitoris, and is thus homologous to
the masculine genital zone of the glans penis" ("Three Essays,"
p. 220). "Anatomy has recognized the clitoris within the female
pudenda as being an organ that is homologous to the penis; and the
physiology of the sexual processes has been able to add that this
small penis which does not grow any bigger behaves in fact during
childhood like a real and genuine penis" ("Sexual Theories," p. 217).
To speak of equivalence or homology is to establish a simple paral-
lelism between the two organs. It is to assert that in spite of the
quantitative differences, thequality is the same, has the same. value;
the same value-size notwithstanding-in terms of pleasure expe-
rienced. In this sense the clitoris is not an ersatz penis, it gives the
girl pleasure of the same type, the masculine type. Masturbatory
activity, which teaches the girl what masculine pleasure is, is basi-
cally a male activity: it too provokes "erections."
The auto-erotic activity of the erotogenic zones is, however,
the same in both sexes, and owing to this uniformity there
is no possibility of a distinction between the two sexes such
as arises after puberty. So far as the auto-erotic and mastur-
batory manifestations of sexuality are concerned, we might
lay it down that the sexuality of little girls is of a wholly
masculine character. ... All my experience concerning mas-
turbation in little girls has related to the clitoris and not to
the regions of the external genitalia that are important in later
sexual functioning .... The spontaneous discharges of sexual
excitement which occur so often precisely in little girls are
expressed in spasms of the clitoris. Frequent erections of that
organ make it possible for girls to form a correct judgment,
[139]
 Freud Investigates
even without any instruction, of the sexual manifestations of
the other sex. ["Three Essays," pp. 21<)-220]
The excitability of the clitoris "gives the little girl's sexual activity
a masculine character" ("Sexual Theories," p. 217).
As homologue and equivalent of the penis, the clitoris differs
from the penis in degree only; the difference is purely quantitative.
And yet it seems as though that equivalence may not be truly equiv-
alent, as though the quantitative difference may entail a qualitative
difference also, since the little girl has simply to observe a penis
larger than her own-her brother's, for instance-to experience an
immediate, irresistible, and definitive envy: the girl does not perceive
the penis as equivalent to the clitoris, but as a counterpart.. and a
superior one, of her own small organ, which is by that very token
transformed by her and lowered to the level of a simple simulqcrum:
"[Girls] notice the penis of a br~ther o~ playmate, strikingly visible
and of large proportions, at once recognize it as the superior coun-
terpart [iiberlegenes Gegenstiick] of their own small and inconspicuous
organ, and from that time forward fall a victim to envy for the
penis" ("Consequences," p. 252).
Could the value or nonvalue that the girl grants her own sex
come from a simple difference in "proportions"? Must it not be the
case that the girl has always-for numerous reasons-felt herself to
be "inferior," so that she latches onto a size difference in this way,
as an excuse, so that she begins so abruptly and so definitively to
"envy" the little boy?
Furthermore, who establishes a simple quantitative difference
between the girl and the boy here, between the clitoris and the penis?
Children? Science? Freud?
Certain texts in fact ascribe to children's sexual theories a belief
in the identity of the two sexes and the identification of the clitoris
as a little penis: this is the little boy's bias in particular, for his
valorization of the penis and the penis alone, and the castration
anxiety that supposedly drives him to a sort of spontaneous fetish-
ism, lead him to endow the girl with a little penis there where he
observes only an absence of penis:
The first of these theories starts out from the neglect of the
differences between the sexes on which I laid stress ... as
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
being characteristic of children. It consists in attributing to
everyone, including females, the possession ofa penis, such as the
boy knows from his own body. It is precisely in what we
must regard as the 'normal' sexual constitution that already
in childhood the penis is the leading erotogenic zone and the
chief auto-erotic sexual object; and the boy's estimate of its
value is logically reflected in his inability to imagine a person
like himself who is without this essential constituent. When
a small boy sees his little sister's genitals, what he says shows
that his prejudice is already strong enough to falsify his per-
ception. He does not comment on the absence of a penis, but
invariably says, as though by way of consolation and to put
things right: 'Her --'s still quite small. But when she gets
bigger it'll grow all right.' ["Sexual Theories," pp. 215-216]
So childhood prejudices are built up into infantile "sexual the-
ories" that endow girls with a little penis, fetishist fashion. But these
prejudices are tenacious. They are found again in adult dreams that
represent women with penises. Ancient art fixed these prejudices by
"reproducing" them in its countless hermaphrodites, and if natural
hermaphroditism provokes a certain aversion, its imitation in art
does not shock at all: it has the apotropaic function of the double
which makes it possible to bear that which, in nature, produces
disgust and horror. Furthermore, according to science the childhood
prejudices are "correct," since "anatomy has recognized the clitoris
within the female pudenda as being an organ that is homologous to
the penis; and the physiology of the sexual processes has been able
to add that this small penis which does not grow any bigger behaves
in fact during childhood like a real and genuine penis" (ibid., p. 217).
And Freud then concludes: "All this seems to show that there is
some truth. in the i llfantile ~~}C~al· the?ry that. wOIEen, lilcemen,
posse's~-~p~~i'~';' (ibid., pp. 217-218). One may say that psychoan-
ilym:tneory itself ratifies the sexual theory of childhood, in away,
while elaborating upon it and correcting it; like fantasy and delirium,
that theory always seems to include, brilliantly, above and beyond
its "falseness," a fragment of "pure truth":
These false sexual theories ... all have one very curious char-
acteristic. Although they go astray in a grotesque fashion, yet
[14 1]
 Freud Investigates
each one of them contains a fragment of real truth; and in
this they are analogous to the attempts of adults, which are
looked at as strokes of genius, at solving the problems of the
universe which are too hard for human comprehension. What
is correct and hits the mark in such theories is to be explained
by their origin from the components of the sexual instinct
which are already stirring in the childish organism. For it is
not owing to any arbitrary mental act or to chance impressions
that those notions arise, but to the necessities of the child's
psychosexual constitution; and this is why we can speak of
sexual theories in children as being typical. ... [Ibid., p. 215]
Between the brilliant prejudices of the child which give rise to
the sexual theories of children and psychoanalysis Freud sees the
same difference as that between the artist who anticipates with a
stroke of genius the psychoanalytic truths stammered out in infantile
fashion and the psychoanalysis that "articulates" those same truths
in an adult and scientific manner.
That is why Freud both can assert that the attribution of an iden-
tical sexuality to the two sexes is based on a clli).4i~hJack_oflrnowl­
edge-that of the existence of the vagina-and at the same time can
make his own this:)h~Q(y",confirmedby science, since he "invents"
the existenc~-cl' a stage, the phallic stage, in which he finds in fact
a single sex organ, the penis (large or small), and indeed a single
type of pleasure-masculine. That is also why one finds a perpetual
slippage in Freud's texts from what children "imagine"-on the basis
of their castration anxiety, for example-to the simple fact. After
showing, for example, how the little boy, seeing the girl's genitals
for the first time, begins by seeing nothing at all, and how, under
the threat of castration, he imagines this "nothing" as the result of
castration and denies that it has occurred by endowing the little girl
with a little penis, Fr:e~u_(Lp;:tss-es from these "theories" forged to
protect himself against anxiety to JDt:ir trllth,tgtht:;:tffirmation of
the "reality" ()fth.e g!rJ'?<::a_~!!:~tiQ...ll~.and shows how, for example,
the little girl very often "may refuse to accept the fact of being
castrated [die Tatsache ihrer Kastration]" ("Consequences," p. 253;
emphasis added).
[142 ]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Womatz
PUBERTY: THE GIRL'S TWO SUPPLEMENTARY TASKS
The hierarchical reversal
Since the primacy of the phallus is not seen as a mere theory/
fiction of childhood, then, since the clitoris is really considered to
be a masculine erogenous zone and, as such, the leading zone, it is
understandable that, of the two tasks women must accomplish in
the course of their development, the first one-a task that men,
more fortunate, do not face, for their sexuality develops in simple,
linear, logical fashion from beginning to end-is to overcome their
original masculinity, to "discard" or "repress" it so as to let the
woman emerge, so as to pass from a masculine erogenous zone to
one that is woman's own, the vaginal zone: "With the change to
femininity the clitoris should wholly or in part hand over its sen-
sitivity, and at the same time its importance, to the vagina" ("Fem-
ininity," p. I I 8). At the time of puberty, in order to become a
woman, the girl who has up to this point been a little man has to
bring off a hierarchical reversal in favor of the vagina, by way of a
rep~ession. Depending on the degree of repression, her development
in the direction of femininity will beeither "normal" or neurotic.
And because "repressing" is not the same as abolishing, nothing
will ever be definitively played out. Tnt: woman's "masculine" sex-
uality rnay resurface in a variety ofways: in dreams, in hysterical
symptoms, in the woman's masculine ideal. Finally, a woman may
always refuse to "repress," refuse to pass from one zone to the other,
thus adopting a posture of masculine overcompensation or else turn-
ing into a homosexual-even if such a refusal does not derive from
a free choice but from the woman's instinctual destiny. Only with
great difficulty does woman succeed in abandoning an erogenous
zone that has proved itself. Or even in simply subordinating it: the
conditions that predispose women to neuroses, particularly to hys-
teria, are highly dependent upon her need to bring about a hierar-
chical reversal in the course of her development so as to achieve
womanhood and realize her own "essence." It is because of this
necessary difficult changeover that "the sexual function of many
women is crippled, whether by their obstinate clinging on to this
[143]
 Freud Investigates
excitability of the clitoris ... or by ... excessive repression" ("Sex-
ual Theories," p. 217).
This break-by means of repression-in a development that can-
not therefore be as linear or as logical as man's is one of the factors
behind the illusions of metaphysics, behind the metaphysical belief
in a pure feminine or masculine essence. It is because metaphysics
has failed to recognize infantile sexuality-the identical autoerotic
activity in both sexes-that it has failed to recognize the girl's "mas-
culinity" and the woman's bisexuality. The repression ofmasculinity I
at the time of puberty is the cause both of woman's future hysteria
and of the metaphysical fiction of unchangeable and opposing es-
sences, because thegenesis ofwoman's development into womanhood has
been forgotten andconcealed. This "forgetting," which results from the
repression of "masculinity" at the time ofpuberty, is also responsible
for the mistaken belief that by nature the girl masturbates less than
the boy, whereas in fact the girl's masturbation has simply been
repressed at the time of the wave of repression that removes a good
part of her masculine sexuality. For "masturbation, at all events of
the clitoris, is a masculine activity and ... the elimination ofclitoridal
sexuality is a necessary precondition for the development of femi-
ninity" ("Consequences," p. 255). Here again the repression is not
always successful: the little girl and later on the woman may be
obsessed by masturbation and may go to great lengths to try to free
herself from it. The failure of the repression serves to confirm the
demonstration of the existence of a "feminine" masturbation in
childhood that is at least as important as the boy's, since the girl is
first of all a little man. Denial of "feminine" masturbation goes hand
in hand with the denial of her masculinity, her bisexuality.
The change of object
In this female genesis, which thus does not proceed without
obstacles and crises, the girl encounters a second task along her
"path": she is not only compelled to change her erogenous zone,
she must (soli) also change her love object: obedience to this double
imperative is the necessary condition for becoming a woman. We
are not dealing here with normative demonstrations imposed by
[144]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
Freud; we are looking at hypothetical imperatives subordinated to
a sociobiological necessity for the boy/girl to become a woman (a
social necessity, since for the sake of convenience society represses
bisexuality in favor ofunisexuality; a biological necessity, since only
the repression of woman's masculinity, the recognition of the pri-
macy of the vagina, permits the perpetuation of the species).
In order to evolve from the masculine phase to the feminine
phase to which she is destined by virtue of the very fact that she
possesses genital organs labeled feminine, the girl thus confronts a
second difficulty, has to satisfy a second obligation (Aufgabe), that
of achieving transference, passing from love for her mother to love
for her father.
This is a task from which the boy, privileged by Nature, is once
again exempt. For him, things are simple: his mother is his first love
object, he remains fixated on this object during the formation of
the Oedipus complex, and at bottom for the rest of his life: the
woman he eventually chooses will be the image of his mother all
over again-so that a woman's development into womanhood also
involves becoming a mother to her spouse. Man's sexuality develops
smoothly, with no break or crisis, owing to its fixation on the initial
love object: the mother. As for the girl, by analogy with what
happens in the boy's case it may be conjectured that her first love
object is also her mother or a mother substitute (" Auch fur Madchen
muss die Mutter ... das erste Objekt sein": For a girl too her first
object must be her mother ["Femininity," p. II8]). The French
translation here fails to render muss, and thus suppresses the con-
jectural character of the assertion regarding the girl's sexuality, which
is only inferred on the basis of the boy's, on the basis not, it seems,
of observation, but of a reasoned argument that proceeds from the
(supposed) identity of the earliest nurturing provided both sexes to
the identity of the first objectal cathexes that is seen to stem from
the satisfaction of the major needs of life, and from them alone
(grosse und einjache Lebensbediirjnisse), Despite this point of departure
postulated as identical, the girl's development is different: she has
to undergo crises and accomplish a supplementary task-at the time
of the Oedipus complex, the father becomes her love object. Fur-
thermore, the girl does not remain fixated on her father as the boy
does on the mother: if her development is normal, she is expected
 Freud Investigates
to pass from the paternal object to another, definitive object choice.
I For women, "normality" consists in never settling down, in re-
maining changeable and capricious.
Given all this, if the point of departure is indeed the same as for
the boy, why does the girl pass from one attachment to the other,
from mother to father? Why and how does the initial bond with the
mother come undone? Freud formulates this question in other terms
that he proposes as equivalent: why and how does the girl "pass
from her masculine phase to the feminine one to which she is bi-
ologically destined"? (ibid., p. II9).
This equivalence can be taken for granted only ifwe acknowledge
that not only in the phallic stage but also in the very earliest stages,
when the child's major vital needs were being satisfied by the mother,
the little girl was a little man, and nothing but a little man: thus it
can no longer be astonishing, or simply conjectural, that she is
attached to her mother during this period just as the little boy is.
The more Freud discovers in the way of later sexual difference, the
more he extends the initial "identity"-first to the phallic stage, that
supplementary stage he invents for the good of the cause, then to
the sadistic-anal and oral stages: the primacy of thephallus, as ifby
contagion, spreads from one stage to the others. And the more he
stresses the original identity, the harder it becomes to resolve the
necessary passage from a masculine to a feminine phase, the one in
which the girl abandons the mother in favor of the father. Hence
Freud's recourse to some "biological destination." This latter, how-
ever, is not to be understood as the fatality of a destiny: in that case,
there would be no need even to wonder "why" the girl sheds her
original attachments. For, contrary to what Freud previously be-
lieved, much too simplistically, no symmetry can be established
between the boy's Oedipus complex and the girl's: there is no need,
either chemical or biological, no law of nature that would impel one
sex to tum toward the other at some specific age, the boy toward
the mother, the girl toward the father. There is no path marked out
in advance that would incline the child preferentially toward the
((
parent of the opposite sex: "From the point of view of psycho-
analysis the exclusive sexual interest felt by men for women is also
a problem that needs elucidating and is not a self-evident fact based
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
upon an attraction that is ultimately of a chemical nature" ("Three
Essays," p. 146, n. I).
SO there is no mysterious force, resistant to analysis, that attracts
one sex to the other: such a simplistic, speculative, or poetic point
of view fails to take account of realities that can be discovered only
by "painstaking" psychoanalytic research based on abundant ob-
servation. To speak of a "mysterious force" is to christen a problem
verbally and metaphysically, not to resolve it; it is a lazy way of
letting oneself be fooled, of accepting a simple opposition between
the sexes instead of bisexuality. Thus when Freud calls upon poets,
at the beginning and the end of his lecture "Femininity," in order,
so he says, to confirm or "complete" his discourse, he does so only
the better to stress their incompetence and the lack of seriousness
of those who appeal to poetry as the easy way out, the best way to
confirm their own prejudices. .
If, instead of speculating (as I myself did for a long time, seduced
by the "genius" of the poets), you consented to devote yourselves
exclusively to observation, to painstaking research, then you would
make some very surprising discoveries (uberraschende Feststellungen)
which would cast doubt on all of your speculative constructions,
including the primacy of the Oedipus complex. Here the poet Soph-
ocles led me astray for a long time, as did the course of woman's
development. Many women remain fixated for a long time on the
paternal object. How could we have suspected that this has not
always been the case? That woman's love for her father, so tender
and intense, so lasting, was a simple transference of an earlier love
for her mother? That the Oedipus complex simply "repeats" the
preoedipal relation to the mother, the prototype of all love?
We knew, of course, that there had been a preliminary stage
of attachment to the mother, but we did not know that it
could be so rich in content and so long-lasting, and could
leave behind so many opportunities for fixations and dispo-
sitions. During this time the girl's father is only a troublesome
rival; in some cases the attachment to her mother lasts beyond
the fourth year of life. Almost everything that we fmd later
in her relation to her father was already present in this earlier
 Freud Investigates
attachment and has been transferred subsequently on to her
father. In short, we get an impression that we cannot under-
stand women unless we appreciate this phase of their pre-
Oedipus attachment to their mother. ["Femininity," p. 119]
Where there is a particularly intense bond with the father, there was
an earlier phase of exclusive, intense, and passionate bonding with
the mother." Paradoxically, the distinctive feature of the girl's love
is thus once again, as with the boy, love for the mother: her love
for her father is a simple metaphorical transposition of that earlier
love. Giving up the symmetry between girls and boys, based on
the masculine model-a move that might have worked in favor of
difference--only reinforces the identity and primacy of the phallus.
It is because the girl is identical to the boy that she loves the mother.
And what, in the mother, does she love, if not the person who is
presumed to possess the phallus?
The girl's libidinal relations with her mother
Active/passive, masculine/feminine
In order to bring about a rigorous assimilation of the two sexes,
first, Freud shows that during the course of the three pregenital
phases the girl, too, has libidinal relations with her mother, and not
just in random fashion; he insists on the fact that these libidinal
desires represent active as well as passive tendencies (vertreten sowohl
aktive als passive Regungen). Once again what is at stake is blurring
the distinctions between opposing terms and precluding a simple
assimilation of passivity with femininity. Passivity is not an "es-
sential" characteristic of woman, she acquiresit"historically." It is
bound up with her development into womanhood by way o-fa never
completely definitive limitation of her original bisexuality.
But if Freud does not ascribe uniquely passive inclinations to the
little girl, it is once again because the differentiation between the
sexes has not yet come about. This means that once this "difference"
6Cf. "Female Sexuality."
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
is acquired, as our whole tradition tells us (and contrary to what
seems to emerge from the beginning of the lecture "Femininity,"
where Freud insisted on woman's original bisexuality and asserted
in criticism of psychology that it was unsatisfactory "to make mas-
culine behaviour coincide with activity and feminine with passivity"
[po 115]), passivity_99~s become the "defining characteristic" of
woman and activity that of man. This is why, in the period of
deferred action, you may even label the little girl's active and passive
tendencies masculine and feminine, respectively. However, you must
avoid doing so as much as possible (was man aber moglichst vermeiden
soli) since, properly speaking, there is as yet neither femininity nor
masculinity in the first two stages, and only "masculinity" in the
third.
Is there any contradiction, then, between the two passages in the
text? When he assimilates passivity with femininity, is Freud merely
repeating the traditional gesture of metaphysics after having de-
nounced it?
The texts in question need to be closely examined: their com-
plexity, which Freud stresses repeatedly, is equal to that of the
notions of masculinity and femininity themselves. First, because
Freud is positing the theses of original bisexuality and sexual indif-
ferentiation during the first three phases of development, activity and
passivity are characteristics that cannot be identified with masculinity and
[emininitv, respectively: the first set of determinations preexist with
respect to the second set, they are thus found in girls as well as boys,
and since bisexuality is never totally eradicated even if one of the
two characteristics has to be partially repressed so that femininity
or masculinity can emerge, the woman will never be completely
passive or the man totally active. Activity and passivity are first of
all characteristics independent of masculinity and femininity; fur-
thermore, just as the development of a woman is a pure limitative
concept in the Kantian sense, the development of passivity is never
totally or definitively guaranteed: what is "proper" to woman al-
ways remains "improper."
This is why, paradoxically for the popular belief that credits the
girl with the "future" passivity desired by the woman, Freud insists
on the heterogeneity of the girl's desires toward her mother, on the
"bisexual" confusion of the active and passive tendencies experi-
 Freud Investigates
enced in childhood: a confusion that cannot be viewed as a synthesis
of masculinity and femininity, since these determinations do not
exist as yet. Starting from this confusion, a "pure" femininity or a
"pure" masculinity-pure theoretical constructs or limitative con-
cepts in the Kantian sense-must be acquired.
All these texts first stress the independence of the active/passive
determinations that are connected with the sadistic-anal stage in
relation to the masculine/feminine determinations that are connected
with the genital stage and that appear only in puberty.
