An empirical investigation of the castration complex in dreams¹

Is Parent‐Offspring Conflict Sex‐Linked? Freudian and Darwinian Models

“…I have not yet found striking and explicit tales of a mother's rivalry with her own daughter, but one could cite numerous tales of stepmothers tormenting or exihng their stepdaughters, and cruel mothers-in-law trymg to kill or harm daughters-in-law Demonic mother-goddesses, ogresses, stepmothers and mothers-in-law are mother-figures specializing m the terrible aspects of mothers toward daughters (Ramanujan, 1983, p 251) Considering the well-known role of mothers-in-law in Indian bride bumings, it seems disingenuous to interpret tales of their mistreatment of their daughters-m-law as merely symbohc More generally, what Ramanujan fails to recognize is that people related by mamage, such as mothers-in-law and stepmothers, have genuine relationship-specific conflicts of interest with their daughters-m-law and stepdaughters, conflicts which greatly surpass those between mothers and daughters Consider step-relationships (Wilson & Daly, 1987) Their essence is that they are formal analogues of genetic links In stable dyadic relationships between unrelated ammals, reciprocity is carefully monitored by both parties, and failures thereof are resented as exploitative (Taylor & McGuire, 1988, Tnvers, 1971, Wilkinson, 1984 Parents, by contrast, willmgly endure a chronic and cumulatmg imbalance m the flow of phenotypic benefits, this is hardly surpnsmg when one considers the Darwmian truism that creatures evolve to expend their very lives enhancing the expected fitness of descendants Parental investment is a valuable resource and parental psyches have evolved to allocate it discnminatively (Daly & Wilson, 1988c) So what of the stepparent'' People enter mto relationships m which they incur some obligation to play parent to someone else's children as part of the bargain of establishing a new mateship, the children enter mto the prospective stepparent's mantal decision as a cost, not a benefit (Becker, Landes, & Michael, 1977, White & Booth, 1985 Pseudoparental obligations are often overtly resented (Ambert, 1986, Messinger, 1976)-even benevolent, affectionate stepparents are unlikely to derive the same emotional rewards from their unreciprocated labors as genetic parents (Duberman, 1975) One consequence is that violence is enormously more frequent in step-relationships than m the corresponding blood relationships , 1988a, Wilson & Daly, 1987, Wilson, Daly, & Weghorst, 1980 Contra Ramanujan and other psychoanalytically onented folklonsts, then, Cinderella stones need hardly be interpreted as symbohc of the malevolence of genetic mothers Like Hall and van de Castle's (1965) dreams of hostile strangers, their exphcit content matches reality more closely than their alleged symbolic content…”

“…Like Hall and van de Castle (1965), Fisher and Greenberg (1977) were encouraged by what they saw as strong empirical support for the concept of castration anxiety But the evidence they reviewed consists entirely of sex differences m the frequency of referrmg or alluding to bodily mjunes (not necessanly to self, nor to the genitalia, nor with anxious affect) Since males more than females specialize in inflicting mjunes, as well as suffenng them more, it is again absurd to treat such phenomena as evidence for father-son conflict Apart from the dubious proposition that boys and girls alike would prefer to have male organs (and that this preference is endemic to human development rather than culturally peculiar) is the quesUon of how small children interpret morphological sex differences Central to Freud's account of psychosexual development is the proposition that toddlers of both sexes develop the theory that girls have been "castrated " The direct testimony of children lends no support to this premise (Goldman & Goldman, 1983, Kreitler & Kreitler, 1966 It, too, seems to be a proposition demanded by Freud's theory rather than a "naturalistic discovery "…”

“…Evolutionary theory provides a thorough and well-confirmed account of the reasons for the vanable magnitude and direction of sex differences in violence and nsk-proneness m different species (Daly & Wilson, 1988a, Darwin, 1871, Tnvers, 1972, and again these reasons have nothing to do with the specific relationship of father and son Hall and van de Castle's (1965) results in support of Oedipal theory are in any case tnvially necessitated by their methodology Exactly symmetncal dreams (e g , "a male dreams that he is a woman" versus "a female dreams that she is a man") were scored as manifestations of "castration anxiety" or "penis envy" according to the sex of the dreamer, and then the sex difference in these scores was treated as a meaningful empincal result Although Eysenck and Wilson (1973) pointed out this fatal flaw, the study has continued to be cited as strong evidence for Freud's theones (Fisher & Greenberg, 1977, Liebert & Spiegler, 1982 Note too that positive or negative affect was not relevant to Hall and van de Castle's sconng, the central constmcts might just as fairly have been labeled "vagina envy" and "penis anxiety "…”

Varieties of Castration Experience: Relevance to Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Psychodynamic Psychotherapy

“…Castration anxiety was represented in many of his dreams by an animal attacking his genitals or by an injury to his foot, which is consistent with Hall and Van de Castle's (1965) criteria that the threat is one of clawing, cutting, biting, or stabbing to a specific part of the body. It is difficult to know whether the preconceptual trauma of the botched circumcision (perhaps preserved as an implicitly encoded memory) contributed to Marvin's body image disturbance; but possibly learning about this neonatal experience in his early teens, and observing the scars on his penis, evoked unconscious fantasies that contributed to his preoccupation with the size of his penis.…”

“…In conceptualizing the psychodynamics and therapy of these patients, I mainly use the term castration metaphorically to refer to a threat to or loss of their sense of masculinity or potency, but occasionally also literally when there are direct threats to the genital organs in a patient's dreams or fantasies. As Hall and Van de Castle (1965) found in an empirical investigation with samples of college students, castration anxiety is often represented in the manifest content of dreams, for example as an attack on or injury to a specific part of the body, or difficulty using the penis or a phallic-2. Names and details have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.…”