ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the analyst's meta-theories in relation to the various theories in circulation concerning the feminine and sexual difference—a logic and models of thought that have a great impact on interpretations and constructions, as well as on transference—countertransference and, consequently, on the entire process of the cure. It focuses on Freud's positions concerning women and their subjacent logic and discusses that they influence contemporary psychoanalysis in that they are either accepted or challenged by subsequent psychoanalytic developments. The chapter also discusses concepts traditionally associated with women: the female enigma, "the dark continent", the foreign, as well as the implications and connotations of the castration complex described in women. Freud's proposals concerning women and the feminine have permeated psychoanalytic thought up to the present, either in consonance or dissonance. In Freud's works, subject—object polarity is operating in relation to sexual difference.