It is not until puberty that the sharp distinction is established
between the masculine and feminine characters. ["Three Es-
says," p. 219]
The antithesis between male and female, which is introduced
by the reproductive function, cannot be present as yet at the
stage of pregenital object-choice. We find in its place the
antithesis between trends with an active and with a passive
aim.... Activity is supplied by the common instinct of mas-
tery, which we call sadism when we find it in the service of
the sexual function; and even in fully developed normal sexual
life it has important subsidiary services to perform. The pas-
sive trend is fed by anal erotism, whose erotogenic zone cor-
responds to the old, undifferentiated cloaca. ["The
Disposition to Obsessional Neurosis," p. 322]
A second pregenital phase is that of the sadistic-anal orga-
nization. Here the opposition between two currents, which
runs through all sexual life, is already developed: they cannot
yet, however, be described as 'masculine' and 'feminine', but
only as 'active' and 'passive'. The activity is put into operation
by the instinct for mastery through the agency of the somatic
musculature; the organ which, more than any other, repre-
sents the passive sexual aim is the erotogenic mucous mem-
brane of the anus. ["Three Essays," p. 198]
At the stage of the pregenital sadistic-anal organization, there
is as yet no question of male and female; the antithesis between
active and passive is the dominant one. At the following stage
[ ISO]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
of infantile genital organization, which we now know about,
maleness exists, but not femaleness. The antithesis here is be-
tween having a malegenital and being castrated. It is not until
development has reached its completion at puberty that the
sexual polarity coincides with male and female. ["Infantile
Genital Organization," p. I4S]
Civilization and Its Discontents stresses the obscurity of the notions
of femininity and masculinity and declares that they are assimilated
too lightly with activity and passivity:
Sex is a biological fact which, although it is of extraordinary
importance in mental life, is hard to grasp psychologically.
We are accustomed to say that every human being displays
both male and female instinctual impulses, needs and attri-
butes; but though anatomy, it is true, can point out the char-
acteristic of maleness and femaleness, psychology cannot. For
psychology the contrast between the sexes fades away into
one between activity and passivity, in which we far too readily
identify activity with maleness and passivity with femaleness,
a view which is by no means universally confirmed in the
animal kingdom. The theory of bisexuality is still surrounded
by many obscurities and we cannot but feel it as a serious
impediment in psycho-analysis that it has not yet found any
link with the theory of the instincts. However this may be,
if we assume it as a fact that each individual seeks to satisfy
both male and female wishes in his sexual life, we are prepared
for the possibility that those [two sets of] demands are not
fulfilled by the same object, and that they interfere with each
other unless they can be kept apart and each impulse guided
into a particular channel that is suited to it. [Pp. IOS- 106,
n·3]
All the texts unequivocally assert that the boy's behavior, as well
as the girl's, is both active and passive. Thus because of the bisexual
constitution, the Oedipus complex is much more complicated than
mighthave been thought. The boy's complex, for example, is dou-
[I S I]
 Freud Investigates
bly oriented, actively and passively: the boy too wants to be his
mother's love "object" (cf. "Consequences").
Generally speaking, in childhood any passive behavior stimulates
a tendency toward an active reaction, in boys and girls alike, so that
a situation of"dependence" may be overcome. For example, playing
with dolls, considered to be a preeminently "feminine" type of play,
is indeed a sign of femininity. But at a particular developmental
stage it is the sign of the active side ojfemininity, and it attests to the
exclusiveness of the bond with the mother.
'What does the little girl require of her mother? What is the
nature of her sexual aims during the time of exclusive at-
tachment to her mother?' ... The girl's sexual aims in regard
to her mother are active as well as passive and are determined
by the libidinal phases through which the child passes. Here
the relation of activity to passivity is especially interesting. 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.
... This is part of the work imposed on it of mastering the
external world.... Children's play, too, is made to serve this
purpose ofsupplementing a passive experience with an active
piece of behaviour and of thus, as it were, annulling it....
Here we have an unmistakable revolt against passivity and a
preference for the active role.... The first sexual and sexually
coloured experiences which a child has in relation to its mother
are naturally of a passive character. It is suckled, fed, cleaned,
and dressed by her, and taught to perform all its functions.
A part of its libido goes on clinging to those experiences and
enjoys the satisfactions bound up with them; but another part
strives to turn them into activity. In the first place, being
suckled at the breast gives place to active sucking. As regards
the other experiences the child contents itself either with be-
coming self-sufficient ... or with repeating its passive expe-
riences in an active form in play; or else it actually makes its
mother into the object and behaves as the active subject to-
wards her. ["Female Sexuality," pp. 235-236]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
During the first three stages, the active/passive antithesis cannot
possibly be confused with the nonexistent masculine/feminine an-
tithesis, and a pronounced preference for activity characterizes both
sexes equally. On the other hand, that first antithesis "later becomes
firmly attached to that between the sexes" ("The Disposition to
Obsessional Neurosis," p. 322). From puberty on, this pairing of
the two antitheses entails the assimilation of masculinity with ac-
tivity, femininity with passivity; from this point on, active tend-
encies are called masculine, passive ones feminine. Freud occasionally
insists that this is a purely "nominal," conventional assimilation that
he himself does not endorse; at other times he appears to be making
the assimilation himself, but in these instances, rather than identi-
i fying activity with masculinity, he is doing the opposite, identifying
masculinity with activity. Freud is thus leaving open to women the
possibility of being "masculine" themselves to the extent that they
are active. There is no need, he insists, for masculinity in the sense
of activity to be linked with masculinity in the biological sense (in
this latter sense the term indicates the presence in an individual of
sperm-producing glands) even though such is most often the case.
Freud is using the term "masculine" to mean "active" when he
asserts (in a way that has led to countless misinterpretations)-and
as a pure convention, at that-that the libido is "masculine":yrope,-ly
spea~i!!.&tf!~. Jibido doesJ1ot .t!.I:;riv.e.ft01Jl.~nl-ge!J.dt?XL he says straight-
forwardly (though the French translation censors an essential part
of the sentence: "Wir konnen ihr [i.e., to the libido] selbst kein
Geschlecht geben"). "There is only one libido, which serves both
the masculine and the feminine sexual functions. To it itself we
cannot assign any sex; if, following the conventional equation of
activity and masculinity, we are inclined to describe it as masculine,
we must not forget that it also covers trends with a passive aim"
("Femininity," p. 13 1).7
If they are read carefully enough, all of Freud's texts are quite
explicit. After reminding us, for example (in a note added in 1915
to the "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality"), that the concepts
7Cf. also "Female Sexuality": "Psycho-analysis teaches us to manage with
a single libido, which, it is true, has both active and passive aims (that is, modes
of satisfaction). This antithesis and, above all, the existence of libidinal trends
with passive aims, contains within itselfthe remainder ofour problem" (p. 240).
 Freud Investigates
of masculinity and femininity, commonly believed to be completely
unequivocal, are quite complex from the scientific point of view,
he distinguishes at least three ways in which these terms are used.
'Masculine' and 'feminine' are used sometimes in the sense
ofactivity and passivity, sometimes in a biological, and some-
times, again, in a sociological sense. The first of these three
meanings is the essential one and the most serviceable in psy-
cho-analysis. When, for instance, libido was described in the
text above as being 'masculine', the word was being used in
this sense, for an instinct is always active even when it has a
passive aim in view. The second, or biological, meaning of
'masculine' and 'feminine' is the one whose applicability can
be determined most easily. Here 'masculine' and 'feminine'
are characterized by the presence of spermatozoa or ova re-
spectively and by the functions proceeding from them. Ac-
tivity and its concomitant phenomena (more powerful
muscular development, aggressiveness, greater intensity of
libido) are as a rule linked with biological masculinity; but
they are not necessarily so, for there are animal species in
which these qualities are on the contrary assigned to the fe-
male. The third, or sociological, meaning receives its con-
notation from the observation of actually existing masculine
and feminine individuals. Such observation shows that in hu-
man beings pure masculinity or femininity is not to be found
either in a psychological or a biological sense. Every individ-
ual on the contrary displays a mixture of the character-traits
belonging to his own and to the opposite sex; and he shows
a combination of activity and passivity whether or not these
last character-traits tally with his biological ones. ["Three
Essays," pp. 219-220, n. I]
He emphasizes repeatedly that the "psychoanalytical" meaning
and the "biological" meaning do not coincide, and that the resulting
confusion of gender and sex makes it impossible to allow anyone
given characteristic to stand as a defining feature of man and some
other of woman. And if psychoanalysis in general identifies mas-
culinity with activity and femininity with passivity (and not the
[154]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
other way around), psychoanalysis is aware not only that such iden-
tification is a matter of convention but also that it remains unsat-
isfactory and insufficient. The differences that derive from the type
of object choice seem more conclusive: the masculine type is char-,
acterized by overvaluation of the object, the feminine type by nar«
cissism; the former prefers loving over being loved, while for the:
latter the opposite is true. But at the same time these determinations \
remain independent of the biological meaning of the terms: a person
who is a woman in the biological sense can love according to a
masculine type of object choice. Consider, for example, the homo-
sexual woman whose case history Freud relates in "The Psycho-
genesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman." After recalling
that this young woman did indeed present some traits associated
with physical masculinity ("her facial features were sharp rather than
soft and girlish") and with psychical masculinity ("some of her
intellectual attributes also could be connected with masculinity: for
instance, her acuteness of comprehension and her lucid objectivity,
in so far as she was not dominated by her passion"), Freud adds
that "these distinctions are conventional rather than scientific"
(p. 154). It seems "of greater importance" to him that
in her behaviour towards her love-object she had throughout
assumed the masculine part: that is to say, she displayed the
humility and the sublime overvaluation of the sexual object
so characteristic of the male lover, the renunciation of all
narcissistic satisfaction, and the preference for being the lover
rather than the beloved. She had thus not only chosen a fem-
inine love-object, but had also developed a masculine attitude
towards that object.... Psycho-analysis cannot elucidate the
intrinsic nature of what in conventional or in biological
phraseology is termed 'masculine' and 'feminine': it simply
takes over the two concepts and makes them the foundation
of its work. When we attempt to reduce them further, we
find masculinity vanishing into activity and femininity into
passivity, and that does not tell us enough. [Ibid., pp. 154,
17 1 ]
Since there are perhaps no notions more ambiguous and complex
than "masculinity" and "femininity," Freud never fails to call at-
 Freud Investigates
tention to the particular sense in which he is using these terms; he
never ceases to stress their ambiguity, their complexity, and their
conventionality.
And ,ys:L~ertain texts, throwing all caution to the winds, une-
quivocally identify masculinity with the subject, activity, and the
possession of a penis, while identifying femininity with the object,
passivity, and the possession of a vagina. "lnf;ll1tileGenitaLOrga-:
nization," which endlessly proclaims the "primacz.of rhephallus, "
the original sexual indifferentiation favoring the phallus, is the text
that makes the isharpestidivisions .between.csex.cand, gender: "It
i is not until development has reached its completion at puberty that
I the sexual polarity coincides with male and female. Maleness com-
bines [the factors of] subject, activity and possession of the penis;
femaleness takes over [those of] object and passivity. The vagina is
now valued as a place of shelter for the penis; it enters into the
heritage of the womb" (p. 145). These are the final words of Freud's
most "phallocratic" text, if not his very last words. Because the
opposition of trends with active and passive aims becomes firmly
attached to the opposition between the sexes at the time of puberty,
Freud goes so far as to declare that notwithstanding identical au-
toerotic activity of the erogenous zones, notwithstanding original
sexual indifferentiation, it is possible, after the fact, to state that
there are differences between girls and boys from the outset, and
that girls are always more passive: "The development of the inhi-
bitions of sexuality ... takes place in little girls earlier and in the face
of less resistance than in boys; the tendency to sexual repression
seems in general to be greater; and, where the component instincts
of sexuality appear, they prefer the passive form" ("Three Essays,"
p. 219). And although elsewhere he asserts that children of "both
sexes" tend to rebel against passivity and to prefer the active role,
he adds that "a child's behaviour in this respect may enable us to
draw conclusions as to the relative strength of the masculinity and
femininity that it will exhibit in its sexuality" ("Female Sexuality,"
p. 236). To be sure, the relative strength of masculinity and femi-
ninity may be measured in boys as well as in girls, but the acceptance
of passivity is identified with femininity and rebellion against it with
masculinity. Freud's very last word on the subject decisively iden-
tifies the rejection of passivity with the rejection of femininity when
[156]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
. -he refers to man's "struggle against his passive or feminine attitude"
(" Analysis Terminable and Interminable," p. 250). A rejection of
femininity within oneself and outside oneself common to both sexes,
it is produced by castration anxiety. That is why, in a man, rejection
of passivity is essentially a fear of being passive before another man
(ibid.).
From this point on,. in reading these texts one may either insist
on the deconstructive.charactetof the Freudian analyses-"mascu-
line" only means "active" and "feminine" means "passive," neither
of these features is inherent in any given individual, each individual
is a mixture of activity and passivity-or one maystress the "meta-
physi~al~'sh;}.r;}eterof these same texts, since, after all, i~keeping
With the entire tradition, it is unquestionably femininity that is iden-
tified with passivity and masculinity with activity and not the re-
verse. To be sure, Freud declares that he is retaining the old terms
by "convention." However, the convention does not seem to him
to be wholly conventional, wholly arbitrary: thus after stating that the
libido has no gender, that he calls the libido masculine because of
the conventional connections between masculinity and activity, he
still refuses to recognize the possibility ofa different convention that
would define the libido as feminine:
Nevertheless the juxtaposition 'feminine libido' is without
any justification. Furthermore, it is our impression that more
constraint has been applied to the libido when it is pressed
into the service of the feminine function, and that-to speak
teleologically-Nature takes less careful account of its [that
function's] demands than in the case of masculinity. And the
reason for this may lie-thinking once again teleologically-
in the fact that the accomplishment of the aim of biology has
been entrusted to the aggressiveness of men and has been
made to some extent independent of women's consent. The
sexual frigidity of women, the frequency of which appears
to confirm this disregard, is a phenomenon that is still in-
sufficiently understood. ["Femininity," pp. 131-132]
As always when he cannot bring other proofs to bear, Freud falls
back on biology, or even some natural teleology, in order to justify
[157]
 Freud Investigates
a "convention," hardly an innocent one, that confuses masculinity
and activity and forbids the libido to be labeled feminine, forbids
to women in reality more than to men the unreserved expression
of their libido; if it is true that "more constraint has been applied
to the libido when it is pressed into the service of the feminine
function," it is not because Nature, that cruel stepmother, takes
feminine needs into account less than masculine ones, it is because
the ideology of a particular society has an interest in undervaluing
the sexual needs of women, in making them frigid, while attributing
responsibility for that frigidity to nature: "Sometimes [that frigidity]
is psychogenic and in that case accessible to influence; but in other
cases it suggests the hypothesis of its being constitutionally deter-
mined and even of there being a contributory anatomical factor"
(ibid., p. 132).
Freud's texts are therefore, as always, heterogeneous: while they
reject any direct identification of activity with masculinity and pas-
sivity with femininity, at the same time they remain imprisoned
within the most traditional ideology. One or the other of these
aspects predominates according to the strategic needs of the moment.
Thus at this level of the text, where what counts for him is
essentially to posit bisexuality and an original sexual indifferentia-
tion, Freud emphasizes that the daughter's desires toward her mother
are active as well as passive.
Ambivalence
For the same reasons, he shows that her desires are ambivalent:
they are at once affectionate and aggressively hostile in nature. Con-
trary to the most widespread prejudices, just as activity is not the
exclusive property of the boy, aggressiviry is common to both sexes
in the first three phases. Thus the ambivalence of the preoedipal
feelings cannot be explained by the Oedipus complex, and the later
ambivalence is only a repetition of the very earliest ambivalence,
which finds itself "reactivated" at the time of the oedipal rivalry. It
is the ambivalent (preoedipal) relation to the mother that is essential
for the understanding of normal and pathological female sexuality:
the girl's aggressivity toward her mother, newly manifested in the
form of anxiety-generating images of being killed or poisoned by
[15 8]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
the mother, constitutes the nucleus of a possible later state of
paranoia."
These results of psychoanalysis take popular opinion and its prej-
udices by surprise, especially since they do not arise out of any
immediate observation or perception: one must be forearmed with
the analytic method in order to decode the girl's anxiety-producing
images as transformations of an aggressive attitude toward the
mother. 9 One of the attractive aspects of psychoanalysis is precisely
that it allows you to observe things that otherwise would remain
imperceptible. Popular opinion thus can always say that you are
speculating, that observation does not confirm your assertions: that
is because popular opinion is incapable of observing. With obser-
vation we have a whole science or art that authorizes you to conclude
S"Among these [new ideas that I have arrived at] is a suspicion that this
phase ofattachment to the mother is especially intimately related to the aetiology
of hysteria, which is not surprising when we reflect that both the phase and
the neurosis are characteristically feminine, and further, that in this dependence
on the mother we have the germ of later paranoia in women. For this germ
appears to be the surprising, yet regular, fear of being killed (devoured?) by
the mother. It is plausible to assume that this fear corresponds to a hostility
which develops in the child towards her mother in consequence of the manifold
restrictions imposed by the latter in the course of training and bodily care and
that the mechanism of projection is favoured by the early age of the child's
psychical organization" ("Female Sexuality," p. 227).
9Cr. also "Female Sexuality," pp. 237-238: "It is difficult to give a detailed
account of these [oral, sadistic, and phallic trends directed towards the mother]
because they are often obscure instinctual impulses which it was impossible for
the child to grasp psychically at the time of their occurrence, which were
therefore only interpreted by her later, and which then appear in the analysis
in forms of expression that were certainly not the original ones. Sometimes we
come across them as transferences on to the later, father-object ... We find the
little girl's aggressive oral and sadistic wishes in a form forced on them by early
repression, as a fear of being killed by her mother-a fear which, in turn,
justifies her death-wish against her mother, if that becomes conscious.... The
women patients showing a strong attachment to their mother ... have all told
me that when their mother gave them enemas or rectal douches they used to
offer the greatest resistance and react with fear and screams of rage .... Ruth
Mack Brunswick ... was inclined to compare the outbreak of anger after an
enema to the orgasm following genital excitation. The accompanying anxiety
should, she thought, be construed as a transformation of the desire for aggres-
sion which had been stirred up. I believe that this is really so and that, at the
sadistic-anal level, the intense passive stimulation of the intestinal zone is re-
sponded to by an outbreak of desire for aggression which is manifested either
directly as rage, or, in consequence of its suppression, as anxiety."
 Freud Investigates
that in the course of the phallic stage, strange as it may seem, the
girl desires to give her mother a child, or to have one by herr!" these
incredible desires are nevertheless expressed with unmistakable clar-
ity, especially since you will be convinced that in the phallic stage
there is no difference between the sexes. The girl's double desire,
active and passive, implies that she fails to recognize both sexual
difference and the respective roles of mother and father in procrea-
tion; it implies that she is ignorant of the vagina's existence. If all
this seems paradoxical and purely speculative to you, it is because
you are projecting what happens later onto the earliest phases of
development, you are setting up an unbroken continuity where there
is in fact rupture and crisis. It is you who are given to speculation
and delirium for fear of making a break, for fear of being surprised
by something new, not allowing yourselves the boon of pleasure
that any unique discovery brings.
I, Freud, do not speculate; I have no bias, as I am the first to be
surprised by my own discoveries and as I am constantly correcting
my past errors. Thus as one more example of a libidinal relation
translating a passive desire toward the mother on the girl's part, I
can give you the voluptuous genital sensations felt by the little girl
when her body is being cared for: the motheris thegirl sfirst seductress. 11
J
For a long time, as it happened, I accused the father of being that
seducer, of being the cause of his daughter's later hysteria. Then I
came to understand that this was pure fantasy on the part of the
IO"Female Sexuality" specifies that the desire to give the mother a baby,
on the girl's part as well as the boy's, comes into play with the arrival of a
brother or sister. And also that clitoral masturbation during the phallic phase
is accompanied by a representation of the mother, though it is without a rep-
resentation of a sexual aim: this would nevertheless betray an intense impulse
of active desire toward the mother: "The little girl wants to believe that she
has given her mother the new baby, just as the boy wants to; and her reaction
to this event and her behaviour to the baby is exactly the same as his. No doubt
this sounds quite absurd, but perhaps that is only because it sounds so unfa-
miliar" (p. 239).
ll"In regard to the passive impulses of the phallic phase, it is noteworthy
that girls regularly accuse their mother of seducing them. This is because they
necessarily received their first, or at any rate their strongest, genital sensations
when they were being cleaned and having their toilet attended to by their
mother.... The fact that the mother thus unavoidably initiates the child into
the phallic phase is, I think, the reason why, in phantasies of later years, the
father so regularly appears as the sexual seducer" ("Female Sexuality," p. 238).
[160]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
hysteric, an expression of her Oedipus complex. Now I believe that
this fantasy is really a repetition ofan earlier fantasy, that ofseduction
by the mother, since I judge that the Oedipus complex is a simple
transference onto the father of the preoedipal libidinal relation to
the mother. The only difference is that in the case of the mother we
are perhaps dealing not with fantasy but with reality. Perhaps one
may even say that the fantasy of seduction by the father serves as a
screen memory for the real seduction by the mother. In any event,
this fantasy has for a long time served as a screen for me, preventing
me from grasping the importance of the girl's preoedipal relations
with her mother. It may therefore be said that as a true "scientist"
I have spared no pains to arrive at the surprising discovery of the
essential character of the girl's preoedipal relations with her mother.
