Female Sexuality and the Role of the Phallus

In a subject as overlaid with misinterpretations and partisan passions as the present one, it seems wise to prevent certain misunderstandings from the beginning. As a sort of prolegomena to the question of female sexuality in psychoanalytic theory, let us reflect briefly on a passage in Jones. Forty-five years ago, in his article “The Early Development of Female Sexuality,” Jones wrote:

Freud has more than once commented on the fact that our knowledge of the early stages in female development is much more obscure and imperfect than that of male development, and Karen Horney has forcibly, though justly, pointed out that this must be connected with the greater tendency to bias that exists on the former subject. It is probable that this tendency to bias is common to the two sexes, and it would be well if every writer on the subject kept this consideration in the foreground of his mind throughout. Better still, it is to be hoped that analytic investigations will gradually throw light on the nature of the prejudice in question and ultimately dispel it. … There is a healthy suspicion growing that men analysts have been led to adopt an unduly phallo-centric view of the problems in question, the importance of the female organs being correspondingly underestimated.14a [Italics mine.]

Few psychoanalysts would be inclined to deny that a proliferous and labyrinthian mythology of masculinity has interfered with their theoretical work and probably even more with their clinical work. No theorist is ever completely free from the existential soil, i.e., from his own sexual, familial, cultural, historical background, out of which his theories develop. In addition, the peculiar nature of the