Phallic and seminal masculinity: A theoretical and clinical confusion

Abstract

Both inside and outside psychoanalysis, the word, 'seminal', is used to praise a creative contribution to science and culture. Rarely, however, does it refer to male procreativity, to the structures and functions that subserve it or to the anxiety related to a threat to it. This situation becomes evident in the concept of castration anxiety, which typically refers, with Freud, to cutting off the penis and not to extirpating the testicles. This phallic theory has been debated, repudiated and ignored. While there is an alternative literature on non-phallic masculinity, it is scattered and rarely refers to seminal function. Freud's theory meets his requirement for a well-articulated representation of absolute loss as an experience, but this clear structure--and its repudiation--obscure the observation and theory of the internal world of the male. I propose the concepts of 'seminal masculinity' and 'seminal castration', which I ground in Melanie Klein's concept of depressive anxiety. I contrast them with phallic masculinity and phallic castration anxiety, which I ground in her concept of paranoid-schizoid anxiety. I argue that they meet Freud's requirement that castration be a potential experience and that understanding masculinity demands such a basis.

Grow a Pair! Critically Analyzing Masculinity and the Testicles

“…The field has paid so much attention to the phallus/penis that it behooves us to ask what we are not talking about and why? Karl Figlio (2010), working in psychoanalytic thought, observes that “what phallic monism and its repudiation have in common is the marginalization of the seminal function, its psychic reality and the meaning of castration as an attack on them,” and further observes, “seminal function is uniquely masculine and divides the sexes and genders. Its near absence from psychoanalytic literature suggests a tacit agreement to disregard masculinity, despite the attention that recently has been given to it” (Figlio, 2010, pp.…”

The Elusiveness of Masculinity: Primordial Vulnerability, Lack, and The Challenges of Male Development

“…Thus, in the phallacy of binary reasoning (Verhaeghe 2004), with its simple, reductive binary code of castration and phallic logic (Laplanche 2007), a narcissistic world of more or less (Figlio 2010) characterized by have/have not, presence/absence, and yes/no reasoning, a zero-sum game operates in which masculinity requires that femininity be repudiated. This is illustrated in my clinical example that follows, wherein woman signifies less, and man, more.…”

“…This intrapsychic achievement-an ideal, to be sure-signifies the male's partial success in transforming his experience of lack, vulnerability, and deficiency into want and desire by turning from maternally derived satisfaction to representations and the substitution of objects in the symbolic realm. In metapsychological terms, primary processes linked to the purified pleasure ego (Freud 1915) recede, secondary processes founded on the reality 4 This is evident among both heterosexual and homosexual men who yearn not only for the pleasures of the penis-in-vagina and/or penis-in-anus, but also enjoy being penetrated, having the testicles or breasts stimulated, experiencing seminal ejaculation involving both retention and release, feeling pleasure through the use of the mouth, and fantasizing as well as engaging in a variety of sexual practices that are too easily societally pathologized (Figlio 2010;Reis 2009; see also Boehm 1930).…”

“…The seminal issue for most men is how prephallic, preoedipal, primordial vulnerability, phallic narcissism, and omnipotence become integrated into an evolving bodily/mental sense of masculinity. The masculine phallic ego ideal, initially based on the unconscious denial of differentiation and grandiose wish for maintaining an omnipotent, idealized union with his maternal object, sustains an impossible illusion (Figlio 2010). This so-called illusion defends against the narcissistic, mortifyingly shameful, and often fragmenting experiences associated with his primordial vulnerability, which is signified by being small, insufficient, lacking, and in need of the object.…”

Castration and intolerance

“…Figlio pointed to the absence of ideas about generativity in views of masculinity, using the financial crisis as an exemplar of phallic masculinity. The hazard of phallic masculinity, suggested Figlio (2009), is that it sustains an impossible illusion fed by a paranoid–schizoid fantasy of growth without limit and reversals that can always be recouped. Whereas phallic masculinity is intolerant, seeking to either disregard or destroy the object, seminal masculinity is tolerant, “troubled by guilt and the impulse to repair the object, and also to contribute to its fertility.” For Figlio, the financial crisis is a useful exemplar of his position because it was built on fantasies of the possession of the phallus as an illusory object that, because it is easily re‐created, transcends castration.…”