It would have been much simpler and easier to be content with what
my patients told me, especially since their statements seemed unan-
imous on this point. And if I have finally understood that we were
dealing in these cases with fantasy and not reality, it is not because
of any masculine bias that would have made it painful for me to
face the idea that a man, the father, can seduce his daughter (whereas
he ought to be there only to impose the law; he would experience
more pleasure by laying down the law than by making love, thus
predisposing his daughter to hysteria). On the contrary, it has been
painful for me to give up that idea, which, even though it went
against common morality, was at least easier to accept than that of
a universal seduction fantasy. In the end, I observed that this "fan-
tasy" indeed referred to a real seduction after all, seduction by the
mother. And it was not because this idea conformed with my mas-
culine prejudices, otherwise why wouldn't I have declared that the
mother was the seductress from the very beginning? It took me
many years to be able to assert that the mother rather than the father
was of absolutely primary importance, and to understand that the
girl's Oedipus complex was not symmetrical with the boy's.
Freud's exaggeration
It will be objected that the reason Freud took so long to make
his discoveries is that they do not result from "observation" alone:
they must include some "speculative" element, something else that
[161]
 Freud Investigates
made it possible for him to "see" what others, who after all had
plenty of opportunities to see little girls, had never perceived. With
respect to the most ordinary experience, the Freudian description
that insists on the intense and decisive nature, the "abundance and
strength" ("Femininity," p. 121) of the girl's preoedipal bonds with
her mother may indeed appear strange, startling, unexpected. Freud
is exaggerating, under the sway of some delirium: his is a mad
exaggeration that must be connected to the madness of the object
observed, since he draws his conclusions from pathological cases.
That objection cannot stand. "Enough can be seen in the children
if one knows how to look" (ibid.: "Man kann genug an den Kindem
sehen, wenn man zu beobachten versteht"-a sentence not included
in the French translation). Only the observer equipped with Ar-
iadne's thread, that of analysis, is truly capable of observing; for the
phenomenon observed cannot, as they say, "speak for itself," es-
pecially in this case, when you "consider how little of its sexual
wishes a child can bring to preconscious expression or communicate
at all" (ibid.). A child cannot supply these desires as "bare facts"
for observation. Indeed, it is because the conscious or even pre-
conscious expression of these desires is lacking that they have to be
deciphered with the aid of analysis. Analysis alone allows us both
to recognize the sexual nature of the desires in question and to see
that they are oriented toward the mother. The intervention of "anal-
ysis" is all the more necessary since, as these impulses are later
directed toward the father, the "observer" has a tendency, through
an effect of retroactive projection, to cover over the earlier bond
with the mother: Freud himself must have been a victim of such a
cover-up operation. Recourse to analysis is necessary for one other
reason as well: not only are these impulses transferred from mother
to father, but they are often manifested in disguised form: hostility
toward the mother is presented in the form of anxiety, for example.
For these various reasons, analysis alone can adequately evaluate the
child's desires and fully "observe" them. This is so because analysis
draws on pathological cases: far from being a handicap in science,
these cases and these alone, by exaggerating all the processes in-
volved, make it possible to perceive them better. Like paradigms, 12
!2Cf. bk. II of Plato's Republic, 368 d-e.
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Womatl
they display in large type what the normal furnishes only in small
print. The pathological cases isolate and reveal, in exaggerated form,
certain relationships that would otherwise remain unknown because
they are hidden: owing to these cases one can study "the traces and
the consequences" of the earliest feelings toward the mother. Like
a good positivist, Freud wipes out the opposition between what is
normal and what is pathological, reversing the hierarchy in favor
of the latter, which then becomes a principle for rendering the nor-
mal intelligible. Between the two there is only a difference of de-
gree--a negligible one, in this case ("our investigations have been
carried out on people who were by no means seriously abnormal"
["Femininity," p. 12I]): thus the results obtained can be considered
credible.
The transformations of the mother-daughter relation
If we have so much trouble believing results like these, if they
appear so astonishing, it is because this intensely powerful bonding
of daughter to mother does not last forever. In one particular de-
velopmental phase a double transformation occurs which makes the
existence of the earlier relation unbelievable. On the one hand, the
girl's feelings turn from positive to negative: she shifts from love
to hatred. At the same time, she changes her love object; from a
fixation on her mother she moves to a fixation on her father. What
remains to be understood is how such an intense attachment to the
mother can come to an end and be transformed into its opposite,
and how the girl can abandon her mother for her father. For this
double transformation is not contingent, and it derives from a ver-
itable "destiny": "This, as we know, is its usual fate" (ibid.: "Wir
wissen, das ist ihr gewohnliches Schicksal"). The first transforma-
tion is governed by the necessity of the second: the attachment to
her mother "is destined to make room for an attachment to her
father" (ibid.: "Sie ist dazu bestimmt, der Vaterbindung den Platz
zu raurnen"). (Once again a whole passage is omitted from the
French translation.) The fate of the attachment to the mother, the
necessary undoing of this intense bond, is required for the little girl's
development into womanhood. It is a matter of space to be filled
[ 16 3]
 Freud Investigates
and space to be left empty: when the libido settles somewhere, it
occupies the entire space, and this cathexis leaves room for no other.
The child's love for one of the two parents is exclusive. In order
for the change in object to take place-s-and this is the normal fate
of femininity-space must be made, the girl must separate herself
from her mother: the only way she can do so is by transforming
the initial love into hate, a transformation made possible by the
original ambivalence of that love.
The fact that the girl's hatred is a ruse of nature, as it were,
designed to serve nature's ends-the passage from mother to father-
can be read in its excessive, and excessively enduring, character. It
may last a lifetime--this persistence of hatred for the mother is
matched only by the persistence ofthe boy's love, a love completely
lacking in ambivalence. This contrast between the two sexes, which
are at first identically "in love" with the mother, is the problem,
for it allows us to suppose that the girl's "hate" for the mother is
less motivated by objective reasons than it is needed as a means for
renouncing the mother and for succeeding in giving up the territory.
The persistence of hatred is sometimes carefully disguised by an
overcompensation of apparent affection. In general, moreover, the
girl does not reach this extreme position: while some portion of the
hostility persists, the rest is overcome. The girl's personal history
and its variations are decisive here for the eventual fate of her hatred.
As the condition that makes the Oedipus complex possible, this
hatred cannot look to the Oedipus complex as its own source. The
problem is how to discover its true origin beyond the secondary
rationalizations, the conscious motivations offered by patients who
always make the psychoanalyst listen to a long list of recriminations
and accusations against their mother.
The list of accusations
If we consult the list of charges against the mother, we find no
clear-cut motive, inasmuch as any of them might be just as valid
for the boy as for the girl; yet the boy maintains his love intact, in
spite of everything. Thus above and beyond the recriminations that
serve as a screen, we still have to find the specific factor that is
actually decisive.
Psychoanalysis: Tile Cllild Becomes a Woman
Tilefirst complaint: the mother did not give the child enough milk.
This is always interpreted as a sign of a lack oflove. This complaint
certainly has some justification: "civilized" children are weaned very
early, in comparison with children among primitive peoples. These
reproaches are heard too frequently, however, to correspond to any
reality; instead, they are much more often the sign of the insatiable
hunger of the child who can never be consoled for the loss of that
good "inn" or "windfall," the mother's breast-even in cases where
nursing lasted as long as with primitive peoples. The hypothesis
may be proposed-it is of course unverifiable, one can only beg the
question-that identical complaints would be found among primi-
tive peoples as well. The mother or wet nurse is thus not "really"
at fault; the limitlessness of desire lies at the origin of a feeling of
infinite frustration, and this feeling is the source of an endless hos-
tility. To accuse the mother is to substitute a finite and external
cause, one more easily overcome, for an infinite and internal cause:
it is thus to attempt, fantasmatically, to overcome a frustration that
is necessary for structural reasons. This defensive behavior is magical
and animistic by nature, like that which consists in attributing the
origin of illness to the loss of the mother's breast; for in the eyes of
the child, as in those of the primitive, there is no such thing as
chance. In their eyes, neither illness nor death can be "natural"-
and since there is only a difference of degree between the child and
the adult, and between the primitive and the civilized, it is still
possible today to verify, for example with neurotics, this human
tendency to conquer the anxiety of death and illness-the anxiety
aroused by the role chance plays in these events-by inventing causes
and responsible parties. For the child, the cause is always the loss
of the mother's breast. This loss frequently provokes anxiety about
being poisoned; for the child, all food but mother's milk is poison.
Judged by the court of psychoanalysis, this first motive for ac-
cusation gives way and turns against the accuser.
Tile second complaint, closely connected with the first: the birth
of another child after a short interval, which results in a still more
rapid weaning: "The mother could not or would not give the [older]
child any more milk" ("Femininity," p. 123). In the case of preg-
nancies in very close succession, this complaint is justified. But, as
in the previous instance, it is not so much the milk that is at issue
[ 16 5]
 Freud Investigates
as the mother's love. The new arrival makes his appearance as an
intruder, a rival who has dispossessed the older child of all the signs
of maternal affection. The child feels he has been dethroned, dis-
possessed, deprived of all his rights; from this point on he directs a
jealous hatred toward his brothers and sisters, and develops resent-
ment toward the unfaithful mother who does not hesitate to share
her attentions, to share herself. All this results in a change in be-
havior, regression to an earlier stage; in particular, as a sign of
aggressiveness and in order to draw full attention to himself once
more, the child stops controlling his excremental functions. This
pattern is well known and accepted; the unique contribution of
psychoanalysis, the aspect that could not have been conceived of
before, is the stress on the intensity of that infantile jealousy and its
enormous influence on later development. That jealousy has all the
more impact as it is repeated with each succeeding birth; it doesn't
matter that the oldest child may still be the "preferred" one, for the
child's love is boundless and immeasurable: it demands exclusivity,
and admits of no sharing.
Here again, the mother is acquitted: the true cause of the child's
disproportionate hatred for the mother is the disproportion of these
infantile demands, and that hatred is only the converse of a no less
disproportionate love.
The third complaint. The first two complaints against the mother
have their source in an oral deprivation. But the accusations do not
stop there, for at every libidinal stage the child always finds a good
reason to hate the mother, so insatiable are the child's desires, gen-
erally speaking. These desires necessarily remain unfulfilled, thus
providing a pretext for hostility. The strongest frustrations appear
in the phallicstage, when the mother forbids masturbation-a source
of voluptuous pleasure that she herself has aroused-and associates
this prohibition with all the signs of strong displeasure and stern
threats.
Taken together, these motives might seem adequate if they were
not equally valid for the boy-who never abandons the mother.
The girl's requisite about-face thus cannot be explained by the nature
of infantile sexuality, the excessiveness of its demand for love, the
impossibility of finding satisfaction. Nor does it originate in the
original ambivalence of the child's feelings. If that were the case,
[166]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
one might say that the bond with the mother is called upon to
disappear by virtue of the very fact that it is the first bond; the power
ofthis earliest attachment means it is always accompanied by a strong
aggressive tendency whenever the child experiences disappointment
or deprivation. Hostility is the obverse of primitive passion in its
violence. And the final triumph of hatred over love results from a
buildup of hostility: the problem is quantitative in nature. If this
original ambivalence is rejected, the disappearance of infantile love
may be seen as a reaction to the special nature of the mother-child
relation, a response to the training the child receives; for even when
this education is extremely indulgent, it entails some constraints. In
this view, the child reacts to these necessary restrictions on its free-
dom with a tendency toward rebellion and aggression.
Whatever explanation may be proposed, and however interesting
such an explanation may be, it can explain nothing, since it is valid
for children of both sexes. It cannot account for the differences
between girls' and boys' behavior.
If we suppose that the various factors invoked are indeed con-
stants (which would imply that the two sexes are identical, or nearly
so, at the outset, and that the mother behaves identically toward
them-and this is open to doubt if we recall that only a child of the
male sex, according to Freud, answers the mother's deepest desires),
then we still have to find a specific factor that alone can account for
the decline of the little girl's attachment. What can this specific factor
be?
The specific factor: penis envy
"I believe we have found this specific factor, and indeed where
we expected to find it, even though in a surprising form" ("Fem-
ininity," p. 124). Is this "discovery" really a discovery ifit corre-
sponds to an expectation? Is it not rather an instance of finding what
one has been looking for? Or is the discovery unsurprising to the
extent that the discoverer, seeking a specific factor with which to
distinguish girls' behavior from boys', could be assured in advance
that such a factor would be found only in the place where sexual
difference is located? That it would lie in an anatomical difference,
[ 167]
 Freud Investigates
or rather in the psychic repercussions of that. an;ltoD.1j~_J,l gifference,
that is, in th~castration complex.
Freud's pseudodiscovery does offer an element of surprise in the
form in which it is presented: "It was, however, a surprise to learn
from analyses that girls hold their mother responsible for their lack
of a penis and do not forgive her for their being thus put at a
disadvantage" (ibid.};':'
This form may indeed appear "surprising": it cannot be taken
for granted, and is not directly accessible to observation; it is "re-
vealed" only in the course of analysis. It may appear astonishing
that the girl should blame her mother rather than her father for the
disadvantage from which she suffers. And at all events, as soon as
she recognizes that her mother has no penis either, shouldn't she
abandon any resentment she may feel toward her mother and transfer
her hostility to her father, the only one who has a penis? Yet the
movement Freud describes is precisely the opposite: the girl begins
to hate her mother and to seek her father's love in order to obtain
the longed-for penis: there, indeed, is the "surprise." The surprise
is such that one may wonder whether Freud did not invent (rather
than discover) this quite specific resentment toward the mother for
the good of the cause (his cause). Especially since it is only in the
lecture "Femininity" that resentment against the mother is presented
as the absolutely decisive specific factor. Elsewhere, no single motive
is given as sufficient, as capable of truly explaining the profound
transformation of the girl's feelings, a transformation that seems in
the last analysis to stem from an inescapable destiny that no "reason"
could conquer, even that of "penis envy." Thus "Female Sexuality"
recalls that hostility toward the mother is not a consequence of
rivalry, of the Oedipus complex, but arises rather from the preceding
phase, which is "exploited" later on. In this text Freud lists "the
whole range of motives" (p. 234) that have succeeded in making
the girl tum away from the maternal object that was so intensely
and exclusively loved. The list is about the same as the one in
"Femininity" detailing the girl's accusations against her mother. But
the order and importance attributed to the various motives are dif-
D"The girl's mother, who sent her into the world so insufficiently equipped,
is almost always held responsible for her lack of a penis" ("Consequences,"
p. 254)·
[168]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
f~rent. In "Fe.m~Ie.).exE;}lity," jealousy with regard to the sibling
nvals comes first, Jealousy caused by the child's exclusive and in-
satiable love, which is always condemned to end in disappointment
and to give way to hostility. In second place comes the influence of
the castration complex on the child without a penis. Then the prohibition
"" mast~rbation ~lays a major r~le. Finally we come to the charge of
msuffiaentftedmg, the expression of a generalized dissatisfaction on
the child's part and of so great a desire on the part of the infantile
libido that there is no way the mother could ever fulfill all its
expectations.
Here the motive of the "castration complex" is not set apart from
the ~thers as sp~cific and essential. Ifit is true that the most powerful
motive for pulling away from the mother is the mother's failure to
give the child a "real" genital organ-it is the mother's fault that
the child was born a girl and not a boy-this motive is not sufficient
justification for the child's ultimate hostility. This time, the motive
that seems more telling to Freud is ambivalence (which seems to imply
that the boy's ambivalence toward the mother is less important than
the girl's, but Freud's caution prevents him from saying so without
prior investigation):
All these motives seem nevertheless insufficient to justify the
girl's final hostility. Some of them follow inevitably from the
nature ofinfantile sexuality; others appear like rationalizations
dev~sed later to account for the uncomprehended change in
feehng. Perhaps the real fact is that the attachment to the
mother is bound to perish, precisely because it was the first
and was so intense; just as one can often see happen in the
first marriages of young women which they have entered into
when they were most passionately in love. In both situations
th~ attitude of love probably comes to grief from the disap-
pomtments that are unavoidable and from the accumulation
of occasions for aggression. As a rule, second marriages turn
out much better.
We cannot go so far as to assert that the ambivalence of
emotional cathexes is a universally valid law ... [but] in the
first phases of erotic life, ambivalence is evidently the rule.
... We shall conclude, then, that the little girl's intense at-
[ 169]
 Freud Investigates
tachment to her mother is strongly ambivalent, and that it is
in consequence precisely of this ambivalence that (with the
assistance of the other factors we have adduced) her attach-
ment is forced away from her mother--once again, that is to
say, in consequence of a general characteristic of infantile
sexuality.
The explanation I have attempted to give is at once met
by a question: 'How is it, then, that boys are able to keep
intact their attachment to their mother, which is certainly no
less strong than that of girls?' The answer comes equally
promptly: 'Because boys are able to deal with their ~mbiva!~nt
feelings towards their mother by directing all their hostility
on to their father.' But, in the first place, we ought not to
make this reply until we have made a close study of the pre-
Oedipus phase in boys, and, in the second place, it is probably
more prudent in general to admit that we have as yet no clear
understanding of these processes, with which we have only
just become acquainted. ["Female Sexuality," pp. 234- 235]
Is it because between the two texts, "Female Sexuality" in 193 1
and "Femininity" in 1932, the investigation into the little boy's
preoedipal stage. may. have led to ~ recognition ?f ,~he ~e~e~sar:.
ambivalence of his feelmgs toward his mother that, m Femininity,
Freud proposed the girl's castration complex as the single deciding
factor? Yet neither in this lecture nor elsewhere does he express
himself clearly about this ambivalence on the boy's part. To the
extent that the exclusive and definitive bond with the mother con-
tinues to be affirmed, one may suppose that, according to Freud,
the boy's ambivalence must be less important than the girl's. It is
as if Freud wanted simultaneously to keep the boy's love for his
mother intact and pure (in this case, the motive of ambivalence as
presented in "Female Sexuality" could be decisive) and. also to aban-
don the motive of ambivalence in favor of the castration complex.
Between the two texts the demands of Freud's customary caution
seem to have been silenced, and "speculation" is substituted for
observation: as the decisive factor that accounts for all the differ-
ences, "penis envy" wins out over every other; the monism of the
explanation, its singleminded focus on a single idea, turns it into a
[170]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
delirious speculation. "Penis envy" is, after all, Freud's denegation
notwithstanding, an idee fixe, an idea that has become more and
more "fixated," to the point of replacing all other ideas.
The specific factor must therefore lie in the girl's castration complex:
for I, Freud, indeed attribute a castration complex to the girl as well
as the boy. And not without cause. This complex, however, does
not have the same content in her case as in the boy's. Following his
usual practice, Freud thus begins by discussing the boy's castration
complex.
In the case of boys, "the castration complex arises after they have
learnt from the sight of the female genitals that the organ which
they value so highly need not necessarily accompany the body"
("Femininity," pp. 124-125). He notices first that the girl has no
penis, large or small. "At this the boy recalls to mind the threats
he brought on himself by his doings with that organ, he begins to
give credence to them and falls under the influence of fear of cas-
tration, which will be the most powerful motive force in his sub-
sequent development" (ibid., p. 125). The sight of the girl's genital
organs as such would never have given rise to the idea of her cas-
tration, and to the potential castration of the boy, if an earlier threat
of castration had not been addressed to the boy, if it were not for
the guilt that is already leading him to believe in the reality of those
threats. The very sight of the girl's genitals, a mere glance, suffices
to arouse anxiety because it already exists in a more or less latent
state, owing to the guilt bound up with masturbation. It is to protect
himself against that anxiety that, in a second phase, the boy proceeds
to endow the girl with a little penis, the clitoris.
In the girl's case, the point of departure is the same as for the
boy. It is the sight of the other's genitals, here too a simple glance
(Anblick), that marks the inauguration of the girl's castration com-
plex. A mere glance is enough for her to see the difference right
away, "and, it must be admitted, its significance too" (ibid.). What
is it, then, that she notices so quickly? A quantitative difference or
a qualitative one? Could a simple quantitative difference be perceived
as such a detriment that the entire subsequent development offemale
sexuality would be definitively marked by it? And in particular,
could it arouse such envy, such a desire to possess that thing she
doesn't have? "They feel seriously wronged, often declare that they
[171]
 Freud Investigates
want to 'have something like it too' " (ibid.).14 In order for a mere
glance to arouse such a feeling of having been injured and such an
ineradicable desire for the penis, it must be that even before her
observation the girl felt injured as to her sex, already felt less loved
than her brother: her glimpse of the penis is merely the occasion on
which a precise object is assigned to a preexisting latent feeling of
frustration (as the boy's mere glance is the occasion on which he
passes from latent to overt and acute castration anxiety). Her quick
look at the other's sex is what allows the girl finally to settle on an
"explanatory reason" for her mother's preference, and in this respect
the sight is reassuring. It is better to have a reason, even one that
is difficult to accept, than to have no reason at all, for this makes it
possible to replace a vague feeling by a quite definite feeling, which,
as such, is less disturbing. That is why, if penis envy takes hold of
the girl at this point (" es ... verflillt nun dem Penisneid") (assuming
that the Freudian description is correct), one may say as well that
the girl seizes upon this "envy" just as one would grab hold of a
life raft.
