The Genesis of the Feminine Super-Ego

According to Freud the Oedipus-complex of a boy is wrecked on castration-anxiety. The presupposition here is that a boy seeks to take his father's place, is threatened in consequence with the loss of his penis, and tries to put himself in the place of his mother. The male child, in order to save himself from castration, identifies himself with the authority of the parents, especially with that of the father, and of the incest-prohibition associated with the father's personality. By this identification he builds up his super-ego, which spurs him on and gives him the power to oppose and overcome the Oedipus-wishes.

The question is: What takes the place of castration-anxiety in the case of a girl? Does she possess anything equivalent to this, giving her power in the same degree to form a super-ego? According to Freud, the influences of education and of threatened loss of affection have far more effect in driving a girl to abandon the Oedipus-complex and form a super-ego than on a boy.

Now I believe I can show that it is probable that a girl possesses something which can be regarded as perhaps completely equivalent to a boy's castration-anxiety. I find this equivalent in the infantile femininity of a little girl, and, as compared with a boy's, in the more pronounced masochistic and passive attitude that is contained in it from the outset. This view is based, it is true, on a certain rectification of the conception we have hitherto held, namely, that the original type of sexuality in the female child is masculine.

I have the impression that we have not only emphasised this too exclusively, but have considered is as too primary. I believe rather that already at a very early stage expression is given in a little girl's mind to her feminine nature, and that the mode of this expression corresponds to an unconscious knowledge of the passive part of the female genital apparatus, i.e. of the vagina; further, that the penisenvy indicates a reaction-formation (though also a