Psychoanalytic Inquiry

A Topical Journal for Mental Health Professionals

ISSN: 0735-1690 (Print) 1940-9133 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hpsi20

Has Castration Anxiety Anything to Do with

Psychoanalysis?

Jani Santamaría

To cite this article: Jani Santamaría (2018) Has Castration Anxiety Anything to Do with
Psychoanalysis?, Psychoanalytic Inquiry, 38:1, 91-105, DOI: 10.1080/07351690.2018.1395646

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2018.1395646

Published online: 19 Jan 2018.

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PSYCHOANALYTIC INQUIRY
2018, VOL. 38, NO. 1, 91–105
https://doi.org/10.1080/07351690.2018.1395646

Has Castration Anxiety Anything to Do with Psychoanalysis?

Jani Santamaría, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT
Following the idea of Green about whether sexuality is related to psycho-
analysis, I begin this article with a question that refers to the title of the
work: “Has castration anxiety anything to do with psychoanalysis?”
Concerned about the lack of bibliographic reference to the concept of
castration anxiety, I make a tour of the notion, taking as its point of
departure and arrival the intellectual itinerary of Freud. I continue with a
brief review of later authors. Interested in rethinking this issue, I wonder
whether castration anxiety is expressed in the same manner in the clinical
practice of today. The question does not tolerate a hasty response, so I
present two clinical vignettes to call attention to castration anxiety as a
central factor in the development and understanding of the clinical prac-
tice. The last section refers to the discussion and concluding reflections.

Much remains to be explored in the matter of castration anxiety. The first step is to rethink the
concept; the second, to open a debate on this issue. The exercise of thinking constitutes an excuse to
investigate and talk freely.
You ought to be like this (like your father). … You may not be like this (like your father)—that is, you may not
do all that he does; some things are his prerogative. [Freud, 1923a]

Oh ! Oh ! Everything has been clarified now !

Oh light, for the last time I will have to see you
I, who has been born to
Someone whom I shouldn´t have been
United with someone I shouldn´t have, killer of someone I shouldn´t have been to. [Oedipus]

There are some concepts in psychoanalysis that have withstood strict definitions or have multiple
meanings. Professionals know that concepts change depending on the school of thought, the
perspectives that posit them, and how they are expressed. The development of psychoanalysis and
diversity of theoretical currents make it impossible to determine a univocal direction for each
concept. Now, it is time to reflect on the concept of castration anxiety, which is a complex issue.
Following the title of the brilliant work of André Green (1995), “Has Sexuality Anything to do
with Psychoanalysis?” I deem it important to reflect on one real problem. In a comprehensive
literature search of no less than fifteen years, I found that there are hardly any references to the
concept of castration anxiety in the psychoanalytic literature, which attests to the lack of interest in
this concept. I agree with Davies (2012) and Balsam (2015) when they stressed the relative neglect or
disregard of studies on castration anxiety in contemporary works.
This work is an invitation to rethink the meaning and importance of castration anxiety in the field
of psychoanalysis. Throughout the work of Freud one detects elements whose assembly constitutes a
theory of castration anxiety.
With the intention to demonstrate that the concept of castration anxiety is a fundamental pillar of
our clinical duty, I present a review of Freud´s intellectual itinerary concerning castration anxiety. I

CONTACT Jani Santamaría, Ph.D. jani10pp20@gmail.com Av San Jeronimo 962, San Jerónimo Lídice, La Magdalena
Contreras., 10200 Ciudad de México, Mexico.
Copyright © Melvin Bornstein, Joseph Lichtenberg, Donald Silver
92 J. SANTAMARÍA

acquaint the reader simply with the necessary information and let the clinical experience be the one
to immerse us in the stormy sea of new ideas.
As background on the subject, consider that, in the letter to Fliess of September 24, 1900, Freud,
already interested in the subject, recommended books about castration (Sorrentini, 2002).
In the Interpretation of Dreams (Freud, 1900), the term castration describes a complex psychic
experience and refers to a symbolic figurative representation. It is represented by the loss of teeth,
cutting of hair, or decapitation; it is also represented through a lack or a loss, as well as a multiplicity
of the phallic element symbolized through the head of Medusa.
This concept of castration officially entered the theory in 1908 with the work Analysis of a Phobia
in a Five-Year-Old Boy (Freud, 1909). The analysis of the child phobia of Little Hans contributed to
relating in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (Freud, 1905), which, according to Freud, “the boy
attributed to everyone including females, the possession of a penis, such as the boy knows from his
own body” (p. 177).
He added that the threat of castration “has a reality effect only at the time of primacy of the
phallus in infantile genital organization.” In the clinical case about Little Hans, he stated: “The effect
of this ‘threat of castration’ is proportionate to the value set upon that organ and is quite
extraordinarily deep and persistent … the horror which is linked with the castration complex. …
The woman’s genitalia, when seen later on, are regarded as a mutilated organ and recall this threat”
(Freud, 1908, p. 217). Here, Freud anticipated the concept of a posteriori and considered that this
fear stemmed from threats made at some point in the life history of the subject. He attributed the
development of the “castration complex by Little Hans to the actual threat of castration” pronounced
by his mother when he was three-and-a-half years old (Freud, 1909, pp. 7–8).
Later, Freud accepted that there could be other reasons based on real experiences in which the
child was afraid of losing an important organ but he always granted to the emerging fear of the
threat of genital castration—or rather phallic—the character of fundamental factor as engine of the
repression of both hostile and loving impulses in the Oedipus complex (Freud, 1926, 1933 [1932]).
Freud also suggested that the fear of castration may have demonstrations related to stages prior to
the phallic stage. An example would be the fear of being eaten by the father caused by oral
regression.
In the Schreber case (Freud, 1911), the amplification produced by delirium, witness to the
psychotic regression and retraction of the libido to the ego, allows better understanding of the
link between the castration complex and what was not yet called Oedipus complex. The idea that the
castration complex is not limited to the anxieties evoked by the cutting of the penis but may concern
less direct sexual aspects of psychism begins to take shape. Hence, the castration complex can be seen
not only in neurosis, but also in psychosis. Remember that one of the main issues of this lawyer was
the desire for castration. The castration complex, therefore, did not lead to any repression or distress.
The patient claimed castration. Thereafter, it is established that the psychosis is rooted in the
Oedipus complex and castration.
Afterward, Freud suggested that the disproportionate terrifying effect that may arouse not only an
explicit threat of castration but also a fantasized sign or hint of it, is due to the phylogenetic memory
of the early days of humanity in which this threat was actually carried out (Freud, 1940 [1938]). It
was in the year of 1913 that, in Totem and Taboo, Freud established a relationship between the
castration complex and the Oedipus complex turning his gaze toward anthropology; he had already
noticed the traces of the castration complex in Greek myths and discovered traces of the castration
complex in the culture. This provided a historical foundation that far exceeded the vicissitudes of
ontogenesis. Freud was convinced that the father of the primal horde actually castrated their children
at the dawn of humanity.
Freud was prompted to propose the idea of phylogenetic schemes by the need to account for the
fundamentally organizational, key position of the castration complex. In addition, the anthropolo-
gical exploration allowed interpreting circumcision as a symbolic castration. This practice of
circumcision was addressed in Moses and Monotheism (Freud, 1937b) as testimony of the actual
 CASTRATION ANXIETY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 93

