Phallic Phase Research Articles

The effects of the age of male early life circumcision on sexual functions later in life

IntroductionAccording to psychoanalytic theory performing circumcision on a boy in phallic phase may aggravate this fear and cause sexual dysfunctions later in life. However this hypothesis is an unverified common-view rather than a scientifically proven conclusion.ObjectivesWe hypothesized that being circumcised during phallic phase is not a risk factor for sexual dysfunction. We also took a peak at how the experience of circumcision is being perceived and its psychological effects. Our secondary hypothesis was, sexual dysfunctions are more frequent among men who had a traumatic circumcision experience.MethodsFor this cross-sectional study, a total of 2768 sexually active, circumcised and voluntary men were recruited from 20 different urology outpatient clinics around Turkey.ResultsThere was no significant difference for PEDT and IIEF scores between participants who were circumcised at different ages (Graph-1,2). When participants were divided into 3 groups according to their circumcision age in accordance with psychoanalytic theory (before, after and during phallic phase) mean IIEF and PEDT scores did not differ. PEDT scores did not differ either by which emotion the participant describe their experience of circumcision or how vividly he remembered it. However participants who remembered their circumcision experience more vividly and had who describe their circumcision experience with fear/anxiety had a higher IIEF score (Graph-3).ConclusionsThe age of circumcision does not affect the risk of PE. This is one of the very few studies that challenges psychoanalytic theory with a scientific method. Remembering the circumcision experience with fear or anxiety did not increase the risk of sexual dysfunctions.

Relire Jean Laplanche : pour une métapsychologie de genre queer

ContextPsychoanalysis has been criticized for fostering an understanding of the human being based on a majoritarian norm while overlooking alternative sex, gender, class, and race experiences. ObjectivesMy goal in this article is to lay the foundations for an inclusive, non-axiological, and non-hegemonic metapsychology, disencumbered of male biopower and heterocentrism. I therefore hope to contribute to restoring the intrinsically subversive nature of psychoanalysis, which was compromised by its institutionalization and historical situatedness. MethodI focus on the gender paradigm by proposing an archaeology of Jean Laplanche's texts from 1973 to 2003. This approach is enhanced by the contributions of feminist studies, queer theory, and contemporary American psychoanalysts informed by the social sciences. ResultsI delineate the primitive acknowledgement of gender difference based on a diversity of anatomical, psychological, and sociocultural features, which I distinguish from the perceptive of sexual difference governed by a binary logic specific to the urges of the phallic phase and marked by the influence of primary caregivers driven by a sexual unconscious and their social inscription. The plurality of gender expressions, as a challenge to contemporary clinical work, is thus understood to result from complex interactions between the following: the enigmatic gender assignments primarily implanted into the child's body ego by a constellation of libidinally invested and socially inserted adults; perceptual genital difference between the sexes; the multitude of messages vertically and horizontally received by the subject in the course of their life; the translation of all these experiences in accordance with the subject's idiosyncratic particularities; and, finally, their perpetual retranslation under the sway of afterwardness with the assistance of socially and culturally situated hermeneutic grids. My epistemological proposal in this kaleidoscopic framework is that of a primary queer sexuality, secondarily transformed into a less inclusive psychic bisexuality through the introjection of the culturally prevalent gender binary. Moreover, I consider the hierarchical relations in regard to identity categories as enigmatic messages “to be translated”, inculcated in the child's psyche by adult bearers of powerful binary norms (masculine/feminine, dominant/submissive, normal/perverse). By means of this intergenerational transmission, gender, sexual, class, and race ideals are likely to perpetuate and thus consolidate the “normative unconscious” formed from the identifications that are refused because of their social non-conformity. Finally, I will show the heuristic importance of the over-inclusive model of enigmatic signifiers, which I propose in this article, by studying a material stemming from various sources: personal clinical practice, novels, films, autobiographical narratives, field investigations. The guiding thread of this heterogeneous corpus is the experience of subjectivities situated in the margins, likely to shed light on the mechanisms that govern the centre. ConclusionsTheoretical constructions are likely to generate effects inside and outside the analytic space due to the performative power of language: hence, the importance for analysts to challenge the ideal of pure neutrality by recognizing the potential infiltration of their theories by their own infantile sexuality as well as institutional, social, and cultural norms. The scope of a metapsychology of gender open to diversity is simultaneously clinical, epistemological, and political.

