ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the script and examines its assumptions and teleologisms, the iceberg of thinking about men and women of which it is the tip. It aims to identify the automatisms and problematic assumptions of the Freudian script, and resolve them into manifestations of a way of thinking about men and women. Gender assignment was recognized as the first and basic organizer of environmental response from birth on, internalized by the child long before genital discrimination occurs. The cognitive certainty about one’s gender and gender role, which are the usual outcome of this consistent environmental handling, are to be distinguished from the subjective evaluation of the desirability or even safety of that role. According to Sigmund Freud, the early experiences of girls and boys are subjectively gender neutral. They are determined by the successive libidinal cathexes of oral, anal, and phallic zones and the polarities of active and passive.