threat of castration that the father could carry out on his children. According to Teicher (2015),
culture will always try to shape narcissism, subjecting it to dissolve the Oedipus complex under the
pressure of the castration complex.
Freud’s clinical experience should have allowed him to extend the constellation of the castration
complex to various configurations. One of the most amazing was provided by The Wolf Man (Freud,
1914). Here, he showed that the negative Oedipus complex (attachment to the parent of the same sex
and hostility toward the parent of the opposite sex) offers no protection whatsoever from the
castration complex, but in the male connotes a strong fixation on anal eroticism; castration is not
figurative neither by an unconscious ghost repressed nor by the memory of a hallucination of the
severed finger. He finds the castration complex in the Wolf Man and opens the way to understand its
regressive aspect in the anal sadistic way. Thereafter, castration becomes associated with the primal
scene and it becomes more and more interpreted in relation to the Oedipus complex.
Another theoretical characteristic of the concept is the point of impact on narcissism. In his
article “Introduction to Narcissism” (Freud, 1914), Freud proposed castration as an attack on
narcissistic integrity and later, in the article on “The Unconscious” (Freud, 1915), he articulated
the concept of castration with narcissistic and hypochondriacal symptoms.
The influence of the castration complex underwent a new category of defense mechanisms: denial
(Verneinung), disavowal (Verleugnung), exclusion, and foreclosure (Verwerfung). This sets, without
debate, the latest theory of instinctual drives, and the second topical of the psychic apparatus.
Once again, the concept of castration appeared in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego
(Freud, 1921) with the aim of studying the ego and the mechanisms involved in castration. This leads
him to look for connection with the phallic-castrated in “The Sinister” (Freud, 1919), which he
attributed to the mother, stemming from “The Taboo of Virginity” where the action of the castrating
father passes on to the castrating mother and in 1922, Freud wrote “Medusa’s Head,” current
mythological theme where he sets the equivalent: decapitation-castration. Freud took up some
reflections on the subject in his article “On the Conquest of Fire.”
It was sometime between 1923 and 1926 that the castration complex, in the full sense of the term,
reached its broadest fulfillment. The concept is set as body of doctrine and affirmed in the phallic
stage of the Oedipus complex. By this time, an addition is made to the history of Little Hans which
generalizes the scope of the castration complex.
Later on, in The Ego and the Id (Freud, 1923a), Freud addressed the issue of the threat of
castration from the point of view of female identification of the male relative to his father, as if the
analysis of the Wolf Man had imposed its memory on that occasion but, thereafter, the Oedipus
complex would occupy the first place in the theoretical corpus.
Grounded on the contributions of Andreas-Salomé (1916), Stärcke (1921), and Alexander (1922),
Freud (1923b) posed weaning and toilet training as precursors of castration. However, he thought
that these precursors cannot be compared with the anxiety of castration, because genital primacy
takes place only at puberty.
The indiscriminate use of the terms castration complex and castration anxiety deserves some
consideration. The concept of complex in psychoanalysis is ambiguous and apparently restricted only
to refer to the Oedipus complex and to a castration complex, with some isolated references to
paternal, maternal, parental, and fraternal complex, all included in the Oedipus complex.
Apparently, the term complex suffered the vicissitudes of the problematic relationship with Jung;
Freud was afraid that the generalization of the concept of complex could be abused and thought that
this definition would leave in the shadows the vital core of psychoanalytic theory: the theory of
repression.
In the article “Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety” (1926), Freud referred to the concept of
castration anxiety as one more among the anguish of birth, separation from the mother, loss of love
against the superego and death anxiety.
From the introduction of death drive in theory, this concept is not only an abstract, speculative
argument that enters the debate but a reassessment agent of the clinical practice. An example is the
94 J. SANTAMARÍA

transition from castration anxiety to female masochism or moral masochism, which, to Freud,
implied reference to the death drive in the latter case. Another example is the negative therapeutic
reaction which, as professionals know, continues to demand punishment, castration. The modalities
of castration anxiety are found in all psychopathological structures, especially in perversions such as
homosexuality (Leonardo da Vinci, Freud, 1913; Fetishism, Freud, 1927).
To be brief, in the beginning, Freud raised the anatomical sexual difference and the universality of
the penis in every human being as the essential factors that trigger the presence of castration anxiety.
He described some precursors, such as separation anxiety and any threat of loss, where he con-
sidered castration anxiety as the echo through this long series of experiences but maintained the
position that the term should always be reserved for the excitations and effects that relate to the loss
of the penis. Later, he mentioned that the concept may be understood fully only if it is associated
with the fundamental thesis of the nuclear and structuring character of the Oedipus. The concept
intersects with the concepts of narcissism, phylogeny and culture.
Freud reaffirmed the concept of fundamental, central value of the castration complex and the
Oedipus complex as a paternal complex. The three elements of the Oedipal triangle are: the law (the
dead father, who institutes the sacrifice of sexuality), desire (of the lost object), and identification
(both with the father and the mother; Perelberg, 2010; Marucco, 2012).
According to Green (1992), the Oedipus complex constitutes the first basic and symbolic structure,
and includes a network of concepts such as the murder of the father, the creation of an ideal of the ego,
identification, superego, loss, castration, sexualization, and sublimation. (Green, 1992, 2004).
Finally, it is important to mention that Freud believed that the father is crucial as a presence in
the mind of the mother, as the third element that establishes the prohibition of incest in the
relationship with the mother.

