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February 27, 1968. THE PHALLIC WOMAN: THE UBIQUITOUS FANTASY IN PERVERSIONS. Robert C. Bak, M.D.
Bak had previously indicated that 'common to all perversions is the dramatized denial of castration' to which he now adds that the denial is acted out through the regressive revival of the fantasy of the maternal or female phallus. This primal fantasy constitutes the psychological core of the bisexual identification; it is reinvested and becomes ubiquitous in perversions. In general, perversions are acted out in various forms through identification with the phallic mother, with related objects, or by a narcissistic split through projection.
The author offered a revision of Freud's early concept that the fetishist maintains two contradictory ideas leading to a 'splitting of the ego'; instead Bak postulates that due to lack of knowledge of the female genital, the child suspends the decision about the mother's lack of a penis, leaving it 'uncertain'. This uncertainty plays a role in perverse fantasies. In support of this hypothesis, Freud noted in 1938 that 'all the various reactions … survive … including contradictory ones, instead of a decision which would have been the outcome later'. In the struggle against the reality of lack of a penis in women, a part of reality is changed into 'uncertainty' by reinvesting the phallic mother fantasy, which leads to uncertainty about sexual identity and a bisexual position. In the dramatized perverse rituals, both partners set out to prove the existence of the female phallus. The uncertain sexual identity interferes with superego development.