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The author summarizes the views expressed by Karen Horney in her paper 'Angst vor der Frau' (Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, XVIII, pp. 5–18, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS, Vol. XIII, pp. 348–360). He agrees with the distinction she draws between
castration anxiety and anxiety directly connected with the vagina, but is not satisfied with the description of this latter anxiety as due to a threat to the boy's self-feeling, a dread of being laughed at because his penis is so small. He considers that the little girl's self-feeling is just as much, if not more, threatened in her relation to her father and suggests that the discrepancy in size between the infantile penis and the maternal vagina gives rise to dread of death by sinking, drowning or completely foundering in the mother's body. These fears of death are analogous to the girl's dread of being torn in pieces or burst by the large paternal penis and differ only in the form of death which is feared. He cites two of a patient's dreams (in one of which occurs a revealing modification of the title phrase) which not only render clear, at any rate in this instance, the 'drowning' character of the anxiety, but also shew how closely it is associated with dread of the father, though dread of the mother appears to be more profound than castration anxiety.