However, during the phallic stage, when her libido is centered in the genital zone the little girl is likely to discover that while her father and
other males such as brother have penises, she and her mother And other woman do not. She reasons that she must have had penis at one time and
she blames her mother for her apparent castration. This, along her disappointment in her mother, such as those revolving around conflicts in
earlier psychosexual stages, leads to some lost of love for her mother and subsequent increased love for her father. Her love for her father, which is
erotically tinged is couple with envy because he has a penis. Penis envy is, in some case, the counterpart of castration anxiety. However, unlike
castration anxiety, which motivates the little boy to renounce his incestuous desires, penis envy carries with it no threat of retaliation by the
mother, since the ultimate punishment, castration, has no meaning for the girl.
b. The Womb Envy
Relating to the concept of Penis Envy, out of psychoanalysis
theory by Sigmund Freud, there is a theory called Womb envy, a term
coined by Karen Horney, is the neo-Freudian feminist equivalent of penis envy. Horney suggests that it is the unexpressed anxiety felt by men,
naturally envying pregnancy, nursing, and motherhood — of woman’s primary role in creating and sustaining life — that leads them to dominate
women and drive themselves to succeed in order for their names to live on. Horney claims that men experience womb envy more powerfully than
women experience penis envy because men need to disparage women more than women need to disparage men. Horney considers it likely that
Womb envy is a psychosocial tendency, just as penis envy is, rather than a quality inherent in men.
Vagina envy is a psychoanalytic concept that
posits that men are envious of women having vaginas. It has been compared to penis envy in women. Hendrik Ruitenbeek connects vagina
envy to mens desire to be able to give birth or urinate in a different way. He writes that this envy can result in misogyny in neurotic people
Psychoanalyst Harold Tarpley differentiates vagina envy from breast and womb envy, in which men are envious of womens abilities to become
pregnant or physically nurture children.
25
The concept of womb envy also means “…the unconscious projection and inversion of the male gaze and
fears of maternal power.”
26
Not merely that the envious is at the stake of the genital and what it can does in giving birth and urinating in different
way, but beyond that, the analogically and symbolically of womb correlating to the power that the woman posses, in this case, mother. In the
same journal, Silver 2007 also said that: “At a deeper level men’s fears hide the unconscious wish to be a woman and the disturbing feelings of
25
Womb and vagina envy. http:en.wikipedia.orgwikiWomb_and_vagina_envy. Accessed on December, 14, 2009.
26
Catherine B. Silver, “Womb Envy: loss and grief of the Maternal body”. Psychoanalytic review, 94 3, June 2007.
inadequacy and vulnerability that arise in young boys in relation to their powerful mothers.”
27
In this paper, the writer chooses to go along with the term that initiated by Karen Horney and those who agree with her, to put the term of
womb envy and vagina envy in the same level and meaning rather than to treat them differentially.
It is not clear exactly how the feminine Oedipus complex is resolved, although Freud does state that the resolution occurs later in life and that it is never
complete. It is obvious that even though the mother does not hold the threat of castration over her daughter, she would express considerable displeasure over
incestuous relation between her husband and daughter. Presumably, the impracticability of fulfilling her oedipal wish causes the girl to repress her desires
for her father and to identify with her mother defensive identification. Robert 1974 suggest that the exact pattern of Oedipus complex takes for
each individual is a function of his history during the pre phallic stages and of the specific familial circumstances during his phallic stage. Freud considered the
resolution of the Oedipus complex to be crucial since he postulated that all neuroses were due to an incomplete solution.
4. Latency Period
