ABSTRACT
There is probably no area in Freud’s writings more fraught with theoretical and clinical contradictions than his pronouncements concerning feminine psychophysiology. The exact nature of the relationship of primitive man and woman is shrouded in conjecture. The risk of false paternity was protected against by the development of the institution of wifely chastity, and gradually woman began to occupy a more and more subordinate role as a sexual chattel of man. The progressive technological development of society in the coming decades can be expected to have continuing important effects on the relations between the sexes. The implications of the changing patterns extend beyond psychoanalytic theory to psychoanalytic therapy.