But Freud obviously does not put it this way. On the contrary,
his entire description tends to show that before the girl's glimpse of
the boy's genitals nothing distinguished her behavior from his, that
nothing distinguished the mother's behavior, either, with respect to
her children of both sexes, so that nothing can account for a par-
ticular "hatred" on the girl's part. And it is also important above
all for Freud to show that penis envy, far from being a secondary
phenomenon, a reaction to a much earlier sense of frustration, is a
primary and essential phenomenon that makes it possible to under-
stand that all the accusations brought against the mother are only
secondary rationalizations. Here is the whole problem in a nutshell:
is penis envy (assuming that there is such a thing) a primary phe-
nomenon (in which case the suddenness and immediacy of this envy,
arising from a single glance, poses a problem) or is it a sec~ndary
phenomenon behind which others are camouflaged? Now If such
"In French the text here reads quelque chose desemblable, not un m~chitl comme
fa, as the translation used by Luce Irigaray has it; the German text m fact says:
es miuhte auch so etwas haben.
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
psychoanalysts as EmestJones, and Maria Torok" and others in our
day, lean toward the latter position (even if they do not all explain
it the same way), Freud for his part makes an effort to refute all
those analysts'v-e-and except for Jones they are mostly women-
who tend to downplay the importance of penis envy, or rather, in
Freud's view, to "disavow" it. Freud himself holds firmly to the
absolutely primary importance of this phenomenon, clings tightly
to it as to solid immovable bedrock. And bedrock indeed is what
woman's penis envy must be, for him, along with its masculine
corollary, "the masculine protest": two limits with which analysis
collides and which compel it to give way to biological research.
Penis envy must in fact be a primary phenomenon inasmuch as
it is an unsurpassable "biological fact," the sign of the rejection, by
women as by life itself, of femininity.
We often have the impression that with the wish for a penis
and the masculine protest we have penetrated through all the
psychological strata and have reached bedrock, and that thus
our activities are at an end. This is probably true, since, for
the psychical field, the biological field does in fact play the
part of the underlying bedrock. The repudiation of femininity
can be nothing else than a biological fact, a part of the great
riddle of sex. ["Analysis Terminable and Interminable,"
p. 252]
IS"L'Envie du penis chez la femme," in Nicholas Abraham and Maria To-
rok, L'Ecorce et Ie norau (Paris, 1978).
16In "Female Sexuality" Freud criticizes Karen Homey's interpretation. Ac-
cording to that psychoanalyst, the intensity of the masculine tendency is due
to a secondary penis envy that serves as a defense against feminine tendencies,
especially against the feminine tie to the father: "It is undoubtedly true that
there is an antithesis between the attachment to the father and the masculinity
complex; it is the general antithesis that exists between activity and passivity,
masculinity and femininity. But this gives us no right to assume that only one
of them is primary and that the other owes its strength merely to the force of
defence. And if the defence against femininity is so energetic, from what other
source can it draw its strength than from the masculine trend which found its
first expression in the child's penis-envy and therefore deserves to be named
after it" (p. 243). He also protests against the interpretation offered by Jones,
for whom the girl's phallic stage is a secondary defensive reaction rather than
a true developmental stage.
 Freud Investigates
This is Freud's last word, as we have seen, on the feminine enigma.
We are at last in a position to understand what is really at stake in
Freud's final and defmitive fixation on penis envy as the decisive
motive for the break with the mother; we can comprehend every-
thing that comes into play in the transition from the discussion of
motives in "Female Sexuality" to the one in "Femininity": the break
with the mother can be definitive and universal only if it turns out
in the final analysis to be based on nature itself, on the rejection of
femininity by all forms of life.
Yet as is always the case with Freud, the appeal to biology, to
what lies beyond psychoanalysis, conceals what is most suspect in
his "thought"-what stems not from observation but from extrav-
agant speculation, from fixed ideas: he falls back on biology or even
on paleobiology and its speculations. In "The Taboo of Virginity"
he goes so far as to argue that in order to "establish" the natural,
biological, unsurpassable character of penis envy, one may draw
upon such speculations even though they may seem extravagant.
And he cites Ferenczi:
Ferenczi has traced back this hostility of women-I do not
know if he is the first to do so--to the period in time when
the sexes became differentiated. At first, in his opinion, cop-
ulation took place between two similar individuals, one of
which, however, developed into the stronger and forced the
weaker one to submit to sexual union. The feelings of bit-
terness arising from this subjection still persist in the present-
day disposition of women. I do not think there is any harm
in employing such speculations, so long as one avoids setting
too much value on them. [Pp. 205-2 0 6]
Here is a real cooking-pot argument: 1. I do not speculate, I observe.
It is Ferenczi who speculates. 2. In any event, there is nothing wrong
with speculating from time to time. 3. These speculations are val-
uable only to the extent that they are at the service of my own
observations and corroborate my own fixed idea. Ferenczi must not
"overestimate" them.
We have seen to what strategy of desire this extravagant "false
solution"-that is, penis envy-corresponds. For in order to assert
[174]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
that femininity is universally rejected, Freud has in fact to ignore a
certain number of observations: for example, the fact that some
neurotics wish to become women-as Lou Andreas-Salome oppor-
tunely reminds him; he has to forget what he himself wrote a few
years earlier in "On Narcissism," a text wholly directed against
Jungian speculations, namely, that men in fact envied women (and
not the other way around) for their unassailable libidinal position.
He neglects all of this in order to defend penis envy alone, clinging
to it as to a rock.
Girls, then, at the mere sight of the penis, of a boy's little penis,
are seized by a desire "which will leave ineradicable traces on their
development and the formation of their character" ("Femininity,"
p. 125) (these traces are what make it possible to reconstruct infantile
penis envy after the fact, in analysis). This envy is such that in the
best of cases "it will not be surmounted ... without a severe ex-
penditure of psychical energy" (ibid.). In general, we may say that
the rest of the little girl's life, or the woman's, is made up of a set
of more or less fantasmatic attempts to satisfy that irrational and
yet necessary envy at all costs. For if the little girl recognizes the
fact that she lacks a penis (die Tatsache ihres Penismangels anerkennt),
that does not mean that she gives in to it easily. On the contrary,
the desire to have a penis herself stays with her for a long time; she
believes in the possibility of having one, implausibly enough, for
years and years; and when, on the conscious level, she can no longer
accept such a possibility, when it has been given the lie by her
knowledge of reality, her desire, as analysis shows, still persists and
retains all its power at the unconscious level. Repressed, it never-
theless continues to exist and to "exercise its harmful effects" (even
if it eludes "observation" by those who are not armed with the
analytic method). The analytic method discovers, in a way that is
paradoxical, to say the least, that one of the desires motivating the
analysis itself is precisely the hope of finally obtaining the longed-
for penis; and because the analysis cannot supply her with what she
has come to seek, that object which she is unable to renounce, 17 the
17"At no other point in one's analytic work does one suffer more ... from
a suspicion that one has been 'preaching to the winds', than when one is trying
to persuade a woman to abandon her wish for a penis on the ground of its
being unrealizable" ("Analysis Terminable and Interminable," p. 252). Freud
 Freud Investigates
woman necessarily goes through depressive crises during which she
is sure that the analytic treatment will do her no good at all, "and
we can only agree that she is right, when we learn that her strongest
motive in coming for treatment was the hope that, after all, she
might still obtain a male organ, the lack of which was so painful to
her" ("Analysis Terminable and Interminable," p. 252). However,
analysis is not always a complete waste of time for a woman; it may
permit her to sublimate her penis envy, to become capable, for
example, of carrying on an intellectual profession; it is "reasonable"
to expect such a result from analysis.
It remains to be seen how the exercise ofan intellectual profession
can be considered a sublimation of penis envy, if by sublimation is
meant a genetic derivation and a deviation from the goal of the
drive: there seems in fact to be no similarity, no common ground,
between penis envy and the desire to exercise an intellectual profes-
sion. Does this mean that the intellectual profession plays the role
of penis substitute? Now it would be understandable that such a
profession might give woman the "phallus" but not the penis (ac-
cording to a well-known formula, only the person who is ahead can
get ahead). We may understand better if we assume that by "intel-
lectual profession" Freud means writing books: since the book is a
substitute for the child and the child a substitute for the penis, writing
books may be understood as a sublimation of penis envy. Thus in
"The Taboo of Virginity" Freud writes: "Behind this envy for the
penis, there comes to light the woman's hostile bitterness against
the man, which never completely disappears in the relations between
the sexes, and which is clearly indicated in the strivings and in the
literary productions of 'emancipated' women'I'" (p. 20 5).
Whether consciously or unconsciously, directly or in sublimated
fashion, penis envy thus always persists, exercising its more or less
harmful effects: in any case its importance is unquestionable. Penis
envy is crucial, for example, for the understanding of certain psy-
is countering here the "naive" demands of Ferenczi, who thought that "every
female patient, if her neurosis is to be regarded as fully disposed of, must have
got rid of her masculinity complex and must emotionally accept without a trace
of resentment the implications of her female role" (ibid., p. 251, n. 3).
"Cf also Nietzsche: for a woman "aut liberi aut libri" (Twilight ofthe Idols).
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
chological patterns characteristic of women, such as envy and jeal-
ousy." Women are more jealous and more envious than men, and
this (regrettable) supplement of jealousy is due to their lack of a
penis; it is not Freud's masculine biases that endow women with
such a "privilege"; no, here there is an objective cause, even a quan-
tifiable one: a "something more" because of a "something less. " For
if men also may tum out to be jealous-may have that ugly "defect"
which is jealousy-it is not, of course, in their case, because of some
sort of deficiency inherent in their sex. No! Jealousy has other roots
as well. What woman's penis envy accounts for is simply the "ex-
cess" (das Mehr bei den Frauen) ofjealousy in women, even its path-
ological character in comparison to "normal" jealousy, men's: in
any case, I, Freud, am inclined (wir sind geneigt) to see penis envy
as the cause of this excessive surplus ofjealousy. He says so himself:
he is inclined to do so. Indeed, that is unquestionable! But others, and
even many psychoanalysts, have different inclinations (Neigung). For
example, the inclination to downplay the significance of penis envy
as it takes hold of the girl in the phallic stage, and to emphasize her
later development instead as more crucial in their "eyes."
How to decide among these divergent inclinations? Among the
various theses and contradictory texts that all defend pre-texts, theses
anticipated by drives and inclinations? How to choose among all
these speculations? Freud in any event decides in favor of the ab-
solutely primary importance of the infantile emotions, which always
playa leading role (richtunggebend), even if they are not decisive on
their own, even if in the etiology of every psychic, pathological, or
even simply unusual event one must always take two complemen-
tary sets of factors into account: the premature infantile fixations,
on the one hand, and the influence of events, of later development,
on the other; the individual constitution and personal history; what
"Other texts will give as "spawn" of this penis envy "feminism" itself:
such is the case of that female homosexual who had carried over from her
childhood years "a strongly marked 'masculinity complex'. A spirited girl,
always ready for romping and fighting, she was not at all prepared to be second
to her slightly older brother; after inspecting his genital organs she had devel-
oped a p~onounced envy f~r the penis, a?d the thoughts derived from this envy
still c~ntmued to fill her. mind. She was in fact a feminist; she felt it to be unjust
that girls should not enJoy the same freedom as boys, and rebelled against the
lot of woman in general" ("Psychogenesis," p. 169).
[177]
 Freud Investigates
is innate and what is acquired. And while it is true that each of these
factors comes into play, that a decrease in one is generally marked
by an increase in the other, in the case of penis envy it is certain
that infantile emotions predominate: so I believe ("Gerade im Fall
des Penisneids mochte ich mit Entschiedenheit fiir das Ubergewicht
des infantilen Moments eintreten"). Q.E.D. In other words, what
allows me to choose among the inclinations is my inclination. My
inclination is what tips the scale in my favor. ... To the general
problem raised by depth psychology-what part is played respec-
tively by innate and acquired factors in the etiology of neuroses or
perversions-Freud's texts give various answers, shift the balance
differently, sometimes in one direction and sometimes in another,
according to the theses being defended, that is, according to the
"inclinations" of the moment, the only real "leverage." (One might
trace Freud's evolution in this regard, beginning with the "Three
Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," in which, despite his assertion
that there is cooperation and complementarity between the two sets
of factors-"the constitutional factor must await experiences before
it can make itself felt; the accidental factor must have a constitutional
basis in order to come into operation" [po I05]-he proclaims the
thesis that for psychoanalysis the accidental factor has priority, on-
togenetic development has priority over phylogenetic development;
individual "history," in any event, has priority for psychoanalytic
practice even if the "theory" gives precedence to congenital factors;
right up to "Moses and Monotheism," in which, to further the
cause, he stresses the importance of the archaic heritage, of the pro-
totypes of phylogenetic events, which he sees as more important
than actual experience: "The archaic heritage of human beings com-
prises not only dispositions but also subject-matter-memory-traces
of the experience of earlier generations" [po 99]).
A critical turning point: the discovery of castration
In the little girl's sexual development, penis envy is thus seen as
a decisive moment. And it comes about as a consequence of the
girl's discovery of her own castration. The only thing her glimpse of
the boy's genitals showed her was that she herself did not have a
penis. She concluded that nature or her mother had indeed done her
[178]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
a considerable "injury," but not that she had been castrated. How
can Freud thus shift from stating that the girl lacks a penis to stating
that she "discovers her castration"? Is this the girl's point of view, or
that of the boy, that of Freud, a Freud who remained fixated at the
stage of infantile sexual theories?
The lecture "Femininity" negotiates this shift as if it operated
automatically. Other texts attribute to the boy's castration anxiety
alone the transition from noticing the girl's lack ofa penis to asserting
that she has been castrated, which results in a fetishist attitude on
the part of boys: they deny the girl's lack of a penis and
believe that they do see a penis, all the same. They gloss over
the contradiction between observation and preconception by
telling themselves that the penis is still small and will grow
bigger presently; and they then slowly come to the emotion-
ally significant conclusion that after all the penis had at least
been there before and been taken away afterwards. The lack
of a penis is regarded as a result of castration, and so now
the child is faced with the task of coming to terms with
castration in relation to himself. ["Infantile Genital Orga-
nization," p. 144]
In the text just quoted, Freud stops at describing the boy's castration
complex, in connection with the phase of primacy of the phallus,
and he states that "the corresponding processes in the little girl are
not known to us" (p. 142). In "Some Psychical Consequences of
the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes," two years later, and
in "Female Sexuality" (193 I), the girl child is made to share the little
boy's point ofview. Freud begins by reminding us that the boy, when
confronted with the girl's genitals, at first sees nothing at all; then,
when the threat of castration has taken hold, he perceives the girl's
sex organ as castrated, and is forced "to believe in the reality of the
threat which he has hitherto laughed at" ("Consequences," p. 252).
Freud then goes on to discuss the girl's reactions at the sight of
masculine genitalia. These reactions are instantaneous: "She makes
her judgement and her decision in a flash. She has seen it and knows
that she is without it and wants to have it" (ibid.). Now one of the
means she might employ for conquering that insurmountable wish
[179]
 Freud Investigates
for a penis would be to deny her own castration, to refuse to accept
the fact of her castration (die Tatsache ihrer Kastration): a corollary of
the boy's denial that the penis is lacking in girls. What was first
presented as bound up with the denial of perception on the boy's
part, under the influence of his castration anxiety, is now proclaimed
a fact, and Freud is then compelled to invent a further denial, the
girl's, for those cases in which she does not accept the point of view
that the boy adopts on her behalf, in which she refuses to recognize
"the fact of her castration." The boy's spontaneous fetishism thus
has a counterpart in a fetishism in the girl: she "may harden herself
in the conviction that she does possess a penis, and may subsequently
be compelled to behave as though she were a man" (ibid., p. 253).
When the girl "discovers her own deficiency, from seeing a male
genital" ("Female Sexuality," p. 233), accepting the fact of her cas-
tration, she adopts the boy's point of view, and at first she attributes
this castration to an individual misfortune, experiences it as a pun-
ishment inflicted on her for having violated the taboo against mas-
turbation. This means that the guiltier the girl feels for having
experienced sexual pleasure, the more easily she accepts the "helping
hand" the boy offers her, the castration of her sex organ, and penis
envy.f" The more sexual satisfaction she has experienced, the more
readily her guilt feelings lead her to accept the idea that her sexuality
is incomplete, that she has therefore not truly experienced pleasure,
and that she is for that very reason less "guilty" than the boy.
But Freud does not say this. In the fact that "castration" is under-
stood as punishment for masturbatory activity and that its imple-
mentation is imputed to the father (for the girl as well as the boy)
Freud sees the effects of "deferred action": "neither of these ideas
can have been a primary one." In both cases "the threat most usually
comes from their mother" (ibid.).
It is in fact important for Freud that the mother should be held
responsible for the threat of castration, for the girl's only way to
achieve separation from her mother is supposedly to hate her as the
"'"This is the explanation Maria Torok gives in "L'Envie du penis chez la
femme," adding that the girl does this in order to keep her mother's love at
all costs. But in that case, how can we account for the fact that the same "penis
envy" is what must justify, in the final analysis, the rejection of the mother
and the turning to the father?
[180]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
source of the girl's own "misfortune"! But it is important too,
conversely, for him to dissociate the girl's castration from guilt
related to masturbation: for if the two things were connected, the
"fact of castration" would no longer be a fact but a fantasy that
could be explained on the basis of the castration anxiety common
to both sexes. Moreover, personal guilt would be insufficient to
explain why the girl, after taking castration as her personal misfor-
tune, should first extend it to other children, then to adults, and
should finally attribute this "negative characteristic" to all women,
including her mother. The generalization of castration prevents it
from being seen as a simple individual fantasy; it gives it the character
of a necessary law, even if the child becomes conscious of it only
by induction from empirical evidence. This is how Freud shifts from
a simple "prejudice" on the part of the boy to the affirmation of a
universally inescapable law. Whether the girl accepts or denies what
Freud thus calls "the fact of her castration," she is at all events a
prisoner of the little boy's viewpoint, which Freud has set up as a
"truth." For both castration or its disavowal (and the fetishism that
accompanies it) imply the recognition of the value of the penis, and
the penis alone, set up as a standard: the effects of the threat of
castration are proportional to the value attributed to that part of the
body, and this interest in the male genital organ is a narcissistic
interest. 21
The girl then may recognize "the fact of her castration," may
see her clitoris as a little penis, a truncated sex organ, and she may
begin to envy the boy's big one; or she may deny her castration,
believing that she does have a penis, or that she still has hope of
acquiring one. In either case, she relates her own sexuality to the
boy's; she remains ignorant of all sexual "difference," of any im-
pairment. She obliterates her "own" sex while holding it in con-
tempt: hers and that of all other women, that of her mother,
"reproducing" the boy's scorn for the "weaker" sex, assuming the
"inferiority" with which the boy endows her so that he can stand
up straight, stand his sex on its own feet, as it were: an apotropaic
defense designed to protect him against the threat ofcastration. "One
llCf. "On the Sexual Theories of Children" and "Some Psychical Conse-
quences of the Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes."
[18 I]
 Freud Investigates
thing that is left over in men from the influence of the Oedipus
complex is a certain amount of disparagement in their attitude to-
wards women, whom they regard as being castrated.... [The
woman] acknowledges the fact of her castration, and with it, too,
the superiority of the male and her own inferiority" ("Female Sex-
uality," p. 229).
The castration complex permanently determines
the boy's relations to women: horror of the mutilated creature
or triumphant contempt for her.... After a woman has be-
come aware of the wound to her narcissism, she develops,
like a scar, a sense of inferiority. When she has passed beyond
her first attempt at explaining her lack of a penis as being a
punishment personal to herself and has realized that the sexual
character is a universal one, she begins to share the contempt
felt by men for a sex which is the lesser in so important a
respect, and at least in holding that opinion, insists on being
like a man. ["Consequences," pp. 25 2-253]22
And this is indeed the direction toward which Freud's entire
enterprise points: make the woman an accomplice in man's crime,
make her disparage her own sex and valorize man's, make her es-
tablish life's rejection of femininity as a general law: "As a result of
the discovery of women's lack of a penis [women] are debased in
value for girls just as they are for boys and later perhaps for men"
("Femininity," p. 127).
That is why the moment when the girl discovers "her" castration
22Freud explains in a note that this is the kernel of truth in the Adlerian
theory, which "has no hesitation in explaining the whole world by this single
point ('organ-inferiority', the 'masculine protest', 'breaking away from the
feminine line') and prides itself upon having in this way robbed sexuality of
its importance and put the desire for power in its place! Thus the only organ
which could claim to be called 'inferior' without any ambiguity would be the
clitoris. On the other hand, one hears of analysts who boast that, though they
have worked for dozens of years, they have never found a sign of the existence
of a castration complex. We must bow our heads in recognition of the greatness
of this achievement, even though it is only a negative one, a piece of virtuosity
in the art of overlooking and mistaking. The two theories form an interesting
pair of opposites: in the latter not a trace of a castration complex, in the former
nothing else than its consequences" (pp. 253-254, n. 4)·
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Womml
is seen as the crucial turning point in her development, the source
of all her later behavior, whatever path her development may take.