Subsequent revisions
Since Freud, castration anxiety has continued to be the subject of reflections. Among the most
representative points of view, Nasio (1988) outlines the constitution of the male castration complex
in four stages. The precondition for the psychic experience of castration is to have the conviction of
the universal possession of the penis. In the first stage, there is a universality of the penis: “everyone
has a penis.” In the second stage, the penis is verbally threatened by the father. The third stage is
characterized by the idea that the penis is threatened by the sight of the naked female body. And in
the fourth stage the mother is castrated—and the boy thinks “I can be castrated like her;” it is here
that castration anxiety emerges. And he proposed that it is toward the final stage that the separation
of the mother occurs and desire is directed towards other women.
Laplanche and Pontalis (1983) considered that it took Freud a long time to attribute to the
castration complex its central place in infantile sexuality for both sexes, and it also took him a long
time to formulate with evidence its articulation with the Oedipus complex and assert fully their
universality. Laplanche and Pontalis (1976) talked about the importance that the child might also
receive the first hint of the father’s genital function, which in the mother’s unconscious is, in any
case, represented by her own Oedipal wish, linked to the penis of her own father. On this basis, it
becomes understandable that the idea of castration is associated so universally, and on so many
levels, with human sexuality (Salonen, 1979).
In Anxiety, the Importunate Companion, author R. Davies (2012) considered the implications of
technically divergent theories about anxiety, which is the reason that he deems important to distinguish
or establish continuity between separation anxiety and castration anxiety. Thus, analysts find that there
are very close relations between the fear of castration and fear of separation. For example, Woolf (1955)
observed that castration anxiety works as a displacement of separation anxiety.
Sachs (1962) presented a case of an 18-month-old boy and reviewed a classic pattern of castration
anxiety expressed through phobic defenses, which lead her to conclude that castration anxiety can
occur long before what it is commonly thought.
 CASTRATION ANXIETY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 95

In the concept of early Oedipus (1928), one finds that M. Klein situated castration anxiety within
a series of traumatic experiences in which an element of loss, oral (weaning) and anal frustrations,
play a part. She mentioned that the displacement of the breast to the penis along with sadism shall
produce castration anxiety and fears of retaliation.
In the same line of research, Starcke (quoted by Laplanche, 1983) was the first to study the
displacement of the breast as a prototype of castration and suggested that the experience of
breastfeeding, and its withdrawal, would be the only experience that may explain the universality
of the castration complex.
There is an author who did a great deal to restore to the concept of castration the importance
given to it by Freud in contemporary psychoanalysis: Jacques Lacan (1955–1958). Lacan integrated
the position of castration into a more comprehensive theory of lack, of incompleteness. This topic
was addressed in depth from different theoretical passages and ghostly configurations.
The problem of castration anxiety in female sexuality is a fundamental aspect that has been
studied by several authors (Alexander, Deutsch, Horney, Jones, Fenichel, and others). It is a complex
problem that deserves a separate chapter, so I do not refer to it in this text.
Throughout this journey, analysts have seen the various evolutionary steps of Freud’s work, which
are testimony to a progression in the development of the concept. The picture of Freud’s work that I
have discussed, aimed to show the importance that Freud posited on castration anxiety. I have
presented, through a chronologic historical exhibition, contributions of this concept in the axis of
metapsychology, development, psychopathology and technology, also recognizing the full extent of
the constant, clinical presence of castration anxiety throughout analytic experience
In 1995, Green wondered whether the role of sexuality in psychoanalysis would continue to be
current in psychoanalysis. I here borrow from such sensible inquiry as the question reemerges today,
one-hundred-and-eleven years later: Has the theory of castration anxiety remains being a pillar in
psychoanalysis? The question does not tolerate a hasty response, so I suggest that people listen to
what the clinical practice has to say.
At this point, I present two clinical vignettes to illustrate how castration anxiety appears today in
clinical psychoanalysis. Antonio´s vignette is limited to the beginning of the experience, and Daniel’s
case includes a detailed presentation of the analytic experience.

Clinical vignette: Antonio

I met Antonio after a car accident that nearly took his life. He was twenty-nine years old and
very depressed because “he had lost a lot of muscle mass.” The accident was so serious that they
had insert nails in his hip and shoulder, but for him, the accident was not as important as
“muscle lost.”
The excessive “virility” of the man in his bodily presentation reminded me at first of the cartoon
of The Hulk. The masculinity that he wished to purport was hypertrophied.
When Antonio came to the office, he was at the peak of a rock where the slightest push, a drop of
water, or an inner weakness would have been enough to throw him into an abyss. These symptoms
were not the whim of one hour; they were ripe fruits, cooked slowly and well seasoned, gently moved
by the wind of fate in which the next wind could cause them to fall from the tree. It could have been
within the next month or tomorrow. The sequela of the psychic fracture multiplied the somatic
trauma.
He shows up in a true body armor, a bodybuilding enthusiast, equipped with an impressive
musculature evident through the way he dressed. He would bring me pictures where he could be
seen in classic bodybuilding positions, with a smooth muscle development emphasized by the oil in
such highly sought after body in that environment. He reminded me of a phrase of Rabindranath
Tagore: “My body is a prison where he whom I confine, cries” (Tagore, 1921).
In four months, he recovered remarkably from the accident and returned to his usual training,
even though the physician suggested that the recovery would take at least one year. Antonio
96 J. SANTAMARÍA

precociously (as he was in life) started a workout routine that consisted of eating sixteen egg whites,
eight chicken breasts, six cans of tuna, only one apple a day, and distilled water.
We committed to working four sessions a week on the couch. During the early years, the
discourse revolved around his physical appearance; he expressed fears of losing his “masculinity”
and sexual power. The following vignette illustrates this.
Antonio: Today I did leg training, I feel fine, and those scars (of the accident) have erased a little more. [He
continues talking about food.] This is my thing, the degree in Economics I studied for my dad, so he can see
that he does not have a fag or idiot son. When I was little, he bothered me all the time; I was skinniest (weakest)
of all my brothers. He always said to me, “Don’t be a fag; hit anyone who gives you a threatening look.” After
eating, I feel like a machine that just got gassed up and every muscle begins to live; you can hardly see my scars.
In the competition they put oil all over my body and I continue taking contraceptives, which make my skin
thinner and highlight more muscles. I have not had to have surgery on my chest [gynecomastia] but two of my
friends have; they were bra size 34C [laughs]. That’s what happens when you take a lot of steroids, but it’s not
going to happen to me because I have everything under control.

