February 02, 2009
If Freud were a woman:
I've just found this clever short essay that parodies Freud by imagining that he was a woman.
It discusses the work of Phyllis Freud, rather than the better known Sigmund, who puts a female perspective in the centre of his male-centric theories.
As Phyllis observed...there was “yet another surprising effect of womb envy, or the discovery of the inferiority of the penis to the clitoris, which is undoubtedly the most important of all...that masturbation...is a feminine activity and that the elimination of penile sensuality is a necessary pre-condition for the development of masculinity.”
In this way, Phyllis Freud wisely screened all she heard from her testyrical patients through her understanding, still well accepted to this day, the men are sexually passive, just as they tend to be intellectually and ethically. After all, the libido is intrinsically feminine, or, as she put it with her genius for laywoman’s terms, “man is possessed of a weaker sexual instinct.”
This was also proved by man’s mono-orgasmic nature.
Apparently it's taken from one of the many, many feminist critiques of Freud's work, who famously focused on theories of male psychology because women just seemed too baffling.
Link to 'What if Freud were Phyllis?'
