ABSTRACT
This chapter wants to reflect upon how people's theoretical thinking about the psychology of the sexes — whether people call this maleness and femaleness, masculinity and femininity, the problem of gender, or the problem of sex — has been limited by viewing the problem through the lens of sexual difference. The sexual difference perspective has been determined by the way Freud initially posed the problem. The sexual difference position takes as given that the sexes can only be and also are psychologically defined one in relation to the other, that male only gains meaning in relation to female, masculine in relation to feminine. Both Lacan and post-structuralism presuppose this Freudian psychoanalytic basis even as they move it from the realm of anatomy into the realm of fantasy. A clinical individual employs a number of components in creating her personal gender and sexuality.
