FEMINITY by Sigmund Freud

I agree with Freud's premise that we cannoassume that "masculine" means active and "feminine" means passive. He points out tht in the animal kingdom many females have very active and aggressive behavior while males are passive and sometimes are solely devoted to caring for offsping. Freud indicates that the passivity associated with women's feminity comes from social impositions on women's behavior. He explains that in general terms the behavior of young girls and boys are basically the same, "Analysis of children's play has shown our women that the aggressive impulses of little girls leave nothing to be desired in the way of abundance and violence." Freud, "FEMINITY", p.4. Freud labels this early stage of girls' development, in which there are not marked differences in girls' behavior when compared with boys' behavior, the "masculine phase" of the girls' development. So although Freud disagrees with the inference that "masculine" means active and "feminine" means passive he validates this inference by his choice of language in his study.

I strongly disagree with Freud's statement that the development of "femininity" may have its psychological roots in the girls' envy for the boy's penis. He does not present any examples or arguments supporting this statement with regards to studies with children in environments where they carry on their regular daily living experiences. Freud knows the weakness of his report when he declares, "Accordingly we are on within our rights if we study the residues and consequences of this emotional world in retrospect, in people in whom these processes of development had attained a specially clear and even excessive degree of expansion." "FEMINITY", p.6. The subjects of his studies are people undergoing psychoanalysis and this population is obviously going to give skewed results since they are a special population limited by their own traits and circumstances. Based on the "penis envy" theory Freud goes on to make insulting inferences about women such as; "The wish to get the longed-for penis ... may contribute to the motives that drive a mature woman to analysis, and what she may reasonably expect from analysis-a capacity to carry on an intellectual profession- may often be recognized as a sublimated modification of this repressed wish." "FEMINITY", p.9; and "The effect of penis-envy has a share, further, in the physical vanity of women, since they are bound to value their charms more highly as a late compensation for their original sexual inferiority." "FEMINITY", p.13.

I cannot imagine the terrible impact that some of these assumptions may have had on women in need of treatment because of mental health problems at that time, since this may have been a good example of the theories used as the basis to provide such women with diagnosis and medical treatment.

Much of Freud's analysis and inferences come from the framework of the typical nuclear family at the time, mother, father and child. I wonder if he would have been able to develop this theory of femininity with the same conclusions he reached at that time in today's society where the nuclear family and the roles of mother and father are definitely different from those at the time he conducted his analysis.