For if she does indeed "acknowledge" the fact of her castration, it
is not without hesitation and resistance: "she rebels against this un-
welcome state of affairs" ("Female Sexuality," p. 229). Her ac-
knowledgment, like her rebellion, originates in the narcissistic wound
that provokes both women's contempt for their own sex and their
need to cover up the wound with a "scar." From this "divided"
attitude with regard to their own sex, to this sex that has been
truncated, cut down in such a major way, three possible orientations
result: sexual inhibition or neurosis; the masculinity complex; and
finally, normal femininity.
The first path often leads to the repression of a considerable por-
tion of the woman's sex drive (ein gutes Stuck seiner Sexualstrebungen):
this can be understood to mean that the girl basically turns away
from her masculine, phallic sexuality-a repression that has as its
corollary a repression of sexuality in general. What is at stake in the
first place is the little girl's masturbatory activity, which, before her
glimpse of the boy's sex, brought her satisfaction related to active
desires focused on the mother. Now what Freud wants to show-
and this is why he needs to associate masturbatory activity closely
here with the representation of the mother, whereas other texts hint
at simple pleasure at the level of the sex organ-is that "owing to
the influence of her penis envy," the girl ceases to gain satisfaction
from phallic sexuality, gives up clitoral masturbatory pleasure, and
at the same time renounces her love for her mother: this latter is
crucial, since the specific explanatory factor accounting for the girl's
detachment has at last been pinpointed. The "comparison" the girl
makes with the boy, who is better endowed, better "equipped"
(ausgestattet) than herself, is responsible for this reversal, or so the
argument goes: it is better to have nothing at all than to have less
than the other has. A narcissistic wound to the girl's self-love, af-
fecting her sex as a whole, which is henceforth experienced as cas-
trated, is what leads her to give up a pleasure that loses all its value
in comparison with the boy's. As if a simple "comparison," a meas-
uring of her own sex by the standard of the other, could suffice to
make her renounce a pleasure presumed to have been satisfying until
then. Mustn't that dissatisfaction and envy already have been present
[ 183]
 Freud Investigates
if one is to have even the desire to compare oneself with the other?
Mustn't the girl already have felt "inferior" before in order to be
affected in this way by the inferiority of an organ, making it grounds
for renouncing her pleasure and her mother's love? Giving up the
mother, however, is not an immediate consequence of the renun-
ciation of masturbatory pleasure, as might have been supposed: the
mother is abandoned neither as the object of the girl's active desire,
a desire henceforth repressed, nor even as the one responsible for
the girl's "deprivation," for the "damages" the girl has incurred.
You thought you had the specific factor there? Don't kid yourself
The mother will be abandoned only when the girl finally recognizes
that she is not the only one who has been deprived of a penis, that
such is the thankless lot of all women, her mother included. Her
love for her mother can then give way to the contempt she feels for
her sex as a whole. Contempt for a creature that lacks a penis is the
only thing that can fully account for the girl's hatred and for her
about-face:
Her turning away from her mother does not occur all at once,
for to begin with the girl regards her castration as an indi-
vidual misfortune, and only gradually extends it to other
females and finally to her mother as well. Her love was di-
rected to her phallic mother; with the discovery that her mother
is castrated it becomes possible to drop her as an object, so
that the motives for hostility, which have long been accu-
mulating, gain the upper hand. ["Femininity," pp. 126-127]
Yet if it is indeed the lack of a penis that devalues the mother in
the girl's eyes, as in the boy's, the specific factor thereby loses all
its specificity: it ought to provoke the boy's detachment as well. But
though some men are scornful of women or horrified by them,
though some men become homosexuals or fetishists, they continue
nonetheless, according to Freud, to be fixated on their mothers; it
sometimes happens, too, that they are heterosexuals, and this het-
erosexuality is even considered normal.
Must we then acknowledge, contrary to everything Freud tried
to demonstrate, that the little girl's love for her mother in the early
libidinal stages is not identical with the boy's? That the little girl is
[ 184]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes A Woman
not, then, a little man? Must we acknowledge that girls and boys
do not have the same reasons for loving or hating their mother?
Can the boy alone love the mother with a love of the anaclitic or
attachment type, whereas the girl's love can be only ofthe narcissistic
type? That is indeed what Freud seems to be asserting when he says
"her love was directed to her phallic mother," not hesitating to
contradict himself, since when it was a question of stressing the
identity between the girl and the boy in the first three stages, he
stated:
A boy's mother is the first object of his love, and she remains
so too during the formation of his Oedipus complex and, in
essence, all through his life. For a girl too her first object
must be her mother (and the figures of wet-nurses and foster-
mothers that merge into her). The first object-cathexes occur
in attachment to the satisfaction of the major and simple vital
needs, and the circumstances of the care of children are the
same for both sexes. [Ibid., p. I I 8]
In this text, it seems, Freud was not concerned about the occa-
sional contradiction. By seeking to make "penis envy" at any price
the ultimate explanation for all feminine behavior, by wishing to
make it the "specific" critical factor, he seems in fact to have elim-
inated all specificity from so-called feminine behavior, since he sees
the valorization of the penis as governing the girl's conduct, in the
end, as well as the boy's. From here on Freud is condemned to be
incapable of accounting for behavior differences between the two
sexes, and condemned to contradict himself. By asserting that the
boy remains definitively fixated on the mother, he "forgets" that
castration anxiety is unshakable bedrock for the boy too. Freud no
longer simply makes the girl "complicitous" with man, he trans-
forms her into a more misogynist and more fetishist boy than the
boy himself. Like a recent convert, she must go even further, must
categorically reject and scorn all her sex (except for the female homo-
sexual, but Freud manages to make her out as a disappointed
dogmatist).
This exaggerated, excessive aspect of the girl's behavior (assum-
ing that the description is well founded) emphasizes the fact that if
[ 18 5]
 Freud Investigates
there is such a thing as penis envy, it is only a secondary formation
grafted onto a preexisting hatred. Doesn't Freud say himself that
penis envy allows "the motives for hostility, which have long been
accumulating, [to] gain the upper hand" (ibid., p. 127)? These hostile
feelings thus cease to be simple secondary rationalizations that con-
ceal the only true reason for hatred: penis envy. Penis envy, on the
contrary, is the opportunity that allows the girl's hatred to pass from
the "periphery," where it had been relegated, to center stage, to
occupy a central position in the places and spaces of love. Freud's
model here is Empedocles;" we do not find a conversion of pure
love into pure hate, but a permanent conflict between two forces
(Eros and the death instinct), each dominating for a while and ap-
pearing to exist in isolation. Penis envy marks the (provisional?)
triumph of hate over love. Furthermore, if it is agreed that the girl
rejects the mother when she becomes aware that the latter lacks a
penis, it may be supposed that during the first three stages the mother
is loved only as possessor of a penis; it may be postulated that even
before the phallic stage, even before the sight of the boy's sex, the
girl always believed that she and her mother had genitals just like
the man's and that the clitoris is a penis. Now when she sees the
boy's sex for the first time, she sees it as a "replica" of her own: it
is the clitoris that serves as a model for assessing the penis and not
the other way around. And the girl seems to be making a real
discovery here: does she discover only that there is a quantitative
difference that works against her, or that there is a likeness, which
then, and only then, allows for a comparison? This would account
for the fact that "penis envy" had not taken hold of her earlier.
Finally, if in the course of the preoedipal stages the girl loves
only a phallicmother, the preoedipal relation of the girl to her mother
(which might have been supposed to be quite different from the
later oedipal relation with the father, as was suggested by the com-
parison with the discovery of the Minoan-Mycenean civilization,
presumed to lack any common ground with Greek civilization) is
already modeled on the Oedipus complex, since the girl loves the
mother only as presumed bearer of a penis. So that when the girl
changes her love object, when she passes from mother to father,
nCf. Kofman, "Freud et Ernpedocle."
[186]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes A Woman
she too in effect continues to remain fixated on a single object, the
bearer of the penis. Transferring her love from mother to father
would simply mean recognizing that there had been some mistake.
If such a transference is possible, it is because notwithstanding the
assertion of a complete break between the two periods, preoedipal
and oedipal, there is in fact, in this view, no break at all. Behind
the mother object as behind the father object, it is always the penis
that is coveted, and this is indeed the conclusion at which Freud
wishes to arrive, this is the fixed idea that governs all his discourse:
despite the primacy accorded the preoedipal relation and the mother,
Freud works things out so as to make the male organ the directing
agent of the girl's behavior, and to subject her sexual development
to penis envy alone.
Thus Freud found the explanation for the girl's detachment from
her mother. He fmds it appropriate, however, to return to the ques-
tion of the importance of giving up masturbation: "disposing of ...
masturbation is truly no easy or indifferent business" ("Femininity,"
p. 128). There follows a lengthy development of the importance the
neurotic attaches to masturbation. The neurotic holds masturbation
responsible for all his problems; he is mistaken only in that he in-
vokes pubertal masturbation, whereas infantile masturbation, as a
manifestation of infantile sexuality, bears the real responsibility for
neuroses. Masturbation and parental tolerance or intolerance of it,
and the degree to which the individual himself succeeds in sup-
pressing it, are basic both to the formation of neuroses and to that
of individual character: "All of this leaves permanent traces on his
development" (ibid., p. 127), and a great deal could be written on
the subject. And yet Freud feels relieved that he does not have to
carry out that undertaking, that "hard and tedious task" (ibid.), and
he declares his great discomfort at the idea of having to give practical
advice to parents or teachers. Does that "cruel" discomfort come
only from a theoretical hesitation as to the benefit or harm wrought
by the prohibitions on masturbation? Or is the "painful" character
attributed to a possible work on masturbation a simple transference
to the "work" of the trouble the child (Freud) always has in dealing
with masturbation, of the aporia into which masturbation plunges
him? As if it led him into an impasse, into violent inner conflict?
Freud's discomfort seems to arise at the point where the infantile
 Freud Investigates
difficulties provoked by this double bind come back into the "the-
ory": the problem of obeying the pressure of the drive that impels
the child to obtain masturbatory pleasure while also obeying the
mother, who forbids that same masturbation and whose love the
child risks losing if he disobeys. Vestiges of that struggle always
persist, and if masturbatory pleasure is suppressed, it always remains
a "dreaded temptation." As for the girl, she cannot succeed in over-
coming this "temptation" except by internalizing the maternal pro-
hibitions, by transplanting the conflict within herself, by playing
the maternal role herself: which is a way of mastering the situation
and resolving the conflict with her mother rather than submitting
to her mother's prohibitions. If the prohibition comes from within
herself, she can give up the pleasure that her clitoris has procured
for her up to that point: "penis envy" is seen as that "thing" she
seizes upon in order to succeed in forbidding herself a pleasure that
she has no "reason" to renounce, and that will continue to tempt
and haunt her even after it has been "suppressed." Hence the com-
parison with the boy's sex and the "idea" that her own organ is
quite "inferior" (die minderwertige Klitoris). Asserting the "inferior-
ity" of the clitoris, condemning it as an organ no longer worth
manipulating, is the equivalent of the judgment passed by the fox
on the grapes-"I thought they were ripe, but I see now they are
quite sour"-when he cannot reach them. We are dealing with a
type of emotional behavior in which one alters the qualities of the
world (since one cannot alter reality, the mother and her prohibi-
tions) "magically," in the twinkling ojan eye, in order to gain control
of an unbearable situation over which reason has no hold at all: the
renunciation of masturbation, which is never accomplished with
wholehearted enthusiasm.
Of course Freud does not say this, since penis envy-this is his
fixed idea-has to be a "primary formation." And yet his supple-
mentary passage on masturbation is like a postscript in which the
repressed returns, in which "the importance of masturbation" is
recognized not only in the genesis of neurosis but also in the conflict
that sets daughter against mother and leads the daughter to tum
away. Penis envy can then be read as a secondary basis for making
rational something that is without reason. It is not penis envy or
narcissistic humiliation, which would be fundamental, that moti-
[188]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes A Woman
vates the reaction against masturbation and the detachment from
the mother;" but the prohibition of masturbation. Other texts cor-
roborate this reading, those that openly declare that the prohibition
of masturbation is a motive for rebellion against the person who
forbids it and that resentment caused by the prevention offree sexual
activity plays a major part in the girl's separation from the mother
("Female Sexuality"). And also that masturbation does not give way
without the internalization of the maternal prohibitions.
Ifenvy for the penis has provoked a powerful impulse against
clitoridal masturbation but this nevertheless refuses to give
way, a violent struggle for liberation ensues in which the girl,
as it were, herself takes over the role of her deposed mother
and gives expression to her entire dissatisfaction with her
inferior clitoris in her efforts against obtaining satisfaction
from it. Many years later, when her masturbatory activity
has long since been suppressed, an interest still persists which
we must interpret as a defence against a temptation that is
still dreaded. It manifests itself in the emergence of sympathy
for those to whom similar difficulties are attributed, it plays
a part as a motive in contracting a marriage and, indeed, it
may determine the choice of a husband or lover. ["Femi-
ninity," pp. 127-128]
The fact that, despite the "inferiority" of the clitoris, the girl still
continues, consciously or unconsciously, to seek masturbatory
24"Analyses of the remote phallic period have now taught me that in girls,
soon after the first signs of penis-envy, an intense current of feeling against
masturbation makes its appearance, which cannot be attributed exclusively to
the educational influence of those in charge of the child.... I cannot explain
the opposition which is raised in this way by little girls to phallic masturbation
except by supposing that there is some concurrent factor which turns her
violently against that pleasurable activity. Such a factor lies close at hand. It
cannot be anything else than her narcissistic sense of humiliation which is bound
up with penis-envy, the reminder that after all this is a point on which she
cannot compete with boys and that it would therefore be best for her to give
up the idea of doing so. Thus the little girl's recognition of the anatomical
distinction between the sexes forces her away from masculinity and masculine
masturbation on to new lines which lead to the development of femininity"
("Consequences," pp. 255-256).
 Freud Investigates
pleasure proves quite convincingly that the clitoris is not so mediocre
after all, and that if the conflict that pits the girl against her mother
were not so violent, if the girl did not also have a need stemming
from her biological destiny to subordinate the phallic erogenous
zone to the "properly feminine":" vaginal zone at a given point in
time, nothing would impel her to put a stop to masturbation, which
in fact she never truly gives up. In the renunciation of masturbation
and in penis envy, the condition-the crucial one, for Freud-that
makes this renunciation possible, we thus have to see above all, as
Maria Torok has stressed, a way of settling a conflict with the
mother. Does the girl give up masturbation in order to keep her
mother's love, as Maria Torok thinks? Or, on the contrary, to be
able to give up that love, as Freud thinks? In order to be able to
hate the one who is forbidding her pleasure, and to take her place?
In any case, it does seem as though this "postscript" has the effect
of making us forget that the motive (presumably essential) for aban-
doning the mother was her lack of a penis, and of foregrounding
the motive of the prohibition against masturbation, that is, against
pleasure of the "masculine" type. That motive makes it possible to
explain the abandonment of one erogenous zone in favor of another,
as the motive of the mother's lack of a penis was necessary to explain
the passage from mother to father, to the sole possessor of the penis
that had been denied the girl by the mother. It was necessary to
combine the two motives since, in order to become a woman, the
girl has both to change erogenous zones (from a "masculine" clitoral
pleasure to a feminine vaginal pleasure) and to change her object
(from mother to father).
THE DESIRE FOR THE FATHER AND THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF FEMININITY
The first condition that allows femininity to be established is
therefore that the girl stop giving in to clitoral masturbation, for
25"Masturbation, at all events of the clitoris, is a masculine activity and ...
the elimination of clitoridal sexuality is a necessary precondition for the de-
velopment of femininity" ("Consequences," p. 255)·
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes A Woman
this renunciation entails giving up part of her activity. This means
that if passivity is not the defining characteristic of woman, the
transition to femininity, properly speaking, does not take place un-
less passivity has gained predominance: "Passivity now has the upper
hand" ("Femininity," p. 128). For it is only owing to the support
of the passive drives (the term passive, crucial here, is absent in the
French translation) that the penchant for the father, which is the
second condition of femininity, can also become predominant. If
one cannot identify passivity with femininity, at least the abandon-
ment of phallic activity is what "smooths the ground for femininity"
(ibid.);" It is still necessary, in order for normal femininity to be
established, that this phallic activity not be totally lost, totally re-
pressed. Normality implies that passivity predominates, but also
that active tendencies are maintained; in short, it implies bisexuality.
The neurotic path is that of an exaggerated repression of masculine
tendencies, which then return in the form of hysterical symptoms.
Because Freud establishes only a difference of degree between
the normal and the pathological, the entire portion of the text that
. appears to deal with just one of the directions the girl's development
may take after the discovery of her castration, the neurotic direction,
deals at the same time with normal development: it is "normal" that
part of the girl's phallic activity should be repressed, that she should
hate her mother and turn toward her father. What is abnormal is
that all phallic activity should be repressed and, a fortiori, that the
repression of "masculine" activity should entail the repression of
passive tendencies-in short, of sexuality in general. What is ab-
normal is excessive repression, the sign of an excessive prior mas-
turbatory activity. When the little girl develops neurotically, she
"gives up her phallic activity and with it her sexuality in general as
well as a good part of her masculinity in other fields" ("Female
Sexuality," p. 229). The passage to the father object, to the feminine
Oedipus complex, is accomplished only when development is nor-
mal, that is, only to the extent that the passive tendencies "have
escaped the catastrophe" (ibid., p. 239). Provided also, of course,
UCf. "Female Sexuality," p. 239: "The turning-away from her mother is
. .. more than a mere change of object.... Hand in hand with it there is to be
observed a marked lowering of the active sexual impulses and a rise of the
passive ones."
 Freud Investigates
that what is left of the bond with the preoedipal mother has been
overcome, the path of development toward femininity is now open.
The girl thus turns toward her father. But what does she want from
him? The same thing she wanted and did not get from her mother
is what she now expects from her father, namely, the penis. Her
mother has frustrated (versagt) her desire for a penis as she earlier
frustrated her desire to nurse.
Freud's description of desire makes it a reactive, hysterical phe-
nomenon: to desire is always to lack, to demand, to claim, to feel
frustrated, to envy the other. " 'What does the little girl require of
her mother?' " (ibid., p. 235; emphasis added). "The wish with
which the girl turns to her father is no doubt originally the wish
for the penis which her mother has refused her and which she now
expects from her father" ("Femininity," p. 128).
If to desire is basically to demand, to expect, it is not surprising
that women's entire development should be oriented by penis envy.
But what about the boy's desire? Is it different in nature? Is it because
the girl always lacks a penis that during the stages that precede the
phallic phase she has already felt frustrated, has always shown more
avidity than the boy, as with regard to her mother's milk? Is the
limitless desire for the mother's breast already a desire for the penis,
or is the latter, in another form, a desire for the mother's breast?
And if the desire for the mother's breast is a desire for the penis, is
this desire less strong in the boy, who is better "equipped" than the
girl? Freud does not seem to be attributing a different nature to
masculine as opposed to feminine desire; still, it is as though the
"reactive" characteristics, resentment and envy, were nevertheless
attributed to women alone, at least in their "excessive"-that is,
pathological-aspect. The girl's desire differs from the boy's as the
pathological from the normal; there is merely a difference of degree:
desire, by nature, for both sexes, is in this view an infinite lack, an
avidity that nothing can satisfy. At the heart of that infinitude, the
difference between a greater and a lesser lack constitutes the differ-
ence between the sexes-a greater lack of penis lies at the origin of
the girl's excessive envy.
With the hierarchical reversal in favor of "passivity," with the
passage from mother to father, a simple shift toward the one who
has the greater chance of being able to satisfy penis envy, it seems
[192 ]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
that the girl's development toward femininity ought to be complete.
Yet such is not the case at all. Freud adds a supplementary condition:
"The feminine situation is only established, however, if the wish
for a penis is replaced by one for a baby, if, that is, a baby takes
the place of a penis in accordance with an ancient symbolic equiv-
alence" (ibid.). Why, if the wish for a child is a mere substitute, is
it seen as more decisive here than desire for the thing itself? Is it
because desiring "the child" is seen as feminine whereas desiring the
penis remains "masculine," arises from the woman's masculine,
phallic instincts? How, then, can the one really be the symbolic
equivalent of the other, a substitute for the other? Is there, for
women, a good way and a bad way of envying the penis? Is one
way more specifically feminine than the other? It does seem as though,
among all the substitute derivatives of penis envy, Freud privileges
the desire for a child alone as that "spawn" women need not be
ashamed of, the only one compatible with femininity. All the other
derivatives, such as the exercise of an intellectual profession, the
production of books, have been seen as signs of bold emancipation
. (cf. "The Taboo of Virginity") or as neurotic in nature-unhealthy
progeny. What is normal for the (unsatisfied) desire for a pet/is is in [act
its transformation into a desire for a child. This transformation stems
from a quasi-moral imperative: "The appeased wish for a penis is
destined [soIl] to be converted into a wish for a baby and for a
husband, who possesses a penis. It is strange, however, how often
we find that the wish for masculinity has been retained in the un-
conscious and, from out of its state of repression, exercises a dis-
turbing influence" ("Analysis Terminable and Interminable," p. 251).