I ask him if he is afraid that the “feminine” may get possession of him and he says no; he knows
how to prevent that from happening. He added: “To what extent can we think that physical pain
helps you forget another kind of pain?”
Antonio: Well, I don’t know. When my mom left it was so painful that I wanted to tear my skin, my heart, so I
wouldn’t feel so much. The accident reminded me that I’m alive. Have you seen those animals that are skinned?
That’s how I felt. I wish there were a store where you could get inflated ever time that you feel deflated. Today I
trained 3 hours in the morning and from here, back to the gym. I feel like an ass, like a donkey almost all the
time. I feel inferior to others even though everyone looks at me when I enter a place. I’m not happy. I reach a
certain weight or size and I want more and more. Do you ever ask yourself: “When does this end?”

For many years, Antonio worked on a permanent feeling of being invisible, of being mistreated.
These scars gradually occupied the analytic scene.
With two older brothers, with a difference of one year between them, Antonio remembered
with sadness not being his father’s favorite because he thought his slim build was not attractive
for his father. His mother’s favorite, he had a very symbiotic relationship with her, hence the
imbalance in the narcissistic economy that he suffered when his mother left home to join a
religious group. Antonio, instead of making emotional contact with this painful reality, increased
training sessions and increased the intake of substances to build greater muscle mass. On one
occasion, the insulin that he injected caused him to faint, and this experience was very frighten-
ing. He began to think of the “pharmacy” that he was taking (about twenty pills with each meal)
and so appeared the fear of becoming sterile and unable to become a father that he so desired. He
had a “virtual” girlfriend whom he hardly ever saw and, at the same time, he had relations with
any woman he met; he consumed drugs also to have good sexual performance, but after such
experience emerged a feeling of emptiness and concern that the sexual activity might affect his
training. He used his penis as an instrument of subjugation and power. As in the case of the Rat
Man (Freud, 1919), Antonio confesses to me that he spends a lot of time looking in the mirror to
see the size of his penis, to see if it has not changed; he needs to confirm that steroids haven’t
hurt it (castration anxiety?). He adds that a close friend died due to steroid abuse and this duel,
mobilizes and scares him.
The technical difficulties, from the outset, referred to the predominance of concrete thinking. It
was difficult to get Antonio to transform the skin-ego, a second defensive skin, into a thought-ego.
The choice of subject was complicated; usually he chose women who were engaged, repeating again
and again the childhood scene of Oedipal rivalry that confirmed that his penis was small and that the
rival was better than him.
In Antonio, the concentration of muscle functioned as a displacement of the penis, which was
invested with an intense amount of burdens and where different types of anxieties concurred.
Therefore, the body-penis-muscle turned into a place of overload on which narcissism (self-
esteem) found support and on which the threat of castration fell at the same time.
 CASTRATION ANXIETY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 97

The body personified the phallus through hypertrophy, which provided it the hardness and
erection of the muscle mass. Although castration is symbolic, the penis itself was becoming a
place of privilege and the fear of castration appeared always linked thereto in this manner.
Antonio’s fear of castration was also tightly linked to procreation—to the fear of losing mascu-
linity. Death was also connected with castration. Rangell (1990) pointed out that castration anxiety
radiates to fears of invasion and damage to the body. Violence against the body expressed through
vigorexia;1 it worked as an attempt to construct a function of the skin-ego (Santamaría, 2016).
The task of transforming into a vital man, of recuperating a live body scheme without need of so
many prostheses became the central theme of the analysis. According to Goldberg (2004), the
desiring body is eclipsed and replaced by a fabricated body. Through this defensive maneuver,
Antonio cleaved the libidinal viscosity from the incestuous link.
The transference was complex, the analytical atmosphere was demanding. At times it felt as
though I was listening to (contemplating?) Narcissus. He beheld himself in the mirror/couch and I
felt as I was Echo.
Psychosexual development, through the erogenous zones (skin) favored instinctual circuits. This
kept Antonio trapped in an autoerotic operation (Freud, 1905) whose main companion was the
illusion of being perfect. The artifacts from which he fed (concrete and symbolic) made him feel like
a God with prosthetics. Life narcissism and death narcissism (Green, 2005) rode together. Let us
remember that because he wanted to be like God, the most beautiful angel, Lucifer, was sentenced to
reign in hell forever and ever.

Daniel clinical case

Three years ago, I received a phone call from a young man, the brother of one of my students. I
perceived that he wanted to show that nothing serious was happening to him. We made an
appointment. He told me that he had returned from abroad due to “panic attacks” that he started
having a few months earlier. He suspended his graduate studies, consulted a psychiatrist, and
returned to live with his parents and a sister five years older than him.
Daniel, who was twenty-one years old at the time, told me that he thought that the main problem
in his life was that he was gay and thought that if he “confessed” such a secret, the attacks would
lessen. So, he confessed his sexual preference to his sister, his mother, and a friend. He chose not to
tell his father about it. The discharge of this “confession” brought about the transient release of
anguish, but it was not enough to stabilize the state of disorganization that he felt.
Daniel previously had a face-to-face, psychotherapeutic experience for one year before going
abroad. We agreed to work four sessions a week on the couch. He always shows great interest and
brings abundant material.
I then encountered a sad young man of thoughtful eyes. When his suicidal thoughts prevailed,
Daniel felt that the barrier between his anguish and the world generated frustrations that he was not
able to contain. He had created a world of emotional confusion that interrupted the process that
could achieve the development of late adolescence. He remained in a vicious circle in which the
defenses that protected him from anxiety prevented the libidinal mobility necessary to live, to have
faith.
If it is difficult to face, integrate, and save with elegance the brunt of the changes in this stage of
life for most young people, for this young patient this was not only a challenge but almost an
impossible task, taking into account the problems that he described as fundamental:
“homosexuality.”
He recounts his childhood years painfully, he recalls having suffered “bullying” for being and
acting in an “effeminate” manner. He adds:
1
Vigorexia: term utilized by Pope et al. (1995) to describe people who present an obsession to build large masses of muscle.
98 J. SANTAMARÍA

