ABSTRACT
Can the feminine be defined? And can we imagine a precise, univocal definition which would make it possible to grasp the mystery of the ‘dark continent’ to which Freud alluded? Freud’s approach is well known: situate the feminine in the opposition of masculine and feminine and separate out its antecedents in infantile sexual development on the basis of other oppositions: between subject and object at the object stage, between active and passive at the sadistic-anal stage, between masculine or castrated genital organ at the time of infantile genital organization (the stage of phallic sexual monism, when ‘maleness exists, but not femaleness’). And Freud goes on to clarify:
It is not until development has reached its completion at puberty that the sexual polarity coincides with male and female. Maleness combines [the factors of] subject, activity and possession of the penis; femaleness takes over [those of] object and passivity. The vagina is now valued as a place of shelter for the penis; it enters into the heritage of the womb.1
