The Flight from Womanhood: The Masculinity-Complex in Women, as Viewed by Men and Women

Abstract

This paper was first read under the title ‘A Woman’s Thoughts on the Masculinity Complex in Women’ at a meeting of the Berlin Society on 31st October 1925. It was published in German and in English in 1926. While appearing to endorse Freud’s mature views on male and female sexuality, described in such places as ‘The Infantile Genital Organization of the Libido’ and ‘Some Psychical Consequences of the Anatomical Differences between the Sexes’, Homey questions here the supremacy of the male point of view in the analytic field of inquiry. She disputes the version of the little girl as a castrated little man and posits a womanly relation to the father as the origin of the castration complex which is resolved through identifying with the masculine position. She introduces the term ‘primary’ penis envy in relation to mere anatomical difference which, in her view, is reinforced by a realization of the privileges of the boy in connection with urethral eroticism, the scopophilic drive, and masturbation. She then distinguishes a secondary formation in which women reject their female functions and take flight from womanhood by seeking refuge in an unconscious desire to be a man. Homey argues that the reason this flight is encountered so frequently in women is that it offers the girl a way of repudiating libidinal wishes and fantasies concerning the father.