Ancient Evidence for “Three” as a Female Sexual Symbol

In a famous catalog of sexual symbols contained in his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,1 Freud classified the number three as a male sexual symbol. Later in that same work Freud twice referred to this symbolism in dream analyses. It was apparently not until 1965 that the symbolism was resurrected and treated in some detail by Jules Glenn,2 who again emphasized the masculine significance of three. Finally, in 1967, Moisy Shopper made the first attempt to challenge Freud's view that the number three appeared to be an exclusively masculine sexual symbol.5 Whereas Freud and Glenn based their interpretations largely on the triple configuration of the penis and testicles, Shopper suggested that as a female symbol, “the number three would then refer to the differentiation of a single gestalt, i.e., the cloaca, into the three separate openings (urethra, vagina, rectum), and their respective contents and sphincters.”

In reviewing this problem, I find it significant that Freud often appealed to evidence from antiquity to corroborate his findings in the area of sexual symbolism. Sometimes he did this quite specifically, as when he related a passage from Herodotus to confirm the usage of ovens as a female sexual symbol. On another occasion, which directly concerns us here, he began a paragraph on sexual symbolism with this general observation: “There is scarcely one of the symbolic representations of the male genitals which does not occur in joking, vulgar or poetic usage, especially in the ancient classical dramatists.” Later in this same paragraph he feels obliged to add: “I should like, however, to devote a few words to one symbol, which, as it were, falls outside this class-the number 3.” Freud implies here that there is no classical evidence to guide us on the sexual significance of the number three, and he proceeds to argue that three is an exclusively male symbol. Freud, however, is in error here; indeed, he is twice removed from the facts. There is a significant