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While early psychoanalytic theory made the clitoris the predominant focus of theories of female sexuality, current writers have raised challenges about its role and function in female sexuality and sexual development. Yet it is striking how little has been said about the mental representations of the clitoris, insofar as the mental life is the realm with which psychoanalysis deals. It is my purpose in this paper to search for possible representations of the clitoris in dreams, fairy tales, and clinical data from the psychoanalytic situation to see what light, if any, such an exploration may throw on the current questions regarding female sexuality. I also attempt to explore why representations of the clitoris have gone unattended in psychoanalytic writing and in mental life in general.
Freud's (1905, 1931, 1933) theories about the role of the clitoris in female sexuality can be summarized as follows: Before the discovery of the differences between the sexes, the little girl's sexual development is identical to that of the little boy's. The central