ABSTRACT
The metaphors of the ``dark continent'', ``the riddle'' and ``gender trouble'' introduce anxious, uncertain and productive moments for psychoanalysis. They also carry de®ning points of tension in the relationship between psychoanalysis and feminism. Since the inception of Freud's phallocentric account of psychosexuality, controversy over the question of female sexuality has continued. On the one hand, Freud radically proposes that there is an unstable loose relationship between the libidinal drive and its aim and object. On the other, the unsatisfactory symbolic equation ± active±masculine±male and conversely, passive±feminine±female ± with which Freud ambivalently struggled, has a long representational history in Western thought. This equation generates our ideas about gender (L. Segal, 1997) as well as re¯ects the social and historical dominance of men and the masculine.
