Penis Envy - Freud's Theory

Freud's Theory

Freud introduced the concept of interest in — and envy of — the penis in his 1908 article "On the Sexual Theories of Children": it was not mentioned in the first edition of Freud's earlier Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex (1905), but a synopsis of the 1908 article was added to the third edition in 1915. In On Narcissism (1914) he described how some women develop a masculine ideal as "a survival of the boyish nature that they themselves once possessed". The term grew in significance as Freud gradually refined his views of sexuality, coming to describe a mental process he believed occurred as one went from the phallic stage to the latency stage (see Psychosexual development).