Perhaps my problems are because I slept with my mother until I was 14 years old. I don’t know why but I did.
Sometimes I went to my bed because my dad asked me to but since I was a kid, I knew I was doing something
wrong, I felt I should not be there but the truth is that I also felt protected and I got used to it so much that I
was afraid to sleep alone. My sister always disagreed with this behavior. I can still feel her reproving gaze.

He recalls a dream that he had when he was four years old in which his mother turned green and
followed him to kill him. He always remembers that dream with a great deal of anguish. From a
young age, Daniel evokes the memory of “a third party” whose intentions are to hurt him.
During the first few years of the analysis, Daniel placed the mother and sister in the role of being
“perfect.” The father was deemed “alcoholic,” useless, and incapable of being an object of identifica-
tion even though, together with these affections, he experienced him as a very powerful figure. He
recalls that when he was thirteen, someone showed him some poisonous herbs, some of which he
kept and thought “if my father does something to me I can put them in his coffee;” he was always
afraid of seeing himself as a serial murderer. The sister had a disease that nearly took her life. This
experience made him feel guilty for having feelings of envy and rivalry, “She was always the one who
made the rules in the house; she said to me, ‘You are a boy, not a girl.’ It was the personification of
the breaking point.” He also idealized the analytic relationship; I was the bearer of the “phallus”: I
knew everything and could read his mind.
Daniel sailed through polarized affective states ranging from omnipotence to disappointment, the
unbearable gravity of the ego kept him in the orbit of the primary process, ruled in his life the
magical desire for troubleshooting and it took a long time to find solid ground (of reality principle).
Among the relevant data, the following are highlighted.
Daniel’s major phobia of the dark and spiders. At age six, he was playing with a stuffed
spider; he hurt his sister and the father stormed out against him to scold; the mother had to
step in and since then, he cannot see spiders, not even in pictures! At nine years of age, they
went on a road trip and dad almost hit a tarantula; he was reading Harry Potter. He says: “The
possibility of going to a world where you are accepted, was the best that could happen to me, I
thought: maybe one day a giant will come and tell me that I am good and special, that was the
best that could happen to me. And suddenly, we stopped because of the damn tarantula and
almost crashed! I hated my father since I was five and wanted to kill him, he broke my
dream!”
It is noteworthy that Daniel defined himself as “gay,” but he had never had a homosexual
experience (or heterosexual). He had oral sex with a stranger at age seventeen and, in the
first year of analysis, he had his first experience with a young man at a party; he does not refer to
it as being unpleasant. He then had an attempt of “courtship” that only lasted a few months.
The emotional experience of “sleeping with mom” worked as a trigger of overflowing
castration anxieties at a level that shaped phobic mental states (darkness, spiders). The
paralysis in emotional growth related him to the constant feeling that, at any time, “thieves
or rapists” would enter the house to hurt him. The Dementors were there, waiting to attack.
These facts, together with dreams that contain penetration where there was a rapist, the raped,
and someone watching, wrapped him during the day and night. It was clear that castration
anxiety was hiding behind the guise of pregenital content (fear of thieves, spiders, darkness,
etc.). Some considerations are sufficient to build an understanding of these difficult-to-handle,
emotional times. Only an inspiration to reflect.
Next, I recount the subsequent sessions of the third year. The first four are consecutive. I
underline the evidence of castration anxiety as architecture in the psychic plane of Daniel’s mental
configuration. I now concentrate on some pieces of the material to draw attention to this area.
As background, I refer to the fact that Daniel began to pay for his analysis with the savings that he
got from a job. He felt very happy to do so. The relationship with a new partner is more stable; he is
sexually active, and for the first time he penetrates this young man. He became unemployed at the
beginning of the year and he expressed fear of going back to being dependent on his parents.
 CASTRATION ANXIETY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 99

First session
He tells me that he had a dream:
I came to analysis and was a house that looked like a hacienda. Your husband came from the kitchen; he was a
Spanish man. You gave me some papers and told me, “Look, see what you think.” I felt very strange,
uncomfortable, as if the barriers were breaking; I woke up anxious. I remembered that dream I had where
your sister was the one who was here, and she was a neurologist, remember? I felt a bit like bookworm, caught
between science.

I respond, “Yes, it seems that now again we are more than two; it took a long time to get your
parents ‘to exit’ the scene and now, again the room begins to fill. Do l have a sister who also
supervises my work?”
He says,
Yes, I don’t know what happened, but the anxiety begins to rise again. You should be happy that I am finally
looking for a job and I have a boyfriend, and I am in charge of my analysis but my mind deceives me.
Sometimes, I’ve wanted to talk to you in the weekend, but I don’t want to interrupt your time with your family,
I’m afraid that you will tell me, “Stay out of my life;” I feel that it would be a transgression to call you outside
my hours.

I interpreted the dreams as attempts to generate new meaning from the perception of an
emotional experience. They worked as a first step of thought.
The pain in Daniel was becoming more intense, he no longer “whispered or tiptoed” in the
atmosphere. The regression penetrated us; it seemed as though H. Hesse in his book Steppenwolf
described better than I the requirement to begin this experience: “You are therefore requested to lay
these spectacles aside and to be so kind as to leave your highly esteemed personality here in the
cloakroom where you will find it again when you wish” (Hesse, 1963).

