ABSTRACT

Sigmund Freud had elaborated his model of psycho-sexual development long before he realised that it was suited more to the development of the boy than to that of the girl. Freud chose the myth of Oedipus to describe masculinity and its pitfalls. It is apparent that the story of Oedipus cannot be used to describe femininity, and even for the boy the Oedipus myth does not tell the whole story. The struggle against femininity continues throughout a man’s life. Freud regarded the ‘repudiation of femininity’ as the ‘bedrock of masculinity’. The chapter argues that Freud’s description of the dissolution of the Oedipus complex possesses a matricidal significance. It shows Freud’s account of the dissolution of the Oedipus complex is a description of a trauma, resulting in persecutory anxiety which has to be split off, denied, repressed, or evacuated. Masculinity and femininity are phantasies of one another and each relies, to a great extent, on the projections of the other.