This introduction to papers by Hilary Offman and Silvia Jiminez argues that Freud’s encounter with feminine sexuality at the origins of psychoanalysis was decisive for his theories of sexuality. His ambivalence toward feminine indeterminacy and privileging of an Oedipalized norm are posited as having lasting effects, including acting as a basis for Lacan’s tables of sexuation. Lacan’s work is cast as aiming to resolve this ambivalent sexism by formalizing feminine sexuality outside the logic of castration, beyond phallic signification. The author contends that this has played a key role in psychoanalysis reinstating the centrality of desire and its relation to the feminine.