title: Clinical practice, theory and their relationship in regard to female sexuality.
abstract: I have tried to show how Freud was led, in unshakeable fidelity to himself, to push to their logical extremes certain of his theoretical positions, bringing him to astonishing conclusions and to the point where he forgot what he himself had seen and heard. He never gave up the scientistic dream of a direct passage from the biological to the psychological. However, psychoanalyst in spite of himself, he discovered the importance of fantasy. Faced by the difference of the sexes, certain women form the fantasy that they are castrated men; but not all women do so. Freud flinched when faced with feminine identification which he could only feel as a masochistic identification to a castrated man.
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005619:Freudian Theory; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D012737:Sex Factors