According to Freud during this phase of phallic masturbation the mother decides that this is not a proper way to behave and decides that it should not be allowed to continue. She forbids him from handling his genitals. However her ban has little effect. The mother then threatens to remove the object from him. Freud says that the mother informs the boy that a man, either his father or the doctor will cut his penis off if he does not stop playing with it (Freud, 1940). Even with this explicit threat there is no perceivable difference in the boy’s behaviour unless another condition is fulfilled. For the threat to be taken seriously the boy must see or have seen female genitals. The boy's first reaction to the girl's lack of a penis is to reject this possibility outright and insist that the girl does in fact have a penis. Eventually though he is forced to admit her lack of a penis. Due to his feelings of sexual desire for his mother, the subsequent aggression towards his father and the threat of castration made by his mother the boy equates the girl’s lack of a penis with the fact of her castration. From this he develops what Freud terms castration anxiety (Freud, 1905). This is the fear that his father will castrate him due to his wish to kill his father that arises from his libidinal desire for his mother. This results in him repressing this libidinal desire due to fear of his father and castration. A conflict is created between his narcissistic interest in his penis and his libidinal desire for his mother. This is the castration complex. In most cases the boy’s narcissistic interest wins out and the ego turns away from the Oedipus complex (Freud, 1924). Another result of this is that the boy sees that though he cannot posses his mother, because of the prohibition of the father, he can posses her vicariously by identifying with his father. This identification has the result of indoctrinating the boy into his appropriate sexual role in life. The primary repression of the desire for the mother is what Freud says constitutes the unconscious and it is here that all future inexpressible wishes go. For Freud this process is more than a repression and actually constitutes a destruction of the Oedipus complex (Freud, 1924). It can be argued however that there is a lasting trace of the oedipal conflict in the boy. Freud calls this the superego and it is the fear of the father that creates this new entity. Here the authority of the father is incorporated into the ego and a new psychical agency which contains the strictness of the father’s prohibition against incest and where all future prohibitions on behaviour will be stored is created. It is from this new agency that all new inexpressible wishes and desires will be repressed into the unconscious (Freud, 1924). This is the process of secondary repression. This victory of the Reality principle over the pleasure principle occurs as a direct result of the boy’s negotiation of the Oedipus complex (Freud, 1905). The destruction of the Oedipus complex in boys is brought about by the threat of castration. The boy has now identified with the father and accepted the father’s prohibition about his mother. He has also come to an understanding that he will one day find a woman of his own to fulfil his libidinal desires.
The story with regards to the girl is almost the opposite of that for the boy. For the girl the castration complex prepares the way for the Oedipus complex instead of destroying it. As with boys the phallic phase in girls also results in phallic masturbation. This is phallic as for Freud the clitoris of the girl is comparable to the penis in the boy and therefore masculine (Freud, 1933). In fact Freud argues that:
"So far as the autoerotic and masturbatory manifestations of sexuality are concerned, we might lay it down that the sexuality of little girls is of a wholly masculine character. Indeed, if we were able to give a more definite connotation to the concepts of 'masculine' and 'feminine,' it would even be possible to maintain that libido is invariably and necessarily of a masculine nature, whether it occurs in men or in women, and irrespective of whether its object is a man or a woman." (Freud, 1905, p.141)
The girl eventually recognises that she does not possess a penis and that the penis is the superior counterpart of the clitoris. This initial recognition of the inferiority of the clitoris leads to the girl becoming envious of what the boy has. Freud calls this penis envy.
“They notice the penis of a brother or playmate, strikingly visible and of large proportions, at once recognize it as the superior counterpart of their own small and inconspicuous organ, and from that time forward fall a victim to envy for the penis.” (Freud, 1925, p.335)
The girl is now faced with a decision; she can deny the fact that she has no penis or she can become fixated on the notion that she may some day get a penis. The third or normal option according to Freud is to accept the fact of her castration. The girl having no understanding that her lack of penis has anything to do with the differences between the sexes explains this difference by assuming that at one time she did in fact have a penis but had lost it through castration. As a result we can see that the girl accepts castration as an accomplished fact and thus has no fear of it (Freud, 1924). In accepting this fact though she develops a sense of inferiority to the boy and decides that her lack of a penis must be a punishment. Another result of this feeling of inferiority is that the girl gives up masturbation entirely; the recognition that she lacks a penis leads her to renounce all of her masculine activities (Freud, 1905). Soon the girl recognises the difference between the sexes and realises that her mother lacks penis also. She becomes angry at the mother for not giving her a penis, and also for not having a penis herself. The anger felt by the girl towards her mother results in an undoing of the bond with her mother as the primary libidinal object. The girl takes this libidinal desire for the mother, the same as that of the boy for his mother, and shifts it onto her father, so that the father becomes the libidinal object (Freud, 1905). Freud argues that this acceptance of her inferiority and the fact of her castration are not tolerated by the girl without some attempt at compensation. The girl via a symbolic chain of associations decides that if she can not have a penis then she will have a baby instead. This is another reason why the girl takes her father as her libidinal object, for the purpose of having a child by him. As such her mother, the primary libidinal object, is now solely an object of jealousy and rivalry even though the girl now identifies with the mother in order to possess her father (Freud, 1905). In loosing the mother as her libidinal object the girl attempts to replace it from within. In this way identification takes the place of attachment (Freud, 1940). This identification has the result of indoctrinating the girl into her appropriate sexual role in life.
From this we can see that in girls it is only after accepting the fact of castration that the girl enters into an oedipal relationship, desiring to kill the mother, marry the father and have his baby. As we have seen with the boy, his successful resolution of the Oedipus complex leads to the creation of the unconscious and the superego. With regards to the girl her unconscious is created by repressing her libidinal desire for the mother, not due to fear of castration as in the boy, but because of her anger and aggression towards her mother for not giving her a penis. It is in the creation of the superego in the girl that problems arise (Freud, 1905). There is no fear of castration in the girl and therefore the motive for the setting up of a superego in boys does not exist in girls. For this reason Freud argues that the Oedipus complex in girls is never truly resolved (Freud, 1924). This means that women remain fixated on their desire of the father and that they therefore always remain slightly fixated at the phallic stage. Freud is not very clear on how they resolve this, he says that somehow they learn to become non-incestuous and usually marry men who are like their fathers (Freud, 1933). One explanation offered for this is that the Oedipus complex is gradually given up because the desire for the father and the associated wish for a baby from him are never fulfilled (Freud, 1924). The end result according to Freud is that women never form a strong superego.
Conclusion
For Freud the importance of the Oedipus complex as a developmental stage in childhood can not be overstated. The successful resolution of this complex moves us away from incestuous sexual desire to an exogamous sexual desire; it explains how desires get repressed, how this repression forms the unconscious, how each sex learns to desire someone of the opposite sex, and how the superego gets formed. Therefore it is only after the individual emerges from their Oedipus complex that we see the familiar Freudian topographical model of the mind, containing the ego or conscious, the id or unconscious and the superego.
References
Freud, A., ed. (1986). Sigmund Freud: The essentials of psychoanalysis. Penguin.
Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality, P.F.L., Vol. 7.
Freud, S. (1924). The dissolution of the Oedipus complex, P.F.L., Vol. 7.
Freud, S. (1925). Some psychical consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes, P.F.L., Vol. 7.
Freud, S. (1933a). New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis, P.F.L., Vol. 2.
Freud, S. (1940). An outline of psychoanalysis. Hogarth Press 1979