Second session
Daniel: “I’m so happy, I bought a new bed; everyone in my house had a double bed and I, being ‘the
little guy’ had a single bed, but I bought one myself. I have a queen-size bed. Yesterday, I got angry
with my mother, I told her things about my analysis that I didn’t want to tell her, I’m still involving
her in my analysis! Why do I feel that everything has to go through her?”
I say to him that it seems that it is difficult to keep in the dyad; he responds, “Yes, gee, do I have
to repeat the pattern of including or removing someone? I don’t know why but I’m afraid that she’d
get angry. I don’t know but I’m afraid that she will stop loving me
I ask: “Why would she be angry? Because you’re with another woman?” He asks, astonished:
“What? Am I being unfaithful to her with you?”
I keep silent and say: “You already have a Queen.” He giggles nervously and responds:
“Yesterday, she asked again if I wanted that she paid for my analysis, I said no. It seems as
though the only woman that can exist is she.” I point out that here in the office there is also a
bed—the couch. He cries, “Yes, but I am also getting angry here and I’m afraid of what may
happen if I get angry.” A few days ago I had a dream: I got here and you said to me, ‘As analytic
technique, we have to come up with something different;’ you lied down in the couch and didn’t
move, you hugged me and then got up. I didn’t know what to do, I was blank. All this confused
him a great deal.”
He “confessed” that in the Monday sessions, which are early, he perceives a very nice smell every
time I open the door. “You always smell so good but especially on Mondays, when the smell is fresh
from the shower.”
The mental landscape in which he remained, that of a child/adult with no way out, trapped in the
adhesive and perverse maternal warmth of the bed, was very painful. It was clear that transference
took the spotlight of the analysis. Daniel did not feel that there was a membrane that differentiated
100 J. SANTAMARÍA

the mother of the analyst and seemed to be condemned to a life sentence of remaining in the
maternal bed, impregnated with maternal feelings. The eclipse was unfolding.

Third session
Daniel: “Last night I was thinking that I have no idea why I’m so afraid of getting angry if I have
never hit anyone. I don’t know what happens to me here, I’m still afraid that something bad will
happen, as if something opened and the memories are eating me.”
Right at that time, part of the lights goes out in the office. Daniel is scared. It lasts only a few
minutes; he bursts into tears and says, “When the light was out, my dad wouldn’t let us light candles.
He went to sleep and all that was heard was snoring. You have no idea how much I feared that noise;
I thought it was a monster or something. I think that’s where my fear of the dark comes from.”
All is silent; the crying increases. I suspect that he has gone somewhere else. I say “Where are you
Daniel? Take me there.” He says,
I was almost eight years old and I went on a work trip with my dad; he went down to the lobby for a drink. I
was alone and began to feel very afraid that someone would come in. I fell asleep and dreamed that a wolf man
entered the room and I woke up very distressed. Soon after, my dad came into the room drunk. I never told my
mom; I was afraid that she would be angry with my dad for leaving me alone but was very scared. I always
caused conflict between my parents so I decided to not say anything. …

He adds:
I’m dreaming a lot, now I dreamed that I got really angry in the session and started screaming. You called for
help and your son came. I thought, “Someone had to come in and our analysis was broken.” This is my worst
scenario; you become scared of me. Your son came very quickly, which made me think that you had a button to
push or something in an emergency that made someone come fast. I thought your son would say, “A mad man
could harm my mom.

I told him that it seemed that the dream put his story on stage: “You are the son who separates the
couple screaming.” He says, “Yes, now here was also in the middle of you and your son, and I felt
shame. I am my father in the dream; that’s why I’m afraid to be violent.” I made him see that the
great fear he felt was that he could become his father. Crying, he said yes; “I become the wolf man.” I
associated this to the dream and said, “And you are my son, scared, separating the poor mother of
the wolf man.” He continues:
Yes, that’s why I don’t want to come anymore because I’m becoming what I never wanted to become. I feel energy
and violence in my body, I grab my hands to not get up and choke you but why do I want to do that? I thought
about going to the bathroom to stop my thoughts but better I tell you: Jani, I feel my body explode, the blood runs
inside and I feel it, I cannot breathe, I’m breaking, something bad is going to happen, the worst is yet to come.

I say to him, “Maybe the worst is over; the catastrophe has already passed and you survived. You
managed to leave the landslide that you are reliving now, paying a very high price: Your mind has
separated and it seems that you are now starting to come back to you.”
He sobbed quietly for the last ten minutes. I felt that he was having an experience of mental
digestion.
Each remark put under the microscope the transference experience in light of past experiences
and the early situation, and despite the fears, Daniel did keep the hinge between thinking and/or
desiring, and doing and/or acting.

Fourth session
Daniel begins to cry and says to me,
I do not know what happens to me. I feel terrible; I feel that a secret was kept in my home. The secret was not
my homosexuality; the secret was that I slept with my mother. I hated my dad and my sister was “the
 CASTRATION ANXIETY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 101

policeman” from whom I had to flee. All these things here, plus that damn movie The Danish Girl … I’m
having a really awful time. I had thoughts and desires of being a woman, but the idea didn’t make me feel as
excited as they show in the film. I didn’t want to leave my mom because I felt safe there. The need was before
the gender. The greatest fear was being separated from my mom. The starting point was separation anxiety
then, I saw that even if I wore my sister’s clothes, I didn’t get it. I always masturbated thinking of men. I wanted
to be my sister to keep close to my mom. Then I was afraid that my penis didn’t work; that’s why I don’t
penetrate, because it physically hurts when I do. In the film, Lili completely killed the artist; what if the same
happens to me?

The link between castration anxiety and separation anxiety was interesting. It looks like Daniel
shows that the consequence of castration is the ultimate inability to reunite (fuse) with the mother.
On the other hand, the issue of bisexuality was clearly suggested in the material.
In the following session, he sits down and says, “Today I don’t want the couch. Lying there makes
me feel worse. A friend told me that she was hypnotized and I thought it was hideous. ‘They get into
you and take things,’ I thought.” I asked him if he felt that I penetrate him and take things without
permission; he said yes.
I ask if he feels that I’m performing witchcraft and taking over his thoughts, his sexuality, and
everything. He weeps and says, “Yes, something like that.” He is surprised that I do not get angry
and allow him to be face-to-face. I connect his need to visually confirm that I have not died and
that he hasn’t killed me or driven me crazy. He also wanted to confirm that I was not looking at
him the way that he felt his sister looked at him, and, at the same time, he told me what he
would have liked to tell his mother, “I no longer want to sleep in your bed.” Daniel is very
surprised at what I say and feels afraid that I will also retain him in that bed-couch. He says,
“Yes, it’s like sooner or later they all become my mother; my final destiny is to always feel
trapped”. I don’t understand why but it hurts. Why can’t I stop feeling these violent feelings
towards you”? I respond, “Could we consider that violence is a barrier that you need to lay down
in order to not feel trapped here?”
The point of repetition of trauma was at the heart of the sessions. We worked for several months
and began to notice a shift in the form of anxiety.

