ABSTRACT
According to A. Freud, aggression is the outward expression of the destructive instincts. Theoretically speaking, aggression makes no distinction between the sexes. The opening to women of social activities that used to be reserved for men has led to attenuation, in its social aspects, of the difference between the sexes. Freud’s opinion that what is repudiated in both sexes is femininity may be aptly recalled at the point. After stating that hysteria in women is closely related to the pre-oedipal relationship with the mother, Freud adds, in his article on female sexuality: ‘and further, in this dependence on the mother one have the germs of later paranoia in women’. In the female, the internal location of her genitals may be related to the internal orientation of aggression. The ambiguousness of the notion of reality in psychoanalysis is largely due to the fact that the same word applied to both psychic reality and external reality.