This at least is the norm "wished for" and imposed by Freud,
who identifies the feminine with the maternal. Of course: but if the
child is a penis substitute, ifa symbolic equivalence can be established
between penis and child, then what is recognized as most "properly"
feminine, the norm of femininity itself, namely, motherhood, cor-
responds fundamentally with the woman's masculine desires, with
her masculinity complex. Even when femininity seems to be most
firmly established, it is still the masculine desire to possess the penis
that imposes its law. So in the final analysis one may conclude-
and Freud's whole discourse tends in this direction-that what is
most specifically feminine in woman is in fact her masculine desire
 Freud Investigates
to possess the penis, her penis envy. This desire thus becomes at
once the vestige of woman's "masculine" sexuality that must dis-
appear in order to leave room for femininity and also what allows
woman to bring her femininity to the best possible fruition. This
amounts to saying, as Freud does in "Analysis Terminable and In-
terminable," that woman is characterized by the rejection of femi-
ninity: and this is true even in motherhood itself. It is just as legitimate
to state that Freud identifies femininity and masculinity with ma-
ternity; that as for what is "properly" or improperly feminine, there
is, properly speaking, nothing but the masculine. "In this way the
ancient masculine wish for the possession of a penis is still faintly
visible through the femininity now achieved [noch durch die vollendete
Weiblichkeit]. But perhaps we ought rather to recognize this wish
for a penis as being par excellence a feminine one [vielleicht soll ten
wir diesen Peniswunsch eher als einen exquisit weiblichen anerken-
nen]" ("Femininity," pp. 128-129). Woman's desire for a child is
thus like a ruse of nature that allows woman, despite her narcissism
and because of her narcissistic injury, to turn toward object love,
to love according to the masculine type ofobject love, to turn toward
first the father, then the lover. But turning toward one or the other
is also at the same time to turn away, for they are loved only as
appendages of the penis, as at last able to give the woman the desired
object, the penis or child-penis, and especially-the ultimate hap-
piness for the woman-the child-penis who is himself a bearer of
the penis, namely, a boy, who alone "brings the longed-for penis"
with him. To desire to have the father's child is in fact to relegate
the father to the background.
(The ultimate outcome of the infantile wish for a penis ...
I changes into the wish for a man, and thus puts up with the
l man as an appendage to the penis. This transformation, there-
fore, turns an impulse which is hostile to the female sexual
function into one which is favourable to it. Such women are
in this way made capable of an erotic life based on the mas-
culine type of object-love, which can exist alongside the fem-
inine one proper, derived from narcissism. We already know
that in other cases it is only a baby that makes the transition
from narcissistic self-love to object-love possible. So that in
[194]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
this respect too a baby can be represented by the penis ....
The importance of the process described lies in the fact that
a part of the young woman's narcissistic masculinity is thus
changed into femininity, and so can no longer operate in a
way harmful to the female sexual function. 27
And though it is true that, on the conscious level, the desire for
a man may appear independently of the desire for a child and may
grow out of motives that belong to ego psychology, "the original
wish for a penis becomes attached to it as an unconscious libidinal
reinforcement" ("Transformations," p. 130).
Thus the desire to have a child, if it does stem from the female
sexual function, still basically refers us back to a masculine consti-
tution: inasmuch as it corresponds with penis envy, it is classified,
in the fmal analysis, within woman's castration complex (ibid.). That
is why, in the analysis of a neurotic woman, it is not unusual to
stumble against her repressed desire to possess a penis as a man does,
a desire manifested on the conscious level by the desire to have a
. child. This desire, if it is frustrated in life, can trigger a neurosis:
"It looks as if such women had understood ... that nature has given
babies to women as a substitute for the penis that has been denied
them" (ibid., p. 129). The path that leads women toward men is
seen as a trick of nature, a means devised to give woman, after all,
what nature has refused her: a penis."
Sometimes the desire for a penis and the desire for a child have
both existed in childhood, in alternation: the accidental factors of
childhood account for this diversity. Corroborating evidence is found
in children's sexual theories, which always contain a kernel of truth:
when the child grapples with the problem of the origin of children,
when he guesses that only women can give birth, he then dispos-
27"On Transformations ofInstinct as Exemplified in Anal Erotism," 17:127-
133 (1917c; hereafter cited as "Transformations"), pp. 129-130).
280ne cannot help evoking Plato's Symposium here (203b-c), in which "Love,"
the child of Penia and Poros, of destitution and resource, is born specifically
as a result of a trick played by Penia, who conceives while Poros is asleep. The
love child is her only resource, the only means she has for escaping her distress,
her destitution, her aporia: the child is woman's resource, it is what allows a
mortal nature, Penia, destitute, in a state of aporia, to achieve immortality; to
acquire the penis?
 Freud Investigates
sesses the mother herself of a penis (which allows him to move from
the idea of a single instance of castration to the idea of generalized
castration), and he sometimes elaborates very complicated theories
in order to explain the exchange of a penis for a child. In all this,
the female genital organ seems never to be discovered: the child is
assumed to live in the mother's stomach and comes into the world
through the intestinal orifice (ef. "The Infantile Genital Organiza-
tion"). An element born of the eroticism of the pregenital phase
thus becomes suited for use in the phase of genital primacy; this
element is the identification of child and excrement. When the boy
observes that the girl has no penis, then the penis is recognized as
something that can be separated from the body, and it is identified
with the excrement that is the first piece of bodily substance the boy
has had to give up.
Thus the old anal defiance enters into the composition of the
castration complex.... When a baby appears on the scene he
regards it as 'lumf', in accordance with those researches, and
he cathects it with powerful anal-erotic interest. When social
experiences teach that a baby is to be regarded as a love-
token, a gift, the wish for a baby receives a second contri-
bution from the same source. Faeces, penis and baby are all
three solid bodies; they all three, by forcible entry or expul-
sion, stimulate a membranous passage. ["Transforma-
tions," p. 133]
The text "On the Sexual Theories of Children" (1908) insists
upon the absence of sexual difference and asserts that children refuse
to grant women the prerogative of giving birth. The cloacal theory
imposes itself as most plausible; the little boy may have the fantasy
that he makes babies "without there being any need to accuse him
on that account of having feminine inclinations. He is merely giving
evidence in this of the anal erotism which is still alive in him"
("Sexual Theories," p. 220). If the boy can have the desire to make
a baby himself, a baby identified with feces or a gift, and if this
desire precedes the phallic stage, can one so easily identify the desire
for a child with penis envy? In that case what could lead the boy to
desire a child? Is it necessary once again-despite the assertion of
[196]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
sexual identity during the first three stages-to distinguish the boy's
desires for a child from the girl's? Because in the final analysis Freud
wants to assimilate the desire for a child with the desire for a penis,
and with this alone, he ends up saying in "The Infantile Genital
Organization" (1923' that the child guesses that woman alone can
give birth; he even displaces the order of the questions children raise
during their sexual investigations. After consistently claiming that
the problem of where children come from is the one that arouses
curiosity first, in a note to "Some Psychical Consequences of the
Anatomical Distinction between the Sexes" (1925) he becomes more
hesitant, and he distinguishes the girl's case from the boy's: "I be-
lieved that the sexual interest of children, unlike that of pubescents,
was aroused, not by the difference between the sexes, but by the
problem of where babies come from. We now see that, at all events
with girls, this is certainly not the case. With boys it may no doubt
happen sometimes one way and sometimes the other; or with both
sexes chance experiences may determine the event" (p. 252, n. 2).
Putting the question of sexual difference first, at least in the girl's
. case, at least for the girl, obviously makes it possible to derive the
desire for a child from her castration complex and to shift the ques-
tion of where babies come from to the phallic stage, so as to be able
to give the mother who has just been castrated a child by way of
consolation, "to exchange her penis for a child." But perhaps it is
not "chance" that decides as to the privileged emergence of one
question or the other, but Freud, who according to the occasion,
according to his polemical needs, gives precedence to one or the
other. That is also why, in his lecture "Femininity," he never alludes
to the child/feces equation, in terms of which the desire for a child
may be derived from anal eroticism, before the phallic stage; fur-
thermore, the later penis/feces/child equation is attributed solely to
the boy, to the boy's castration complex. And if "On Transfor-
mations of Instinct" asserts that in unconscious productions (ideas,
fantasies, and symptoms) the concepts of feces, money, gifts, child,
and penis are difficult to separate and are easily interchanged, in the
supporting cases of female pathology that he quotes, Freud takes
into account only the symbolic equivalence of two of the "little
ones": child and penis. Language supplies evidence of the child/feces
identity in the expression "to give (someone) a child," as though it
[197]
 Freud Investigates
were a gift, a present; language also underlines the fact that the
equivalence is valid especially for men. 29 Finally, in Freud's summary
of the transformations of instincts in the girl, only the penis/child
equation is retained:
In girls, the discovery of the penis gives rise to envy for it,
which later changes into the wish for a man as the possessor
of a penis. Even before this the wish for a penis has changed
into the wish for a baby, or the latter wish has taken the place
of the former one. An organic analogy between penis and
baby ... is expressed by the existence ofa symbol (Tittle one')
common to both. A rational wish ... then leads from the wish
for a baby to the wish for a man. ["Transformations," p. 1]2]
However, Freud cannot go against all his earlier statements, can-
not "forget" that the little girl, even before penis envy has been
unleashed by the sight of the boy's sex, in the course of the phallic
phase not yet "disturbed" (in der ungestiirten phallischen Phase) by all
these vicissitudes, has already wished to have a child, as her play
with dolls signifies. Freud at this point finds himself compelled to
attribute two different meanings to playing with dolls, an activity
so characteristic of girls, it seems, that the wisdom of the ages has
always attributed it to a desire for motherhood, and has done so
without any need for psychoanalysis! Playing with dolls appears to
have different meanings at different times: in the phallic stage, before
the disturbance introduced by the sight of the penis, this activity is
not truly an expression of the girl's femininity, it merely signals her
identification with her mother; by that you are to understand not
an identification that would betray a desire to be a mother herself,
but simply a desire to dominate, to move from a situation in which
she is passively subject to the mother to a situation in which, playing
the role of mother in turn, she becomes active and can do to the
doll-child everything her mother has done to her: "She was playing
29In "The Dissolution ofthe Oedipus Complex" (1913), however, he writes:
"[The girl] slips-along the lines of a symbolic equation, one might say-from
the penis to a baby. Her Oedipus complex culminates in a desire, which is long
retained, to receive a baby from her father as a gift-to bear him a child"
(pp. 178-179). . is compared to a ship that has undergone countless vicissitudes in
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
the part of her mother and the doll was herself' ("Femininity,"
p. 128).
When the desire for a penis appears, doll play changes meaning:
the doll-child then becomes the father's baby and the goal of the
strongest feminine desire (das stiirkste weibliche Wunschziel). This play
is then seen as properly "feminine." Which suggests that during the
previous phase the boy, who is just as subject to his mother as the
girl, should also show a predilection for playing with dolls. Yet it
seems that at every age doll play has instead been considered, and
by boys themselves, as girls' play. But Freud, who on occasion does
not hesitate to compare girls and boys, neglects that potential ob-
jection, obsessed as he is by his fixed idea.
THE GIRL'S OEDIPUS COMPLEX
The girl, then, in her desire to get a child-penis, is seen as turning
to her father, a mere appendage of the penis: the father becomes a
love object, and the girl enters into the oedipal situation. The female
Oedipus complex is a reaction to the repression of clitoral activity
and to the repression of the desire for a penis as such. In the girl,
the Oedipus complex is a secondary formation. It is preceded and
prepared for by the aftereffects of the castration complex (cf. "Some
Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction between the
Sexes"). The girl's preexisting hostility toward her mother is con-
siderably reinforced at this point, since the mother becomes a rival,
the one who gets from the father everything that the girl wants
from him. And it is this intense new hatred and this new love that
end up covering over, by virtue of their very intensity and their
long duration, the preoedipal relation between daughter and mother.
The Oedipus complex is for the girl "the outcome of a long and
difficult development; it is a kind of preliminary solution, a position
of rest which is not soon abandoned, especially as the beginning of
the latency period is not far distant.... the girl ... enters the Oed-
ipus situation as though into a haven of refuge" ("Femininity," p.
129). All Freud's terms here emphasize the fact that for the girl, who
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 Freud Investigates
the course of a long and painful voyage, the oedipal situation is a
real haven, a place of repose and respite in which she can try to
mend her narcissistic wounds before embarking on new and haz-
ardous adventures. Nothing will force her to leave the port, more-
over, to overcome the oedipal situation, which she will in fact
overcome only "late" and incompletely. Freud insists so strongly
on the "happiness" of this oedipal situation that he has a great deal
of difficulty later on finding any good explanation for the fact that
the girl nevertheless does end up overcoming her Oedipus complex,
however incompletely.
What is at stake in this description-which is too idyllic not to
be suspect-is establishing a perfect dissymmetry between the girl's
Oedipus complex and the boy's. This dissymmetry is justified by
the difference-s-one with many implications-in the relation of the
Oedipus complex with the castration complex in boys and girls
respectively. Whereas the boy's Oedipus complex, which has de-
veloped during the phallic phase, gives way under the influence of
the castration complex, the girl's finds the condition ofits possibility
and its duration in that complex. Castration anxiety compels the
boy to abandon this position: the fear of losing his penis leads to
the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, which is, "in the most
normal cases, entirely destroyed" ("Femininity," p. 129) (one can
henceforth wonder what may be the meaning of the earlier state-
ment, in the same text, that an exclusive and permanent attachment
binds the son to his mother: "A boy's mother is the first object of
his love, and she remains so too during the formation of his Oedipus
complex and, in essence, all through his life" [ibid., p. lI8]; it is
true that these speculations allow of more than one contradiction).
In particular, it is the sight of the female genitalia that gives the
threat of castration its full impact, for it makes credible and repre-
sentable the loss of the boy's own penis. The acceptance of the
possibility of castration, the idea that the woman is castrated, ~nds
any possibility of satisfaction within the framework of the Oedipus
complex: the penis must be the price for oedipal satisfaction. In the
conflict between narcissistic interest in that part of the body and the
libidinal cathexis of the parental objects, it is the former that wins
out: the child's ego turns away from the Oedipus complex and it is
simply repressed but suppressed, destroyed (for all this, see "The
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Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex"). The catastrophe of the Oed-
ipus complex that marks the triumph of narcissism is at the same
time a victory of the species over the individual: according to Fe-
renczi, the penis owes its extraordinarily high level of cathexis to
its organic significance for the continuation of the species. In the
girl, on the other hand, the castration complex makes the Oedipus
complex possible, brings it into being and sustains it. The difference
between men and women corresponds with the difference between
"a simple threat of castration" and an "accomplished" castration.
"The girl accepts castration as an accomplished fact, whereas the
boy fears the possibility of its occurrence" ("Dissolution," p. 178).
We can now understand why Freud has to acknowledge that the
"girl's castration" is not a simple fantasy on the boy's part and that
it is recognized as a "fact" by the little girl-a fact that is seen as
the consequence of a castrating punishment. Whereas Freud used
the mother's lack of a penis to explain the girl's detachment from
the- mother, rejecting the hypothesis of a simple personal punish-
ment, in order to account for the difference in oedipal fortunes, he
ascribes to the girl a recognition that her lack of a penis results from
an accomplished castration. "A female child ... does not understand
her lack ofa penis as being a sex character; she explains it by assuming
that at some earlier date she had possessed an equally large organ
and had then lost it by castration. She seems not to extend this
inference from herself to other, adult females, but, entirely on the
lines of the phallic phase, to regard them as possessing large and
complete-that is to say, male-genitals" (ibid.).
Because her castration has already been accomplished, the Oed-
ipus complex cannot, for the girl, succumb to the threat ofcastration.
Now the consequences of this difference between girls and boys-
and this is what is truly at stake in the debate-have to do with the
formation of the superego. In fact, if a vigorous superego is installed
in place of the boy's destroyed Oedipus complex." the formation
(Bi/dutzg) of the girl's superego turns out to be compromised. It can
attain neither the power nor the independence that, from the cultural
JO"In boys ... the complex ... is literally smashed to pieces by the shock of
threatened castration.... Its objects are incorporated into the ego, where they
form the nucleus of the super-ego ... the super-ego has become its heir" ("Con-
sequences," p. 257).
[201 ]
 Freud Investigates Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
end of the path to normal femininity, which differs from the neurotic
point of view, it requires: "1 cannot evade the notion (though.1
path only by a difference in the degree of repression. These two
hesitate to give it expression) that for women the level of what IS
paths imply the girl's recognition of the "fact of her castration."
ethically normal is different from what it is in men. Their super-
But there is a third path, to which Freud returns with apparent
ego is never so inexorable, so impersonal, so independent of its
reluctance after lingering long on the other two. "To go back a
emotional origins as we require it to be in men" ("Consequences,"
little" ("Femininity," p. 129): Freud retraces his steps reluctantly,
p. 257). He hesitates to say this because he knows perfectly well
for this time he is dealing with a situation in which the girl refuses
that "feminists are not pleased when we point out to them the effects
to recognize the "fact" of her castration, a fact that does not suit
of this factor upon the average feminine character" ("Femininity,"
her at all. Far from abandoning her earlier masculinity, then, she
p. 129). For to attribute to a difference in the outcome of the Oedipus
stubbornly clings to it, even exaggerates it, persisting in her clitoral
complex the moral and cultural difference between men and wornerr"
masturbatory activity and seeking her salvation in an identification
is a way ofjustifying the cultural repression of woman in the name
with her mother or her father. In short, this path is that of a "pow-
of nature; it is a way oflegitimizing all cultural and social inequalities
erful masculinity complex" in which the girl fantasizes that she is
by appealing to a libidinal evolution that, because it is ~ong ~nd
really a man all the same; she continues against all odds "to cling
painful in woman, compels her to linger like Ulysses with Circe
with defiant sell-assertiveness" to her threatened masculinity and to
the sorceress in that harbor the Oedipus complex, so that she can
hold on to "the hope of getting a penis some time" ("Female Sex-
overcome it only "late" and incompletely, too late in any case to
uality," pp. 229-230). Freud's terminology here suggests through-
do it well, too late to avoid definitively compromising the formation
out that the girl who does not accept her own castration is incredibly
of the superego, and thus of the woman's moral and cultural stand-
stubborn: she is someone who dares stand up defiantly to men, who
ing. Too late because it is difficult to understand, assuming that she
does not bow down, despite her truncated penis, before the erection
reaches this point, how the girl can tear herself away from all these
of the great penis of the male: someone who has the audacity not
delights: "In girls the motive for the demolition of the Oedipus
to hold herself in contempt, not to feel humiliated, not to feel any
complex is lacking" ("Consequences," p. 257)· Nevertheless, in
narcissistic wound (cf. "The Dissolution of the Oedipus Complex"),
order to explain the construction of a superego in the girl and the
not to recognize her own inferiority; someone who, as a result,
demolition of the infantile genital organization, Freud in other texts
endangers the supremacy of the male sex and at the same time the
invokes the result of education, the threat of loss of love, the dis-
Fre.udian speculation that attempts to legitimize that supremacy.
appointed desire to have the father's child. But he concludes on a
This stubbornness can derive only from blindness, the feminine
note of uncertainty: "It must be admitted, however, that in general
counterpart to the boy's fetishism. The girl denies "the fact of her
our insight into these developmental processes in girls is unsatis-
castration," finds it intolerable, and her masculinity complex, her
factory, incomplete and vague" ("Dissolution," p. 179).
exaggerated masculinity, is the equivalent of the fetish, the thing
th.at at on.ce conceals castration and reveals it by its very exagger-
anon. ThIS means that the girl who does not react to the sight of
THE GIRL'S MASCULINITY COMPLEX
the boy's penis with penis envy is nevertheless not assertive, does
The girl's Oedipus complex is only one possible outcome of her not stand up to the boy by exhibiting a "properly" feminine sex
libidinal development after she discovers her castration: it lies at the that satisfies her fully; she continues to compete with the boy by
exhibiting a penis herself, by proclaiming that she too is a male: in
""This difference in the reciprocal relation between the Oedipus and the short, she does not acknowledge the anatomical difference between
castration complex ... gives its special stamp to the character of females as the sexes, she adopts a fetishist posture. This woman does not envy
social beings" ("Female Sexuality," p. 23 0).
