ABSTRACT
This chapter explains a particular masculine problem and a particular masculine set of phantasies. the problem of gender has to do with the vicissitudes of the early relation to mother-the phantasies surrounding her and the processes of projection, introjection, internalization, identification that are part of the relation to the primary maternal object. Separation and differentiation from the maternal object through the use of symbolic thinking constitutes the main dynamic of human development. Failure of this process of symbolization plunges the individual into psychosis and the male into persecutory fears about masculinity. Masculinity has the appearance of being defined by something positive-that which the male has and the female lacks. However, emphasising this as Freud did and as Lacan appears to do, is a masculine strategy employed to deny the implications of the converse, that masculinity is defined negatively, as that which is not feminine.
