Phallus: Encyclopedia II - Phallus - In psychoanalysis

Phallus - In psychoanalysis

The symbolic version of the phallus, a phallic symbol is meant to represent male generative powers. According to the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, males possess a penis, but no one can possess the symbolic phallus. In Jacques Lacan's Ecrits: A Selection he includes an essay "The Signification of the Phallus," which articulates the difference between "being" and "having" the phallus. Men are positioned as men insofar as they are seen to have the phallus. Women, not having the phallus, are seen to "be" the phallus, within a heterosexual framework. The symbolic phallus is the concept of being the ultimate man, and having this is compared to having the divine gift of God.

In Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, she explores the Freud and Lacan discussions of the symbolic phallus by pointing out the connection that the phallus maintains to the penis. She writes, "The law requires conformity to its own notion of 'nature' and gains its legitimacy through the binary and asymmetrical naturalization of bodies in which the Phallus, though clearly not identical with the penis, nevertheless deploys the penis as its naturalized instrument and sign" (135). In Bodies that Matter, she further explores the possibilities for the phallus in her discussion of "The Lesbian Phallus." If, as she notes, "Freud enumerates a set of analogies and substitutions that rhetorically affirm the fundamental transferability of that property," that is, the transferability of the phallus from the penis elsewhere, then any number of other things might come to stand in for the phallus (62).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "In psychoanalysis", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki