Castration anxiety


Castration anxiety is the fear of emasculation in both the literal and metaphorical sense. Castration anxiety is an overwhelming fear of damage to, or loss of, the penis—one of Sigmund Freud's earliest psychoanalytic theories. Although Freud regarded castration anxiety as a universal human experience, few empirical studies have been conducted on the topic. The theory is that a child has a fear of damage being done to their genitalia by the parent of the same sex as punishment for sexual feelings toward the parent of the opposite sex. It has been theorized that castration anxiety begins between the ages of 3 and 5, otherwise known as the phallic stage of development according to Freud. Although typically associated with males, castration anxiety is theorized to be experienced in differing ways for both the male and female sexes.

Literal

Castration anxiety is the conscious or unconscious fear of losing all or part of the sex organs, or the function of such. In the literal sense, castration anxiety refers to the fear of having one's genitalia disfigured or removed to punish sexual desires of a child.
In Freudian psychoanalysis, castration anxiety refers to an unconscious fear of penile loss originating during the phallic stage of psychosexual development and lasting a lifetime. According to Freud, when the infantile male becomes aware of differences between male and female genitalia he assumes that the female's penis has been removed and becomes anxious that his penis will be cut off by his rival, the father figure, as punishment for desiring the mother figure.
In 19th-century Europe, it was not unheard of for parents to threaten their misbehaving sons with castration or otherwise threaten their genitals. This theme is explored in the story Tupik by French writer Michel Tournier in his collection of stories entitled Le Coq de Bruyère and is a phenomenon Freud documents several times. In this same period, Dr. Kellogg and others in America and English-speaking countries offered to Victorian parents circumcision and in grave instances, castration of their boys and girls as a terminal cure and punishment for a wide variety of perceived misbehaviours, becoming very popular over time.

Metaphorical

Castration anxiety can also refer to being castrated symbolically. In the metaphorical sense, castration anxiety refers to the idea of feeling or being insignificant; there is a need to keep one's self from being dominated; whether it be socially or in a relationship.
Symbolic castration anxiety refers to the fear of being degraded, dominated or made insignificant, usually an irrational fear where the person will go to extreme lengths to save their pride and/or perceives trivial things as being degrading making their anxiety restrictive and sometimes damaging.
This can also tie in with literal castration anxiety in fearing the loss of virility or sexual dominance.

Relation to power and control

According to Freudian psychoanalysis, castration anxiety can be completely overwhelming to the individual, and can often breach other aspects of their lives. A link has been found between castration anxiety and fear of death. Although differing degrees of anxiety are common, young men who felt the most threatened in their youth tended to show chronic anxiety. Because the consequences are extreme, the fear can evolve from potential disfigurement to life-threatening situations. Essentially, castration anxiety can lead to a fear of death, and a feeling of loss of control over one's life.
To feel so powerless can be detrimental to an individual's mental health. One of the most concerning problems with all of this is the idea that the individual does not recognize that their sexual desires are the cause of the emotional distress. Because of unconscious thoughts, as theorized in the ideas of psychoanalysis, the anxiety is brought to the surface where it is experienced symbolically. This will lead to the fear associated with bodily injury in castration anxiety, which can then lead to the fear of dying or being killed.

Counterpart in females

It is implied in Freudian psychology that both girls and boys pass through the same developmental stages: oral, anal, and phallic stages. Freud, however, believed that the results may be different because the anatomy of the different sexes is different.
The counterpart of castration anxiety for females is penis envy. Penis envy, and the concept of such, was first introduced by Freud in an article published in 1908 titled "On the Sexual Theories of Children". The idea was presumed that females/girls envied those with a penis because theirs was taken from them—essentially they were already "castrated". Freud entertained that the envy they experienced was their unconscious wish to be like a boy and to have a penis.
Penis envy, in Freudian psychology, refers to the reaction of the female/young girl during development when she realizes that she does not possess a penis. According to Freud, this was a major development in the identity of the girl. The contemporary culture assumes that penis envy is the woman wishing they were in fact a man. This is unrelated to the notion of "small penis syndrome" which is the assumption by the man that his penis is too small. According to Freud's beliefs, girls developed a weaker superego, which he considered a consequence of penis envy.
Among his many suggestions, Freud believed that during the phallic stage, young girls distance themselves from their mothers and instead envy their fathers and show this envy by showing love and affection towards their fathers. According to Cohler and Galatzer, Freud believed that all of the concepts related to penis envy were among his greatest accomplishments. However, these are also his most criticized theories as well—most famously by Karen Horney.

Empirical testing

Sarnoff et al. surmised that men differ in their degree of castration anxiety through the castration threat they experienced in childhood. Therefore, these men may be expected to respond in different ways to different degrees of castration anxiety that they experience from the same sexually arousing stimulus. The experimenters aimed to demonstrate that in the absence of a particular stimulus, men who were severely threatened with castration, as children, might experience long-lasting anxiety. The researchers claimed that this anxiety is from the repressed desires for sexual contact with women. It was thought that these desires are trying to reach the men's consciousness. The experimenters deduced that unconscious anxiety of being castrated might come from the fear the consciousness has of bodily injury. The researchers concluded that individuals who are in excellent health and who have never experienced any serious accident or illness may be obsessed by gruesome and relentless fears of dying or of being killed.
In another article related to castration anxiety, Hall et al. investigated whether sex differences would be found in the manifestations of castration anxiety in their subject's dreams. The researchers hypothesized that male dreamers would report more dreams that would express their fear of castration anxiety instead of dreams involving castration wish and penis envy. They further hypothesized that women will have a reversed affect, that is, female dreamers will report more dreams containing fear of castration wish and penis envy than dreams including castration anxiety. The results demonstrated that many more women than men dreamt about babies and weddings and that men had more dreams about castration anxiety than women.