Session—Months later
Daniel:
I had a dream; I dreamt that I was with my sister and mother. She said, “Go with the cashier and tell her that
you’re a woman;” she gave me an I.D. card and said, “Tell them your name is Laura” [which is the mother’s
name in real life]. The picture was of a transvestite and I approached the cashier and began to speak really gay. I
felt quite anxious.
Yesterday, my mom was calling the bank. She is not the cardholder; my dad is. They she was asked to provide
information and handed me the phone saying, “Tell them you’re my husband.” They started asking questions; I
gave them a wrong answer and I started to feel afraid because I thought I would be put in jail for fraud, for
pretending to be who I’m not. My mom was laughing her head off, but I was scared. In the dream then comes a
scene where we were running, avoiding being shot at; I crossed the street running. I felt like an impostor: Being
gay is being an impostor; being a husband is being an impostor.

He remains silent for a moment and then adds:

Something has happened. I don’t think I ever saw the scene as clearly as I do now. What I was doing in the
dream is the story of my life: I, taking my father’s place and then I have to run for my life because he wants to
shoot me. How logical, isn’t it? It happened with Luis [the boyfriend]. I was afraid at night;, I was dreaming
something about him defending me from the devil only this time I woke up and started writing.

I say, “You resorted to a third party; writing.” He laughs, and with an air of well-being he answers,
“Yes, I had to put it in writing to understand what was happening to me, and I repeated to myself,
‘Patterns are not repeated; they stop; intimacy does not kill anyone.’ This time, I was able stop the
demon.”
102 J. SANTAMARÍA

In the next session, he recalls that when he started to pay for his own analysis his sister told him,
“Jani is never letting you go,” and he adds: “I think that many things have gotten mixed up this year.
I started paying for my therapy and it makes me feel free but sometimes it makes me feel
persecuted.”
The transformations of the psychic apparatus gave castration anxiety the appearance of social
anxiety, which is nothing but anguish of the superego. That is where the need for self-
punishment that could be related to sadism is often rooted (figurative, condensed, and displaced
in the sister).
He narrates a dream with Harry Potter: “I said goodbye to a stage in my life, my childhood. I feel
like I’m saying goodbye to Europe; I had to wake up. I’m in another dimension; the Dementors begin
to disappear. I always had the feeling that a person (a man) was always in my house, watching my
every move. I could not be alone in my house and now, I tolerate him more. It was all in my head.”
He continues:
I can’t stop thinking about the fucking Danish Girl: If someone ever doubts the power of film; I will give them
my history. I’m feeling very uncomfortable about being gay. I think I’m homophobic and don’t understand
what homosexuality is. Sex with a man is disgusting, I don’t know if being gay is a defense or a decision. I do
not know, but I’ve never had an erection thinking or seeing a woman. I had the preconception that a man and
woman sleeping together involved sexual matters. I didn’t have it with my mom, but I felt like I had. Now
because of my work, I feel I’m teaming up with dad—I grew up trying to fight with my dad so my mother
would be mine; but lately say to myself, “Your mother is your father’s; as a kid I couldn’t understand that they
are a couple.” I wanted to steal her from him and see my mom as my friend and that cannot be. I would have
had fewer problems if I could have understood this. It is as if there had been no difference with them, I
remember that you used to say that I had them deep in me and I didn’t understand what you meant. I state that
that there is already a door and he says: “Yes, the other day I dreamed that I arrived in an apartment because I
was being chased; then I took out a key and pretended that I lived there; I took a key and opened the door and
to my surprise, the key fit the keyhole and opened the door.

Discussion and final thoughts

Today, we are no longer in the times of phobia of horses, there is no Rat Man, and apparently, the
analysis of the Wolf Man relates virtually to the past century. However, clinical experience with
Antonio and Daniel seems to condense a little the unconscious of the clinical cases described by
Freud, only now the phobia is of spiders, it is the father who becomes a wolf man, and Daniel’s sister
(the Rat man) does not die but becomes ill and Daniel displays what Laplanche (1999) called a
“crime of thought.”
The Devil that Christoph Haizmann associates with God, and which Freud interpreted as a
substitute of the father figure, appears in the demonic neurosis endowed with a good phallus and
female breasts, and re-appears now through Daniel’s The Danish Girl, and Daniel and Antonio’s
vigorexia. And we’re not in the seventeenth century!
The Danish Girl could very well be Schreber’s first cousin; and the homosexuality of Leonardo Da
Vinci, who sleeps with his mother; and anyone for whom sexuality is affected by inhibition, all of
them seem to parade on the stage of castration anxiety, highlighting its essential component: the
oedipal tragedy.
Only one point of contact of the two materials is sufficient to give rise to an interesting sight: the
essence of this experience lies in the fact that both Antonio and Daniel recognized for the first time
—at the price of distress—the anatomical difference between the sexes.
One can see that castration anxiety is neither reduced to a stage in the evolution of infantile
sexuality, nor to a simple chronological time. On the contrary, this experience is constantly renewed
throughout existence.
Milmaniene (1993) stated that when castration anxiety is “excessive” and cannot be processed, it
may lead to different conflict situations. The first situation may be homosexuality, as with Daniel;
and the second conflict situation that he posits is the permanence of an unresolved oedipal situation
 CASTRATION ANXIETY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 103