[2°3]
 Freud investigates
the penis, to be sure, but it is because she believes she has one. She
is not a real threat to psychoanalysis: she is an exception that proves
the rule, Freud's fixed idea set up as a universal truth, since it is the
valorization of the penis, the fantasmatic belief that she possesses it
or will one day possess it, that exempts her from the commonest
reactive attitude. The choice of a homosexual object which often
characterizes this type of woman is conceived of not as a woman's
desire for another woman but actually as a man's desire for another
man (for a woman whom she takes in her own image as someone
who has a penis, since she herself identifies with her phallic mother
or father;" Her homosexuality is simply a consequence of her mas-
culinity complex. You may imagine that such homosexual women
who love only creatures of the feminine sex have some feelings of
disgust or at least of contempt for creatures of a different sex. You
are wrong: female homosexuals too have once loved a man, their
father: no one can avoid passing through the Oedipus complex, that
is, the desire for the penis men possess; no one can fail to recognize
the superiority of the male at some time or other. Female homo-
sexuality, as analysis teaches, is rarely if ever the direct extension of
infantile masculinity. It is only because of the inevitable disappoint-
ments that they undergo vis-a-vis the father that women are impelled
to regress toward the earlier masculinity complex. The behavior of
female homosexuals serves as corroborating evidence, reflecting two
phases of female development: they "play the parts of mother and
baby [the phase connected with the predominance of masculine sex-
uality] with each other as often and as clearly as those of husband
and wife [repeating the bond with the father]" ("Femininity," p. 130).
We may still wonder why the majority of girls who are also
inevitably disappointed by their father still do not all regress toward
masculine sexuality and evolve toward the "normal" femininity "to
which they are destined." What accounts for the fact that some are
"destined" for a "normal" femininity and others for the "mascu-
linity complex" or homosexuality? Freud does not evade this ques-
tion, but he refers back (as he always does in awkward situations)
to the constitutional factor as crucial: he cannot really produce any-
thing else ("Wir konnen uns nichts anderes vorstelleri") that might
32In this regard Luce Irigaray speaks very aptly of "hommosexualite,"
[ 2 0 4]
Psychoanalvsis: The Child Becomes a Woman
motivate a woman not to desire the penis, to persist stubbornly in
refusing to recognize the fact of her castration. We are to understand
that constitutionally she is more masculine than feminine, and that
therefore she cannot help persisting in this masculinity. She is by
nature, as it were, a boy manque who ends up taking herself to be
a boy for real. This means that constitutionally she possesses a large
measure of activity (ein griisseres Ausmass von Aktivitdt) "such as is
ordinarily characteristic of a male.... The essence of this process is
that at this point in development the wave of passivity is avoided
which opens the way to the turn towards femininity" (die Wendung
zur Weiblichkeit ero.ffi1et) ("Femininity," p. 130).
What can it mean to say that "activity" is a constitutional factor?
Can Freud assert without contradicting himself that a large measure
ofactivity is ordinarily characteristic ofa male after he has distinguished
masculinity in the biological sense (in which masculine means sperm-
bearing) from masculinity in the psychological sense (in which mas-
. culine means active), and after he has declared that those two mean-
ings are in general independent ofeach other? It is only if you equate
those two meanings that you can speak of "activity" as a consti-
tutional factor and conclude that a woman who "does not wish for
a penis" is more masculine than feminine, that she therefore has,
really has, as it were, and not fantasmatically, a penis. If this were
so, that woman would not have to deny "the fact of her castration"
and she could legitimately "stand up to the boy" without showing
the slightest signs of defiance; owing to her inordinate measure of
activity, she would in fact be more man than woman, a true anomaly
and aberration of nature. Appealing to the constitutional factor to
explain the girl's masculinity complex then amounts to saying that
a woman takes herself to be a man when in fact she is (almost) a
man. The reference to her constitution, which thus explains nothing,
simply allows Freud, once again, to "retrieve" even those "women"
who seem the most opposed to his fixed idea. True women do not
reject the view of women held by men, who to further their own
cause attribute to women an incomplete sexuality. When a "woman"
rejects this view, it is because she is herself also a man.
At a point where his fixed idea directs all this speculation more
firmly than ever, Freud appeals-in a perfect example of denega-
tion-to observation, to the meticulous work of analysis, and tries
[ 2 0 5]
 Freud Investigates
to make women psychoanalysts accomplices of his delirium, those
women who are themselves "exceptional" women, more masculine
than feminine. It is not surprising, then, that they have been able
to "anticipate" the Freudian discoveries; in particular, it is a "woman,"
Dr. Helene Deutsch, who is said to have demonstrated that the love
acts offemale homosexuals reproduce the mother-child relationship;
it is Dr. Ruth Mack Brunswick who is said to have been the first
to describe a neurosis that could be attributed to a preoedipal fixation:
"The case took the form of jealous paranoia and proved accessible
to therapy" ("Femininity," p. 130); it is Dr. Jeanne Lampl de Groot
who is said to have established "the incredible phallic activity of
girls towards their mother by some assured observations" (ibid.,
pp. 130-13 I). The choice of these particular examples is no accident:
their main point is that women themselves recognize their original
"masculinity." Freud is paying them "homage" here, in the last
analysis, for having anticipated his own discoveries, having made
themselves accomplices of a masculine discourse that they thus cleanse
of any hint of phallocratism. He cedes the priority of his discoveries
so that he can better inscribe women's discourse within the process
of analytic truth, thereby depriving that discourse of any originality.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF BISEXUALITY
The lecture might end here. To be sure, Freud has up to now
described only the "prehistory of woman"; the development of
femininity through puberty to adulthood remains to be described.
Such is not his intention, however, for, he says, the data are not
sufficient. And yet he does not end his talk here. He lingers over
the prehistory of woman, even he, as though in a haven that offered
him complete safety. Perhaps also because that prehistory is crucial
for subsequent development that is not accomplished without con-
flict and difficulty: in fact, woman's development into womanhood
is never completely assured, precisely because of its prehistory, be-
cause of woman's original bisexuality or rather her early "mascu-
linity." Repression notwithstanding, this latter does not fail to leave
some disturbing "remnants." Regressions to the preoedipal stage
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Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
are very frequent; in certain women one may observe a repeated
alternation, so that sometimes masculinity predominates, sometimes
femininity, as if the conflict were never truly resolved, as if the
woman forever kept her nostalgia for her "masculine being." What
is called woman's instability is perhaps related to that bisexuality
which is so marked in every feminine life, to that perpetual balancing.,
between feminine and masculine. That absence of a stable position
makes woman unlocatable, elusive, enigmatic in the eyes of men,
who are less subject to bisexuality, to that permanent conflict be-
tween femininity and masculinity, since in man the masculine always
predominates, since the penis has always been such a leading zone
that ifcertain neuroses or psychoses did not reveal repressed feminine
desires in man, one might even wonder what masculine bisexuality
means: "Some portion of what we men call 'the enigma of women'
may perhaps be derived from this expression of bisexuality in wom-
en's lives" ("Femininity," p. 131). Because with "woman" men
never know for sure with whom they are dealing, they try to over-
come her lack of "proper nature" and propriety by making her their
property, by deciding, given her undecidability, in favor of mas-
culinity; in short, by endowing her with "penis envy" as a definitive
mark. The passage immediately following demonstrates that Freud's
gesture is indeed one of deciding in favor of the masculine. With
sexual life dominated by the masculine/feminine polarity, one might
have expected that for each sexuality there would be a specific cor-
responding libido. Yet after stating that nothing of the kind is true,
that there is only a single libido at the service of the male and female
sexual functions alike, that the libido thus has no gender as such,
Freud still goes on to qualify the libido as "masculine," as we have
seen; and even if he does so out of respect for a convention that
identifies masculinity with activity, that convention is not deemed
arbitrary because the opposite convention is judged inadmissible:
"Nevertheless the juxtaposition 'feminine libido' is without any jus-
tification" (ibid.) And this is so--such at least is Freud's impression-
because the libido is subject to a greater constraint when it supports
the feminine function. This impression turns out to be immediately
corroborated by an exceedingly "speculative" or ideological appeal
to a sort of "natural teleology." Nature takes less account offeminine
requirements than masculine ones in order to achieve a biological
[20 7]
 Freud Investigates
end: sexual aggressiveness has been entrusted to men "and has been
made to some extent independent of women's consent" (ibid.). As
always, the appeal to biology serves only to corroborate Freud's
speculations, allows him to blame nature for the cultural injustice
by which man subordinates woman's sexual desires to his, keeping
them strictly dependent on his own (all cultural rules having as their
aim precisely that sexual subjection of woman).
In "The Taboo of Virginity"33 Freud recognizes that a certain
"measure of sexual bondage is, indeed, indispensable to the main-
tenance of civilized marriage and to holding at bay the polygamous
tendencies which threaten it, and in our social communities this
factor is regularly reckoned upon" (pp. 193-194). So it is the socia!
necessity of maintaining monogamy that justifies the subjectlonof
one sex to the other. Nothing, however, justifies the choice of the
feminine sex as the one to be subjected rather than the masculine.
One observes only that "this state ofbondage is ... far more frequent
and more intense in women than in men" (ibid., p. 194), and this
is so because the man who first assuages a young woman's amorous
desire, the one who overcomes her resistances, establishes with her
a lasting relationship, the possibility of which will never again
be open to any other man. This experience creates a state of
bondage in the woman which guarantees that possession of
her shall continue undisturbed and makes her able to resist
new impressions and enticements from outside.... This
bondage can on occasion extend very far, as far as the loss of
all independent will and as far as causing a person to suffer
the greatest sacrifices of his own interests. [Ibid., p. 193]
What the man is aiming for, then, is permanent and peaceful pos-
session of the woman, in which her instability is overcome and she
is led to sacrifice her own sexual interests.
Thus "The Taboo of Virginity" could hardly proclaim more
"The taboo of virginity among primitive peoples and the valorization of
virginity among civilized peoples both have the same goal: defense against the
danger represented by woman because of her penis envy, by the subjection of
woman.
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Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
clearly that the ultimate end in view is that of "culture," not nature
(if we go along with Freud in maintaining that ideological oppo-
sition); and as a sort of ruse culture exploits a psychic phenomenon
that is itself conditioned by the education women receive, by the
repression of female sexuality, in order to "sacrifice" woman's sex-
uality, to subject her completely-without her consent-to man's
"aggressivity": the subjection of woman that makes her an ac-
complice of man's desires is the only thing that prevents man's sexual
"aggressivity" from being perpetual rape and violence.
Thus men do not hesitate to sacrifice women's sexual interests:
and yet they are asto~ished that women are frequently frigid! Freud
considers that frigidity 'constitutes a still "insufficiently understood"
phenomenon. It is beyond his comprehension. And yet, as if by
"free" association, immediately after declaring that "nature" en-
trusts men with the sexual aggressiveness that remains to a certain
extent independent of women's consent, he "evokes" woman's sex-
ua1 frigidity in a revealing way. This frigidity only confirms the
woman's "disadvantage"; though Freud concedes that it may some-
times have a psychic origin and may consequently be subject to
treatment, in other cases he does not hesitate to lay this frigidity at
"nature's" doorstep by attributing it to the presence of some con-
stitutional or anatomical factor. Even in cases where frigidity may
have a psychic origin, it cannot result from mistreatment by men,
from the sacrifice that Freud does not hesitate to require of women's
interests. No, it must still, and always, be the woman's fault: through
her frigidity she is only manifesting her hostility toward man. Some-
times that hostility is undisguised: after the first occasion as well, a
given woman may insult her husband, raise her hand against him,
and even strike him, even though, as happened in one such case,
"the woman loved the man very much, used to demand intercourse
herself and unmistakably found great satisfaction in it" ("The Taboo
of Virginity," p. 201). These hostile attitudes are most often ex-
pressed by sexual inhibition, that is, by frigidity. The hostility does
not arise from a reaction to woman's state of dependency, no, it
stems from the narcissistic injury born of the destruction of the
organ on the occasion of defloration, and, at a more basic level,
from the woman's penis envy:
 Freud Investigates
After this enumeration of the motives for the paradoxical
reaction of women to defloration, traces of which persist in
frigidity, we may sum up by saying that a woman's immature
sexuality is discharged on to the man who first makes her
acquainted with the sexual act. This being so, the taboo of
virginity is reasonable enough and we can understand the rule
which decrees that precisely the man who is to enter upon a
life shared with this woman shall avoid these dangers. At
higher stages of civilization the importance attributed to this
danger diminishes in the face of her promise of bondage....
[Ibid., p. 206]
That is why many women who are frigid in a first marriage are
tender and contented spouses with a second husband. It is not that
the second husband is more potent sexually, for example, or takes
her desires into account to a greater extent, no: it is simply because
their "archaic reaction" has, "so to speak, exhausted itself on the
first object" (ibid.).
RHAPSODIC SUPPLEMENT
The lecture might have ended here. And yet it continues, without
apparent necessity, in the name of a "promise" Freud made earlier,
not to describe the entire development of femininity through pu-
berty to adulthood, but at least to cite a few details, some of the
particular features of mature femininity that psychoanalytic obser-
vation has revealed. What makes Freud keep this "promise"? Is it
his special friendship for women that compels him to reveal their
specific qualities? Or is he seeking to overwhelm them? It seems,
in fact, as though these disconnected remarks were left to the end
because Freud hesitated up to the last minute, and because they
constituted the real "end" of his whole discourse (their rhapsodic
nature disguising their true importance); at the same time, this sup-
plementary rhapsody is designed to bring final support to the pre-
ceding demonstration, revealing by that very token the fragility of
the whole speculative construction, which cannot stand up without
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Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
a supplementary column, a fetishist column that serves to fill in the
holes in this discourse, which is too well put together not to conceal
some gaps.
All the specific characteristics of the woman who has reached
maturity are destined to reinforce the importance of penis envy (to
reinforce for us the idea that Freud is indeed prey to a fixed idea,
despite his disavowals): "Ifyou reject this idea as fantastic and regard
my belief in the influence of a lack of a penis on the configuration
of femininity as an idee fixe, I am of course defenceless" ("Feminin-
ity," p. 1]2).
The final rhapsody is equivalent to a bulletproof vest put on in
extremis; it both masks and reveals an obsession Freud tries to pass
off as truth by accumulating an addendum of proofs. After taking
the precaution of declaring that it is not always easy to distinguish
between what can be attributed to the sexual function on the one
hand and social discipline on the other, Freud lists a certain number
of specific characteristics of women which are all based on their
penis envy. His statements of principle notwithstanding, that desire
for a penis seems in the last analysis to have been conceived as
natural, all too natural, for it is seen as the insurmountable "bio-
logical fact," the bedrock found under all the other layers. Woman's
narcissism is greater than man's, in this view, and it influences her
object choice; she has a greater need to be loved than to love. Wom-
an's object choice is of the narcissistic type (the woman loves only
herself, or a part of herself, or what she has been herself, or what
she would like to be herself; woman does not love according to the
masculine model, by attachment, but desires only to be loved): Freud
reiterates this endlessly, at least from the time of "On Narcissism"
(see also "The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a
Woman"). Because she has been able to maintain an unassailable
libidinal position, the woman is envied by the man: such was the
earlier thesis. Now the emphasis is singularly displaced. To say that
woman is narcissistic is to stress her incapacity to love the other and
her need to be loved, a need that seems to reflect not complacency
and self-sufficiency so much as the original narcissistic wound, that
is, in the final analysis, penis envy. The desire to be loved is a sign
of a deficiency, as the man's sexual overvaluation of the object is
the sign of an original narcissism that has no gaps, that is capable
[21 I]
 Freud Investigates
of being transferred to others. Only the man who has not already
been castrated, wounded, can empty himself of his narcissism to the
benefit of others. Woman can only hold herself back, reserve for
herself a narcissism that has already been penetrated; she can only
conserve herself, she cannot expend herself. Interpreted this way,
woman's narcissism can no longer be attributed, with no possibility
of ambiguity, to a positive, Dionysian force; rather it must be di-
rectly attributed to death drives. Woman's physical vanity is also
described, this time, as 'an "effect of penis-envy," for women con-
sider their charms "as a late compensation for their original sexual
inferiority" ("Femininity," p. 132). Pubertal development and the
formation of female sex organs lead to an increase in the original
narcissism that was "injured" during the phallic phase, after the girl
discovered the little boy's penis and could no longer stand up to the
boy on equal terms. At puberty the girl can hold her head up once
again, can hold it all the higher to the extent that she felt injured
during the phallic period. Woman's "vanity" is thus vain indeed; it
is the sign and counterpart of the original defectiveness of her genital
organs. Beauty is now conceived as a natural compensation for a
"natural" wound. The beautiful woman is beautiful now with an
attendant beauty, a beauty associated too closely with that penis
whose lack continues to constitute its negative determination. Beauty
is a supplementary garment added to the one nature has woven to
hide the ugliness of woman's incomplete sexual organs; it serves as
an example to show woman that she is to be modest, that she is to
invent veils and fetishes in order to seduce men all the same. Wom-
an's amorous choices also betray "penis envy" when they are freely
made and not dictated by society. In one case, the choice is made
according to the narcissistic ideal: the woman chooses the man that
she wished to become when she was a little girl. This choice is
rooted in the girl's "masculinity complex," and the conditions that
make it possible lie in childhood, in that moment when the little
girl was herself a little man-the choice of an object according to a
narcissistic ideal implies a fixation in the phallic stage. In the other
case, the girl remains fixated on her father, remains within the Oed-
ipus complex, and chooses her object according to the paternal type.
In both cases the woman ought to achieve happiness, since she is at
last acquiring the longed-for penis, either through identification or
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Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
through the child obtained from the paternal substitute. Yet it is not
that simple. Even when woman's choice is free, her happiness is not
self-evident. Freud still has to explain why so many women are in
conflict with their husbands, why they show hostility toward them,
why many women enter into several relationships, and especially
why second marriages are generally happier than first ones. No-
where in any text does Freud hold the husband responsible for his
wife's hostility toward him, or the father either, for whom the
husband is seen as a mere substitute. No, the woman's hostility
toward her husband is a vestige of the hostility she felt toward her
mother. To get to this point, Freud first has to postulate that hostility
toward the mother did not end when the girl turned away from her
mother toward her father; then he has to explain that the hostility
was transferable, along with the love, from mother to father. He is
forced to argue that the girl's hostility toward her mother was con-
nected with the ambivalence of her affective relationships, an am-
bivalence that earlier had not been considered a crucial factor in the
break with the mother. Earlier, and in "Female Sexuality," he had
rejected ambivalence, since it was common to both sexes and yet it
did not keep the boy from remaining fixated on his mother. "The
lack of a penis" could not be invoked to account for the girl's
hostility, since the hatred persists when the girl passes from the
mother to the father, or to the husband, as father substitute, even
though they possess the longed-for penis. Freud is thus compelled
to propose the factor of ambivalence, which obviously makes it
necessary for him to state, as he does a few lines farther on, that
the mother-son relation for its part implies no ambivalence.
In this text, then, Freud does not stop with a single contradiction.
At every tum, in the interests of the cause, one particular argument
is advanced rather than some other. It was necessary here to show
that a woman's hostility toward man could be nothing but the
transference of a previous hostility toward the mother, just as love
was a simple transference from the one to the other. But whereas
love, to the extent that it was love for a phallic mother, was always
love for the father, or at least for the father's penis, hatred has never
been and will never become hatred for man, for the penis; it has
always been and will always remain hatred for the mother/woman,
even when it is "transferred" to father or husband. This is why
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 Freud Investigates
second marriages are happier than first ones: in first marriages, the
husband inherits the woman's earlier hostility toward her mother,
and the hostility is thereby liquidated; second marriages are happier
because the hostile reaction has ended.
In "The Taboo of Virginity" Freud had already attempted to
explain why second marriages are better than first ones. There, too,
it was woman's conduct that was held accountable for the failure
of the relationship. But her hostility toward the man was attributed
to the defloration that gave rise to a narcissistic injury, itself con-
nected in the last analysis with penis envy. That archaic reaction of
hostility to man, a reaction capable of taking such pathological forms
as inhibition and frigidity, is the one "to which we may ascribe the
fact that second marriages so often turn out better than first. The
taboo of virginity, which seems so strange to us, the horror with
which, among primitive peoples, the husband avoids the act of
defloration, are fully justified by this hostile reaction" ("Taboo," p.
208). The lecture "Femininity" would say nothing else if the hostility
toward the mother were explained by the "injury" inflicted on the
girl. One might then say that the girl's "revenge" against her i]US_
band was only a transference of the revenge she would have liked
to direct against her mother, whom she held accountable. In the
interim between the two texts, according to this view, Freud must
have come to understand that the husband is the mother's heir as
well as the father's. Yet nothing of the sort is true, for Freud does
not cite penis envy now, but rather the simple ambivalence of the
girl's original feelings as the decisive factor underlying her hostility.
