PENIS ENVY

"The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?'"-From Sigmund Freud: Life and Work by Ernest Jones, 1953

Sigmund Freud’s views on women stirred controversy during his own lifetime and continue to evoke considerable debate today. "Women oppose change, receive passively, and add nothing of their own," he wrote in a 1925 paper entitled "The Psychical Consequences of the Anatomic Distinction Between the Sexes."

Donna Stewart, M.D., a professor and chair of women’s health at the University Health Network, explained, "Freud was a man of his times. He was opposed to the women’s emancipation movement and believed that women’s lives were dominated by their sexual reproductive functions" (Lehmann, p. 9).

Penis Envy:

Penis envy is the female counterpart to Freud’s concept of castration anxiety. In his theory of psychosexual development, Freud suggested that during the phallic stage (around ages 3-5) young girls distance themselves from their mothers and instead devote their affections to their fathers.

According to Freud, this occurs when a girl realizes that she has no penis. "Girls hold their mother responsible for their lack of a penis and do not forgive her for their being thus put at a disadvantage," Freud suggested (1933).

While Freud believed that his discovery of the Oedipal complex and related theories such as castration anxiety and penis envy were his greatest accomplishments, these theories are perhaps his most criticized. Female psychoanalysts such as Karen Horney and other feminist thinkers have described his ideas as distorted and condescending.