Freud, in 1937, put forward the idea that the repudiation of femininity and the death instinct were factors contributing to the resistance to recovery in psychoanalysis, stimulating much contentious debate. I will illustrate how these ideas have been modified and expanded as both the repudiation of femininity and the death instinct are linked by their envy of the receptive dependence on the good object which lead to a feeling of humiliation and shame in both males and females. When the death instinct is formulated as an anti-life instinct the relationship with envy becomes clearer, the two may indeed turn out to be different aspects of the same thing.

In this article I will use clinical material to try to show how the process of negotiating this receptive attitude by repudiating femininity in favour of phallic omnipotence is enacted with perverse behaviour and violence and how, with the help of analysis, the patient may be able to modify their destructive behaviour.