The author deals with the concept, phallic mother, aiming at theoretical clarification. He compares Freud's contributions to the subject with those of others, chiefly M. Klein. The latter's conceptions of the phallic mother are traceable to Abraham's (1922) paper on the spider as symbol, and to Jones's view that the child's greatest fear is not of castration but being devoured by the mother. Green's clinical examples—chiefly schizophrenics—frequently reveal the fantasy of the phallic mother. In his clinical experience, he finds cases in which castration anxiety predominates; in others, the fear of being devoured.