Tumescences

Thorkild Vanggaard. Phallos, A Symbol and Its History in the Male World:

New York: International Universitites Press, 1975.

IN PRELITERATE CULTURES, human beings preoccupied with the marginal existence of the group celebrate reproductive activity and fertility in direct, symbolic fashion. In such cultures, phallic worship, the religious transformation of the reproductive state of the penis, is an overt manifestation of this crucial social concern. The phallus in this extension of meaning becomes a symbol not only for sexual excitement, but also for potency, in a sense implying successful competition for sexual partners. It is a relatively direct transformation of the territorial implications of the association of property and of access to females found again and again in modern ethological studies as associated conditions. Thus in the artifact, the phallus, there are the conjoint implications of potency in the sexual and in the aggressive senses.

The modern transformation in the significance of the phallus found in the complex literate civilizations, in which psychoanalysis has flourished, is well shown in two definitions of the term "ithyphallic, " sometimes found in museum descriptions. The prefix ithy- means "erect, " and the root phallos means "penis", so that ithyphallic is in modern context a tautology. The first definition given has to do with the religious symbolic images used in Bacchic rites. The second definition, dating from 1864, toward the middle of the Victorian era, is "grossly indecent." In between, as Freud points out, there lies the epoch giving rise to his aphorism that "civilization depends upon sexual repression." In concrete terms, cultural repression is shown in the systematic depreciation of the phallus into indecency.

Pursuing the meaning of this symbol in many different contexts, the Danish psychoanalyst Thorkild Vanggaard has published a fascinating