P-02-20 The Relationship Between Premature Ejaculation and the Timing of the Pre-Adult Circumcision

Circumcision is a common ritual defined both in Muslim and Jewish faith, which predates both religions. Our aim was to investigate the relationship between premature ejaculation (PE) and the age when men has been circumcised before adulthood. There were 3 previous studies which studied the relationship between PE and the timing of the pre-adult circumcision, which had conflicting results. These studies had clustered the subjects according to their timing of the circumcision by using psychoanalytic theory, before, during and after phallic phase. However there is no clear scientific evidence to reason using such categorization. Apart from using this grouping we have decided to also add a comparison of PE between every age subjects were circumcised. 1662 male subjects, who were circumcised before adulthood, have accepted to join our multi-center study and have been asked to fill our 23 question survey, in urology outpatient clinics throughout Turkey. This study is still ongoing. Survey included the premature ejaculation diagnostic tool (PEDT) as well as the age subjects were circumcised.

Freudian theories of homosexual development

Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Jean-Martin Charot, and Havelock Ellis were a few antecedents to Sigmund Freud in identifying, defining, and theorizing the development of homosexuality. However, the majority subscribed to the thought that homosexuality was congenital, albeit unnatural. Havelock Ellis offered some psychological considerations to the condition of homosexuality and was said to have paved the way for more significant developmental explanations that began with Freud. According to Caprio (1954) the congenital theories prior to Freud became “obsolete” (p. 3). Because of the contributions of Freud, psychoanalysts that followed him such as Sandor Rado, Edmund Bergler, Irving Bieber, Lionel Ovesey, and Charles Socarides, to name a few, took on views that homosexuality was developmental in nature. During the phallic phase of development Freud made a pivotal discovery about the oedipal complex. This and other theories of psychosexual development are overviewed. It is important to get an understanding of the basic construct of theory given the rise of deconstruction and reconstruction undertakings.

Electra Complex and the Confusion of Albee’s Martha’s Sexual Identity: A Psychoanalytic Study

According to the Freudian psychoanalytic theory, earlier traumatic experiences highly influence the psychological development of personality. Freud also affirms that the earlier years of childhood development play a crucial role in the formation of personality. He states that all normal infants go through specific stages of psychosexual development that are naturally progressive, namely: oral, anal and phallic stages. Any disruption of or delay in the progress of any of the psychosexual stages or failure to cope with them causes the fixation of the libido at a particular stage. Martha, the central figure in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, suffered from painful emotional experiences during childhood which gave her an unbalanced personality and a fragile ego. She lived a lonely and troubled childhood because she was abandoned and rejected by her father, a matter that has left a deep scar on her psyche. Martha also has a phallic fixation owing to the unresolved sexual conflicts during the phallic phase of the psychosexual development, a matter that negatively influences her personality. Applying Freudian psychanalytic theory, the aim of this study is to investigate the influence of past traumatic experiences of childhood on Martha’s behaviour and her psychological wellbeing. The study also seeks to uncover the impact of the unresolved Electra Complex on the development of Martha’s personality and her sexual maturity.

The Early Oedipal Situation: Developmental, Theoretical, and Clinical Implications

The Oedipus complex is typically thought to begin in the phallic phase, when the child’s relationship to the parents as a couple achieves central prominence. In contrast, the author views the appearance of oedipal conflicts in the phallic phase as the end point of a line of development of triangular relatedness that began in infancy. An aspect of the Kleinian view of the oedipal situation—that awareness of the parents as a couple begins in the preoedipal period—deserves serious consideration. A patient is presented for whom the working through of early oedipal issues in the transference-countertransference permitted recovery from withdrawal into a fantasy world.

The Perversion of Fetishism in Women

This paper attempts to demonstrate that fetishism as defined by Freud in males also exists among women. Freud described fetishism as a defense against castration anxiety arising from the perception of the female genitals. It is suggested that the main difference between male fetishism and female fetishism is that because of developmental factors involving the phallic phase, for women the fetish represents the penis of the father, not of the mother. Clinical material is presented to support these hypotheses.

Impertinent Questions: Irigaray, Sade, Lacan

Luce Irigaray's Speculum (Minuit, 1974) reproduces various texts representative of Western thought and, by simply curving the reproductive mirror, exposes the phallocentric assumptions underlying the entire tradition. The first third of the book is a detailed reflection on Freud-loving, but with a tender resentment that the Father of Psychoanalysis never adequately exposed his desire for his hysterics/daughters. Irigaray resents Freudian theory's refusal to engage the otherness of female sexuality. In Freud's writings woman is either a lesser, castrated man, or woman is mother, necessary ground for phallic reproduction. Irigaray's delineation of Freud's phallocentric exclusion of the real female who is more than a mere complement to the phallic male recalls a moment in Freud's delineation of infantile sexuality. Freud named the last stage of infantile sexuality the phallic phase. In the phallic phase, the partial drives are subordinated to a central genital organization, but only one kind of genital organ comes into account-the male.' Fascinated by children's sexual theories,2 Freud finds that children in the phallic phase hypothesize the anus as phallic receptacle, and attempt to think the familiar anus as the legendary maternal womb. At the same time the real female genitals never seem to be discovered (Freud, op. cit., p. 175, italics mine). As Irigaray reads Freud, Freudian theory appears to be arrested in the phallic phase. The Freud Irigaray reads and resents is Jacques Lacan's version of Freud. Nevertheless, Speculum never mentions the name Jacques Lacan. However the mark of Lacan's influence3 can be seen in a less expected place than the reading of Freud; it appears in Irigaray's reading of (Un a priori paradoxal, Speculum, pp. 253-267). Irigaray bears down on the Critique of Practical Reason, where she finds an interest in pain and suffering as gratifying signs of one's obedience to the Law. Shall we in this way place with [mettrons-nous la avec Sade]? (p. 265), she asks. Kant avec Sade (Kant with Sade) is the title of an article by Lacan on the Critique of Practical Reason which demonstrates the same sort of perversities in as Irigaray finds.

