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Manifestations of the Female Castration Complex. KarlAbraham.
Pleasure in Sleep and Disturbed Capacity for Sleep. M. J. Eisler.
Communications: A Few Don'ts for Beginners, E. M. Cole; A Symbolism of Appendicitis, W. H. B. Stoddart; A Simple Lapsus Linguae, Chas. Daly; The Unconscious Root of Aesthetic Taste, S. Herbert; A Spermatozoa Phantasy of an Epileptic, F. P. Muller.
The Female Castration Complex.-The psychological phenomena which we ascribe to the so-called castration complex of the female are so numerous and multiform that even a detailed description can not do full justice to them. These questions are made still more complicated by their relations to biological and to physiological processes. This present study, the author tells us, does not pretend to cover the entire field. He would limit his discussion to a psychological consideration of clinical material.
Many women, he says, suffer temporarily or continuously during childhood or later from the fact that they were born female. The wish to be male constantly appears in dreams and in neurotic symptoms and appears so often as to warrant the generalization of its universality. This wish often is conscious but not infrequently it remains unperceived. The explanations so frequently given for this desire to be a male are usually rationalizations. Thus the real underlying motives are concealed. The inability to repress with sublimation the feeling of being at a disadvantage with the boy by the poverty of the external genitals therefore gives rise to strong charges of libido which must find some expression. Out of this there arises a typical castration complex in which the female genital is treated as a wound. This wounding is often projected towards the male as its author, hence the frequent impulse to castrate the male.
With the discovery of the male genitals the girl's narcissism is injured. In this period every child holds to its own place and covets what others have. Envy arises and is made up o