Freud and Castration

The story of Frank revolves around ideas of castration and its effects on child development and moral development.

Freud is well known for his views on castration. He considers it to be the key to psychosexual development.

He believed that children would naturally develop the idea of castration on viewing their anatomical differences. Boys would thus fear castration and give up their desire for their mothers (the Oedipus complex) and their desire to kill their father to displace him in her affections.

Girls seeing their castrated state although they first desired their mothers blamed them for the lack of a penis and wish to obtain one - penis envy. The girl child desires to have her father and his penis, and to obtain a child, the child being a penis substitute - in Freud's words 'a penis child'.

Freud really seemed to think that girls were castrated.

Some girls will not accept that they are castrated

'A girl may refuse to accept the fact of being castrated, may harden herself in the conviction that she does possess a penis and may subsequently be compelled to behave as though she were a man.' (8)

This is the Masculinity Complex. Freud does not explain this remark - it is left to the reader to interpret.

Fear of castration is the key to the development of Super Ego. Boys fearing castration by the father internalise his edicts to form the Super Ego. Girls, Freud thought therefore have a weaker moral constitution. As they are already castrated they cannot fear it. Freud believed that women have weaker Super Egos, and thus moral development, than men.

One way or another Frank is already castrated and so has not adopted any moral code. She has of course not had a code to identify with. Frank does not follow a moral code. Instead she is driven by ritualised 'magic' thinking. When she eventually discovers that she is infact an intact female she does show some remorse - because the reason she saw for her acts has been taken away.