ABSTRACT
In Totem and Taboo Freud presented a new version of the myth of original sin: the collective murder of the father of the primeval family. While the pioneers of psychoanalysis behaved like the brother-clan described by Freud in Totem and Taboo – rebelling against the customs and traditions of their Jewish ancestors, including circumcision – the practice of removing the clitoris of the girl remained largely unchallenged in psychoanalysis until very recently, when the girl's concern for the safety of her own genitals began to be addressed under the rubric of "primary genital anxiety". This led to efforts to distinguish the loss of an illusory phallus from the fear of injuring the genitals. Following Freud's ideas on the primacy of the phallus, Ferenczi's point of departure in his theoretical fantasy was that both sexes had originally "developed the male sexual organ" and, further, that this was recapitulated in the embryological development of the individual.
