Freud and the repudiation of the feminine

This paper begins with a discussion of Freud's central ideas on the feminine in his landmark paper, Female Sexuality (1931), written within months after his mother's death. It then traces the evolution of these ideas from the perspective of his own history from childhood to old age. Using some of his letters and clinical papers as reference, one sees that his experience of the feminine in himself, and especially his repudiation of the female components of his own identity, contributed to his belief that such repudiation of the feminine in males was a universal, biologically rooted phenomenon. His personal evolution, enriched by self-analytical insights, is reflected in changes in the nature of his understanding of, and in his ability to accept, his women patients' representations of him as feminine and maternal.