The Castration Complex Revisited

Castration, castration anxiety, and the castration complex were once core, fundamental concepts in psychoanalysis. Have they remained so over the years? What is their current place in analytic theory and practice? From the inception of psychoanalysis, the concept of castration has been intimately connected to Freud’s earliest formulations concerning infantile sexuality: e.g., the sexual curiosity and wishes of children, phantasies concerning the anatomical sex difference, the primal scene and how babies are made, etc. In relation to the Oedipus complex, which Freud thought was the universal nuclear complex of child development and held a formative place in the structuring and development of the psyche, castration fears (fears of the father) in the boy were thought to bring the Oedipal phase to its end, solidifying the internalization of the super ego and ushering in a period of latency. In the girl, recognition of the anatomical sex difference (castration) was believed to initiate the Oedipal period. The melancholic acceptance that she would never obtain the much sought after phallus was thought to conclude a period of mourning, sublimation, and displacement that eventually resulted in a wish for a male partner and a baby (each in its own way a symbol of and heir to the father’s penis).

But that was then, this is now. As reflected in the articles in this issue, there has been an expansion and revision of psychoanalytic thinking brought about by pregenital studies, object relations, feminism, self psychology, queer theory, relational perspectives, attachment theory and many other contemporary additions, trends, and emendations. What then, is one to make of the current status of castration anxiety and the castration complex in the contemporary analytic scene? Given, for example, the diminution—and even abandonment—of the role of drives in the theorizing of many American psychoanalysts, do these concepts still occupy a central role in analytic thinking and practice?

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