Why this difference, ifnot because in "Femininity" woman's relation
to man turns out to be cleansed of any tinge of hatred, because
woman has been transformed into man's accomplice, and because
after her stormy relationship with her mother, her relationship with
men is conceived as a restful haven in which only a vestige of hatred
toward the mother remains? In "Femininity," penis envy and the
girl's castration complex are presented as the origin of the Oedipus
complex, a complex that has no reason to come to an end; thus it
would be strange if this same penis envy, this same castration com-
plex, were used to justify woman's hatred of her husband and her
potential separation from him in order to justify her hostility. Hence
the appeal to "ambivalence" alone, and not to penis envy. Penis
[ 21 4]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
envy serves here to justify not divorce but marital happiness. If the
husband is hated only insofar as he is the mother's heir, he is loved
only insofar as he is or will be the child, or will give his wife the
child, that is a penis substitute: "Even a marriage is not made secure
until the wife has succeeded in making her husband her child as well
and in acting as a mother to him" ("Femininity," pp. 133- 134). We
are to understand that the husband will of course be a child of the
male gender and that he will fully satisfy the wife only by giving
her a son: "The difference in a mother's reaction to the birth of a
son or a daughter shows that the old factor of lack of a penis has
even now not lost its strength. A mother is only brought unlimited
satisfaction by her relation to a son" (ibid., p. 133). (To dare to
assert after this that the mother behaves in exactly the same way
toward her children of both sexes takes real courage.) Unlimited
satisfaction because the mother-son relationship is the most com-
plete, it lacks nothing, not even the penis (es ist uberhaupt die voll-
kommenste), and because it is also the least ambivalent of all human
relationships (am ehesten ambivalenzfrei)-on the mother's part as well
as the son's, since a son may finally allow her to hold her head high,
to bind up her narcissistic wound, to be once again on a par with
a man. If she is not a man, at least she has brought into the world
a little man that she loves like a part of herself, a part all the more
precious in that it bears witness, despite all the rest, to her "own"
masculinity: "A mother can transfer to her son the ambition which
she has been obliged to suppress in herself, and she can expect from
him the satisfaction of all that has been left over in her of her mas-
culinity complex" (ibid.).
The Son is the Child who is his mother's Saviour. All religions
have known this all along: the child takes the mother's wounds to
himselfand restores to her an intact body. The mother thus becomes
a Virgin mother, whom nothing can penetrate. Thus in the Christian
religion, a Pied statue presents a Virgin holding on her lap a bloodied
Christ who conceals the maternal wounds by inscribing them upon
his own body. Motherhood is a path to salvation;" The son rec-
onciles the woman with herself, with the husband she loves as a
child, and even with her own mother: against all expectations, after
34Cf. Sarah Kofman, Nerval: Le Charme de fa repetition (Paris, 1979).
[ 2 1 5]
 Freud Investigates
the birth of her first child, because the woman can once again hold
up her head, she ceases to rail against her own mother and begins
again to identify with her. In some cases this identification may lead
the woman, simply as an effect of the repetition reflex, to reproduce
the unhappy marriage ofher parents (ifthere is an unhappy marriage,
for one cannot suppose that Freud considers this to be a general
rule).
The woman's identification with her mother, which allows her
to play her role as mother with respect to her son and her husband,
reproduces the daughter's infantile identification with her mother.
It includes two phases: the preoedipal phase, in which affectionate
attachment to the mother predominates and in which the girl takes
her mother as a model (Vorbild); and the oedipal phase, later on, in
which she wishes "to get rid of her mother and take her place with
her father" (ibid., p. 134). Of these two phases, much "is left over
for the future ... neither of them is adequately surmounted in the
course of development" (ibid.). For the woman's future, the decisive
phase is the first one, for it is during the phase of affectionate at-
tachment to her mother that she begins to acquire those qualities
that will allow her to play her sexual and social role-which is of
incalculable importance later on.
Because Freud now needs to transform the woman into a "good
mother" for man and thus capable of exerting an attraction for him
(this is the boon the woman wins-a need that arises because wom-
an's amorous state is a simple displacement of her attachment to her
mother onto another object-in the interests of this cause, man's
cause, he does not hesitate to simplify mother-daughter relations
quite curiously here. On the one hand, he expunges the ambivalence
of the preoedipal phase, on which he has earlier insisted in order to
explain the girl's hostility toward her mother and then toward her
husband, and emphasizes only the positive and affectionate relations.
On the other hand, and correlatively, he does not hesitate to use the
Oedipus complex to account for the girl's hostility, whereas earlier
the oedipal hostility has been conceived as the "reactivation of an
older hostility," has in any event been set in a background of preex-
isting hostility. In addition, and in particular, Freud "forgets" here
what he has earlier asserted, what he urged us not to forget, namely,
that when the girl identifies with her mother during the preoedipal
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Psychoanalysis: The. Child Becomes a Woman
phase-when she plays with dolls, for example-she only wants to
overcome a passive situation; she is at that point taking on a role
that is more masculine than feminine.
It has not escaped us that the girl has wished for a baby earlier,
in the undisturbed phallic phase: that, of course, was the
meaning of her playing with dolls. But that play was not in
fact an expression of her femininity; it served as an identifi-
cation with her mother with the intention of substituting
activity for passivity. . .. Not until the emergence of the wish
for a penis does the doll-baby become a baby from the girl's
father, and thereafter the aim of the most powerful feminine
wish... , With the transference of the wish for a penis-baby
on to her father, the girl has entered the situation of the
Oedipus complex. [Ibid., pp. 128-129]
If we are to believe this passage, and everything that precedes it in
the lecture, then the preoedipal phase, in which the little girl is like
a little boy and in which she identifies with a phallic mother, can only
predispose her to playa masculine role, an active role: how can she
then acquire the "qualities" that will allow her to fulfill her sexual
function, if that function, to the extent that it is [eminine, is tied to
passivity and to the predominance of the vaginal zone, which ac-
cording to Freud remains undiscovered during the preoedipal stage?
It is only in the oedipal stage that the girl could desire to be like her
mother. It does seem as though the first and the second identifications
cannot be separated, that being like the mother, as such, implies the
desire to have a penis-child with the father, for the girl's identification
during the preoedipal phase can end only by making her play a
masculine role, the role of a phallic mother, and will prevent her,
properly speaking, from becoming a mother and a woman.
By forgetting what it was particularly important not to forget,
Freud can speculate on marital happiness, on the happiness of the
man charmed by the woman who is highly attractive and fully
endowed with maternal characteristics. And yet the spouse's hap-
piness cannot be as great as the son's, for man and woman are
separated from each other by a lack of synchrony; they are out of
phase. The man has always loved his wife as a mother (his mother);
[217]
 Freud Investigates
now the wife succeeds "in making her husband her child" only
when she herself has a child. But then, especially if she has a son,
she directs all her love toward the child, toward the only person
with whom she has a relationship free of ambivalence, the only
person who enables her to feel pride: "A mother is only brought
unlimited satisfaction by her relation to a son; this is altogether the
most perfect, the most free from ambivalence of all human rela-
tionships" (ibid., p. 133).
In these closing lines of the lecture, Freud seems to turn nos-
talgically toward that blissful period of childhood in which love
relations were quite perfect, and to turn away from his wife as if
she had been unable to mother him adequately, as if she had aban-
doned him in favor of her children, and had been "unfair" to him.
As if filled with envy and jealousy, he turns against women and
accuses them of responsibility for marital unhappiness, of being for-
ever incapable of being fully fair to men, for it must be recognized
that their penis envy deprives them of any sense of justice and
fairness.
At the end of the lecture, then, as if to get even, Freud attributes
a number of unpleasant characteristics to women, stressing every-
thing that makes them inferior, especially from the cultural point
of view. In the name of penis envy he justifies all the masculine
prejudices and thus stamps them with "scientific" endorsements:
women, we say (we men?), have weakersocial interests than men and
they have a lesser capacity to sublimate their drives. The first char __
acteristic derives from "the dissocial quality which unquestionably
characterizes all sexual relations. Lovers fmd sufficiency in each other,
and families too resist inclusion in more comprehensive associations"
(ibid., p. 134). This argument is curious, to say the least, since it
ought to entail the social disinterest of the man "in love" as well as
the woman "in love," unless it postulates that only the woman is
attached to the family circle because she is detached from social
interests; which is to lock her in a vicious circle. . .. This argument
can in fact be understood only if to the initial cultural inferiority of
woman a second is added: her lesser capacity to sublimate her drives
(individual variations notwithstanding). Indeed, it is because woman
sublimates her drives to a lesser extent than man does that she
remains attached to the family, finds no external outlets, becomes
[218]
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
jealous when man relegates her to the background, when he shirks
his duties as husband and son in favor of his civilizing tasks; she is
thus led to adopt a hostile attitude toward the civilization that robs
her of her husband or son:
Women soon come into opposition to civilization and display
their retarding and restraining influence-those very women
who, in the beginning, laid the foundations of civilization by
the claims of their love. Women represent the interests of the
family and of sexual life. The work of civilization has become
increasingly the business of men, it confronts them with ever
more difficult tasks and compels them to carry out instinctual
sublimations of which women are little capable.
Such is the thesis developed in Civilization and Its Discontents (p.
10 3). Woman counters the civilizing trend, to be sure, but what
Freud does not recall to mind in his lecture is the fact that women
are the ones, as he says elsewhere, who established the foundations
of civilization by the demands of their love. Civilization and Its
Discontents locates the origin of the family in the need for genital
satisfaction: this need does not manifest itself in the manner of "a
guest who drops in suddenly, and, after his departure, is heard of
no more for a long time, but instead [takes] up its quarters as a
permanent lodger" (ibid., p. 99); it requires the existence of home
and family. Sexual need is what motivates the male to keep the
female close at hand, and women, so as not to be separated from
their children, remain near the strongest male. It is woman more
than man who perpetuates the family, for under the pressure of
external necessity man goes out to work, while the women watch
the children. It is the power of her love for the little ones that keeps
the woman from separating from that part of herself that is the child,
as it is the need to hold on to a permanent sexual object that leads
both sexes to maintain life in common. The woman will take the
part oflove and family all the more because civilization itself requires
her to play that role. In other words, woman's lesser capacity to
sublimate her instincts is not a natural inferiority on her part, as the
end of "Femininity" suggests: it results from her education. Only
men are compelled by civilization to sublimate their impulses, to
[21 9]
 Freud Investigates
accomplish increasingly difficult tasks, and thus to pass from the
"closed society" of the family to the "open society" of humanity,
to work for civilization, putting themselves not at the service of the
death drives, which draw the family in upon itself, but at the service
of Eros, which makes it possible to extend to humanity the power
of their love, a power that is inhibiting insofar as it is restricted to
the family alone. Women for their part are not trained for subli-
mation; they have only a limited "talent" for it, for they are "the
actual vehicle of the sexual interests of mankind" ("Civilized' Sexual
Morality," p. 195).
In "Femininity" woman's social inferiority and her lack of" ap-
titude" for sublimation are declared to be inborn and indelible in-
feriorities; they are viewed as natural and ineradicable character traits.
This inferiority is in addition to that of her superego, which is also
natural, and which "gives its special stamp to the character offemales
as social beings" ("Female Sexuality," p. 230). In "Femininity" Freud
notes this "female character trait" without dwelling on its conse-
quences. Perhaps because he dwelt upon them at length elsewhere;
perhaps because these "unflattering" consequences for woman con-
trast with the marital happiness he has just evoked, which arises
when the woman brings a son into the world and thus finds her
penis envy satisfied. In other texts (" 'Civilized' Sexual Morality
and Modern Nervous Illness," for example) Freud is much more
circumspect with regard to the happiness of mothers; women, he
says, can doubtless be satisfied with a nursling as substitute for a
sexual object, but they cannot be satisfied by a child who is growing
up. Yet they are no better satisfied by marriage:
Under the cultural conditions of to-day, marriage has long
ceased to be a panacea for the nervous troubles of women;
... a girl must be very healthy if she is to be able to tolerate
it.... The cure for nervous illness arising from marriage would
be marital unfaithfulness. But the more strictly a woman has
been brought up and the more sternly she has submitted to
the demands of civilization, the more she is afraid of taking
this way out. [" 'Civilized' Sexual Morality,' " p. 195]
Because she does not have the capacity to sublimate her sexual instincts,
the remedy left to her is to take refuge in neurosis. "Nothing protects
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Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
her virtue as securely as an illness" (ibid.). Because education com-
pletely represses female sexuality before marriage, keeping women
in total ignorance and tolerating no amorous inclination that does
not lead to marriage, it produces a type of anaesthetized woman
(and the tendency to frigidity that derives from her education cannot
be overcome in this case by a powerful sexual experience, given
man's reduced sexual potency); and "these women who conceive
without pleasure show little willingness afterwards to face the pains
of frequent childbirth. In this way, the preparation for marriage
frustrates the aims of marriage itself' (ibid., p. 198). Far from being
satisfied by the child (a purely theoretical solution that can carry no
weight in the current state of civilization), woman can only choose
unsatisfied desire, infidelity, or neurosis.
"'Civilized' Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness," .\
published in 1908, allows for the supposition that all women's un-
happiness results from their disastrous education and that it is there-
fore subject to correction: in this view it is linked to a historical
situation and not to the natural condition of women. In "Femi-
ninity," although Freud prudently states that it is not "always easy
to distinguish what should be ascribed to the influence of the sexual
function and what to social breeding" (p. 132), the accent falls on
"nature," on women's "inclinations," their "desires," women being
responsible in the last analysis for their own unhappiness. One can-
not help thinking that this way of turning women into "things"
corresponds with a deep desire on Freud's part, with the desire to
immobilize them in an "eternal feminine" that no social progress
can transform, however dearly it may cost women. In an early letter
to his fiancee, Martha, he does not hesitate to acknowledge this:
It is possible that a different education could suppress all wom-
en's delicate qualities-which are so much in need of protec-
tion and yet so powerful-with the result that they could earn
their living like men. It is also possible that in this case it
would not be justifiable to deplore the disappearance of the
most lovely thing the world has to offer us: our ideal of
womanhood. But I believe that all reforming activity, leg-
islation and education, will founder on the fact that long
before the age at which a profession can be established in our
[221 ]
 Freud Investigates
society, nature will have appointed woman by her beauty,
charm and goodness, to do something else.
No, in this respect I adhere to the old ways, to my longing
for my Martha as she is, and she herself will not want it
different; legislation and custom have to grant to women
many rights kept from them, but the position of woman
cannot be other than what it is: to be an adored sweetheart
in youth, and a beloved wife in maturiry.i"
And because the woman is "adored" by the man, her "oppression"
can in no way-eontrary to what John Stuart Mill thought (and he
is the point of departure for this whole edifying missive)-be com-
pared with that of the Negro! "Any girl, even without a vote and
legal rights, whose hand is kissed by a man willing to risk his all
for her love, could have put him right on this" (ibid.). That is why
it is impossible to want to launch women upon the struggle for life
on the model of men. And Freud for his part will be quite capable
of doing all that is necessary to remove his beloved, whom he has
made his accomplice, from that competition, and assign to her as
her exclusive domain the peaceful activity of the home: "I dare say
we agree that housekeeping and the care and education of children
claim the whole person and practically rule out any profession"
(ibid., p. 75).
Because it is a matter of ruling out the possibility that woman
may one day become man's rival, she whom he basically needs to
Ijmake his accomplice, Freud fixes and freezes her definitively in a
. type that corresponds with his "ideal of femininity."
Obsessed by his fixed idea, he immobilizes woman, imprisons
her in her "nature" as in a real yoke of iron. It is on that fixity of
woman, on the impossibility of her evolving and changing after a
certain age-thirty!-as opposed to the flexibility and plasticity of
man, who is forever young, never finished, always capable of trans-
forming himself and improving himself, that the lecture ends: on a
death sentencefor woman. Because she has exhausted all her potential
in her painful development into femininity, woman finds herself
"Freud to Martha Bernays, November IS, 1883, in Lettersof Siomund Freud,
P·7 6
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Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
forever fixed in a definitive posture, without hope of undergoing
any further development. If psychoanalysis is capable of helping
men change, where women are concerned it can only deplore that i
terrifying state of affairs. Panic-stricken, frozen with horror, theJ
E~<::h()flalyst shrinks back in the face of this zombie he has just
mgnufactured, in the face of this unchangeable rock, the thirty-year-
old woman, as if he found himself face to face with Death itself.
"A woman [of about thirty] ... often frightens [erschreckt] us by her
psychical rigidity [StarrheitJ and ul!cha,l1~ab.ility" ("Femininity,"
pp~ij4:"i35).· . .-
After a woman has reached a certain age, psychoanalysis can do
nothing but avert its gaze.
Psychoanalysis can never touch woman except to make a dead
body of her.
To make a dead body of woman is to try one last time to over-
come her enigmatic and ungraspable character, to fix in a definitive
and immovable position instability and mobility themselves. "The
seductive flash of gold on the belly of the serpent vita" and "Vita
femina. "36 For woman's deathlike rigidity serves to keep feminine
"masculinity" in a state of repression. It makes it possible to put an
end to the perpetual shifting back and forth between masculinity
and femininity which constitutes the whole enigma of "woman. "
That is to say that a woman who has reached maturity, a woman
at thirty, cannot be fully a woman except at the price of death-at
the price of the triumph of "femininity" over masculinity within
her-the triumph, it would seem, of the death instincts over Eros.
This is a solution to the feminine enigma that is at the very least
cheerless, frightening, one that definitively blocks all exists, all paths,
all contact. 37
36Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. W.
Kaufmann and R. Hollingdale (New York, 1968), para. 577, p. 310; and "Die
frohliche Wissenschaft," in Nachgelassene Fragmetlte, Friihjahr 1881 his Sommer
1882, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin, 1973), pt. 5, vol. 2,
sec. 339 (December 22, 1851), p. 298.
37Theword frayage, translated here as "contact," comes from the verb frayer,
which has several meanings: to scrape or rub together (sometimes to the extent
of wearing away); to open up or clear a path; to keep company (with someone).
In addition, Kofman draws here, after Blanchet, on an association between
frayer and effrayer, to frighten. -Translator
[223]
 Freud Investigates
"That is all I had to say to you about femininity"! If, a women,
you are not satisfied with this lecture that signs your death sentence,
you can always console yourselves by reading, for example, the
poets.
Gerard de Nerval, perhaps.
In an appendix to Un Voyage en Orient, Nerval recalls the "ori-
ental" interpretation of the creation of Adam and Eve. 38 God began
by creating races made "of a lofty, subtle, and luminous matter,"
the Dives, the Djinns, the Afrites, and the Peris, and he gave them
the earth. Then God created a new race more intimately bound to
the earth and better able to bring about the difficult marriage between
nature and Spirit. So he created Adam out of earth and lime, and
gave him Lilith, from the race of the Dives, as his companion. Lilith
was later unfaithful, and had her head cut off. At the beginning,
then, there is said to have been a radical difference between man
and woman, who are of different races; the woman, who belongs
to the subtler and more spiritual species, is by that very token a
danger to man, an all too terrestrial creature; she seduces him, de-
ceives him, leads him astray from his proper path (that of civiliza-
tion). "Lilith, woman eternally condemned of the Arab tradition
and who is used by the demon to seduce all the great men and make
them miss their mark. "39 In a second period, God understood that
he had been wrong to associate two different natures-and to the
detriment of the male! He therefore resolves this time to draw the
woman from man's very substance, to create a woman in the very
image of man, conceived of him so that she can no longer be un-
faithful to him, so that she cannot help conforming to his desires,
turn from criminal into accomplice, that is, into hysteric: the woman-
criminal has had her head cut off. God decides to take woman from
Adam's rib.
Now comes a "rather amusing" episode. While God is busy
binding up the man's wound (from the very beginning woman is
a wound for man, who empties himself of a part of his substance
for her), a monkey picks up the rib and runs away. An angel sent
38Gerard de Nerval, Oeuvres, ed. Albert Beguin and Jean Richer, vol. 2
(Paris, 1961), pp. 687-688.
"Nerval to Jules Janin, December 27, 185 I, in Oeuvres, vol. I (1960), p.
101 5.
Psychoanalysis: The Child Becomes a Woman
to chase him manages to grab him by the tail. "That was all he was
able to take back to his master." God, compelled to make the best
of a bad situation, "and giving in perhaps without thinking to the
vanity of an artist, transformed the monkey's tail into a creature
who was beautiful on the outside, but inside full of malice and
perversity." (This is the explanation for the fact that despite man's
desire to overcome sexual difference by reducing woman to a part
of himself, woman nevertheless remains "irreducible," diabolical.
She is beautiful in appearance only, human in appearance only; she
conceals malice and perversity-that is, her animality-within her-
self. Her beauty is a mask that makes man forget that woman is
closer to the monkey than he is. Woman is thus the opposite of the
silenus to which Alcibiades compares Socrates, ugly on the outside,
but inside filled with a divine substance. t J In order to understand
this legend, it is necessary to
refer back to the first struggles of monotheistic religions that
proclaimed woman's fallen nature out of hatred for Syrian
polytheism, in which the feminine principle dominated under
the name of Astarte, Derceto, or Mylitta. The earliest source
of evil and sin was thought to go back beyond Eve, back to
those who refused to conceive of an eternally solitary creator
God: they spoke of a crime committed by the ancient divine
spouse, a crime so great that the universe trembled; all angels
and terrestrial creatures were forbidden ever to pronounce her
name. The solemn obscurities of primitive cosmogonies con-
tain nothing so terrible as this rage of the Eternal, annihilating
even the memory of the mother of the world.
The name of woman thou shalt never take in vain ....
"Plato, Symposium, 215a-b, 216d.