The establishment of core gender identity in normal girls. I. (a) introduction; (b) development of the ego capacity to differentiate

There has been a gradual shift from Freud's point of view that there is no femininity until the phallic phase. Modification of Freud's view on the onset of femininity is furthered by establishing that differences between boys and girls are observable in the preoedipal period and by studying the origin of a girl's sense of femaleness, i.e., her core gender identity. It is not essential whether we call this early development of the girl's sense of her femaleness core gender identity, earliest gender identity,or precursors of gender identity.Several studies confirm it is an essential foundation on which subsequent gender identity is built, Its establishment is normally well under way and sometimes irreversible by age 3 and more firmly secured in the fourth and fifth years. Of the multiple factors-biological (including its expression as instinctual drive), genetic, and experiental-contributing to core gender identity, the ego capacity to differentiate is traced and stressed as a necessary condition. The psychoanalytic and relevant nonpsychoanalytic literature is reviewed. Cognitive functions play a more significant role in core gender identity formation than previously believed and probably are more universally contributory at this early age (before 3) than identification mechańisms, envy of the male genitals, or castration anxiety. Ascription of gender at birth followed by the environmental confirmation impinging on progressively maturating cognitive capacities in the child would then normally be the organizer of gender identity, although definitely not the sole forces molding it.

LESBIAN, GAY, BISEKSUAL DAN TRANSGENDER: TINJAUAN TEORI PSIKOSEKSUAL, PSIKOLOGI ISLAM DAN BIOPSIKOLOGI

The rise of LGBT case in Indonesia, attracted the attention of researchers to see how the view of psychology about LGBT. This study is a literature review research using relevant reference theories and publications in the field of Psychosexual, Islamic Psychology, and Biopsychology. According to the psychosexual perspective, humans are inherently bisexual. A person to be able to express himself as LGBT or heterosexual is when he is in phallic phase, where the point of pleasure is in the genitals. Based on the Islamic psychology, LGBT behavior is a type of ammara personality; dominated by lust 55%, assisted by 30% of mind power, and 15% of qalbu. While based on biopsychological point of view, LGBT behavior is not influenced by hormones but occurs due to changes in brain structure caused by experience and environment called plasticity, where the behavior of a person is able to change the shape of the human brain itself. From the results of the literature review above shows that LGBT is an abnormality of sexual orientation that is influenced by one's experience and environment.

Sex differences in some aspects of smoking behavior.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether there are sex differences in the way men and women open an unopened pack of cigarettes and obtain the first cigarette and to test hypotheses derived from Freudian psychoanalytic theory regarding the phallic phase of psychosexual development, the Oedipal complex or castration anxiety in males, and penis envy in females. Statistical results clearly indicated that men and women differ in the methods they use to open an unopened pack of cigarettes and to obtain the first cigarette. The observed behaviors are consistent with the Freudian hypothesis that castration complex in males and penis envy in females is expressed in everyday living.

6. Europe

Children in Turkey are circumcised most frequently between the ages of five and seven, i.e. close to the time of the phallic phase. CANSEVER studied twelve children with various psychological tests previous to and after the circumcision. She concludes that her findings are highly supportive of the theory that circumcision, performed around the phallic stage, is perceived by the child as an act of aggression and castration.

A STUDY ON THE NATURE OF INSPIRATION. I. SOME SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING THE PHALLIC PHASE.

A STUDY ON THE NATURE OF INSPIRATION. I. SOME SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING THE PHALLIC PHASE.

Distortions of the Phallic Phase

Distortions of the Phallic Phase

Respiratory Incorporation and the Phallic Phase

Respiratory Incorporation and the Phallic Phase

Conflict and Autonomous EGO Development during the Phallic Phase

Conflict and Autonomous EGO Development during the Phallic Phase