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As sigmund Freud developed his view of female psychology, he indicated areas where he thought his conclusions were quite trustworthy and others where is insights were either untested or still tentative. A pattern has emerged in the criticism as Freud's view that has developed over six decades: where he felt most secure, criticism has been most vehement, sustained, and consensual; where he felt hypothetical or tentative, there has been lack of consensus and conceptual tangle.
This battle of sexuality theories is much too long and full of fronts for review in one article. What I would like to do is pursue a particular angle, inviting you to follow an exercise in what-might-have-been. Specifically, I will offer a review of the questions that Freud's theoretical revisions after 1920 might have raised had he reconsidered his views on female psychology in light of those revisions. This is only an exercise in historical-biographical reconstruction and theory-construction — I am not writing as a clinician on the basis of clinical experience, but as a historian. I do think, however, that this approach can illuminate current psychoanalytic thinking about female psychology.
The area of Freud's views on female psychology that he assessed as most secure was articulated clearly in his 1905 Three Essays.1 He