by which the ability to maintain a consistent and sustained heterosexual relationship is annulled
(pp. 24–25), as in Antonio’s case.
The identity confusion in both cases resorted to the use of the body as an attempt to contain all
kinds of anxieties and fears. The heart, lungs, muscles seemed to disengage from the unity of the
body to become autonomous, hence the character of sinister in which they both lived inside. This led
them to remain in a narcissistic version of being great: a large erect penis-muscle (Antonio), where
the penis itself is powerless (Daniel).
Violence (through action, and/or through mistreatment of the muscle) appeared to be the psychic
tissue on which they risked becoming fractured in more than one direction; hence, the piece of
castration anxiety came to fill and mask infinite fears, such as: fear of death, of loss of affection
(helplessness), of castration (impotence), of submission (to be used), of loneliness (exclusion), of
depressive and paranoid anxiety, of loss and attack.
It is understood then that violence was an attempt to locate a wall on the road and thus, it created
the illusion of separation. The violence in both of them was a way to fight against the wish of their
mothers, in a system where there was no father experience sufficiently strong to counteract the pull
toward symbiosis and fusion.
The emotional experience sums up castration anxiety in different ways. Analysis bears witness to
the struggle to build a father function that may lead to a law. Daniel lived in a world of projective
identifications where he experienced himself at the mercy of the wishes of a mother/father who could
seduce and/or attack him and he could become Hulk/Wolf Man. Antonio, like Daniel, felt that there
was not even a thin delineation of a place for a father to create a cut in a loving way. Thus, violence
represented a defense against eroticism; at the same time, it burst in what Aulagnier (1975) called
“primary violence.”
In the case of Daniel, the analysis of homosexuality poses particular problems at the theoretical,
clinical, and technical levels. According to Botella (1995), homosexuality relates more to a variant of
narcissism than to a sexual deviation or object choice. So we understand that homosexuality worked
as a remedy for the failure of the narcissistic investment.
In both cases, the sexual practice had a defensive character (sometimes maniacal) before castra-
tion, separation, paranoia, and confounding anxieties. In this sense, Meltzer (1964) wrote: “It is very
important that the analyst avoids being dragged to become a mentor, mediator or judge in the
external relations of the patient. In no area is this pressure as severe as in regard to sexual life” (pp.
116–118).
The gathering of the split-off parts is a difficult and painful process. The repudiation of
femininity, “biological bedrock” that Freud developed in Analysis Terminable and Interminable
(1937a, pp. 114–117) may impose, as he points out, a limit on the continuation of the analysis.
Simultaneous to this difficulty, Stoller’s touchstone (1975) appears to remind analysts of the
importance of observing and working through a female phase in the analysis of men. The author
presents homosexuality as a defense to survive against the threat of psychic disintegration.
Another important aspect is raised by Britton (1991, p. 29), who claimed that the depressive
position and the Oedipus are inseparable, “Neither is completed, the two are relived and work in the
development of the individual in each new situation of life.”
The development of the castration complex leads to a new state, a new geography that transcends
rivalries and enters into a plane that is not about having or not having, but the choice is between
what is possible and what is impossible. The process throughout the whole emotional experience will
lead to a state of hope about what is possible. Life recovers the rights and provides an access key to
the door of emotional growth. As Herman Hesse put it: “Not always all that howls, is a wolf; the wolf
also has cracks inside” (Hesse, 1963).
For a long time, only the primary sensations could fill the psychic reality of Antonio and Daniel,
who, enslaved with maternal aromas and pleasant cooing of echo, moved farther and farther away
from reality and its demands. The anxieties were trapped in an eternal repetition.
104 J. SANTAMARÍA

The dream work, as a point of germination for emerging thought and transference, as firm
ground, were able to reach anchors strong enough to shake that repetition. For now, the transference
work has transformed by both Daniel and Antonio in humans in the process of thought construc-
tion. As suggested by H. Levine (Levine and Brown, 2013, p. 314), “We prepare our minds session by
session towards the emergence of an unexpected encounter with mental truth.”
Finally, I believe that, to generate the conditions that enable to dream the undreamable or
interrupted dreams is a task that looks in the window. The analyst participates in dreaming dreams
that the patient is unable to dream for him or herself and this is what makes these experiences, as
Cassorla (2005) called them, “non-dreams-for-two” where, in the words of Bion (1996, p. 67), “The
real dream is felt as promoting life.”
Finally, I reemphasize castration anxiety as a central factor in the development and understanding
of the clinical practice. The cases presented herein revealed, sometimes in slow motion, others
rapidly, the comings and goings of this type of anxiety. For now, we ignore the huge variety of
clinical combinations, the interweaving of primitive anxieties and the dynamic role that this type of
anxiety exerts as psychic motor.
What Freud described as castration complex is an entirely new discovery. It is a psychic structure,
born from the development of infantile sexuality, from the desire that it causes, and from its
consequences on the child’s imagination. Sometimes it is preceded by a threat presented by the
mother or one of her substitutes (nanny, governess) to intimidate the child and encourage him to
renounce the erotic self pleasure. However, although the threat comes from women, the execution of
the cure is attributed to men: the father, the doctor, etc.
The child seeks an explanation for the anatomical difference and solves this inquiry with an
infantile sexual theory. At the time of the Oedipus complex, the threat of castration becomes
psychically effective based on this infantile sexual theory. The threat of castration plays its role of
signal at all times when the temptation to transgress is reborn. The superego, once created, will
become guardian of memories of the threat and agent in its possible reactualization.
As mentioned by Green (1992), “If we consider the core function of displacement, the extensions
of castration anxiety give it a very wide field of action and may be responsible for the genesis of
many symptoms and inhibitions, mainly the order of neurosis and perversion. In other cases,
castration anxiety, although present, is encompassed in other anxieties that cast a shadow over its
role” (p. 37).
Psychoanalysis is facing new challenges in the study of concepts, in the theory, the method, and
the technical approaches. Much remains to be explored in the matter of castration anxiety. The first
step is to rethink the concept; the second, to open a debate on this issue. The exercise of thinking
constitutes an excuse to investigate and talk freely.

Notes on contributor
Jani Santamaría, Ph.D. in Psychology, is Teaching Psychoanalyst of the Mexican Psychoanalytic Association (APM),
Psychoanalyst of Children and Adolescents. Member of the Committee on Children and Adolescents of the
Psychoanalytic Federation of Latin America (FEPAL), and Coordinator of the Training Program – APM.

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