Clitoris

The Seba library treats Clitoris in 9 passages, across 7 authors (including Freud, Sigmund, Ferenczi, Sándor, Rank, Otto).

In the library 9 passages

when at last the sexual act is permitted and the clitoris itself becomes excited, it still retains a function: the task, namely, of transmitting the excitation to the adjacent female sexual parts, just as—to use a simile—pine shavings can be kindled in order to set a log of harder wood on fire.

Freud’s canonical formulation reduces the clitoris to a transitional ignition mechanism whose proper developmental fate is to yield excitatory primacy to the vagina.

Freud, Sigmund, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905thesis

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Fr[eud] thinks that the clitoris develops and functions earlier than the vagina, that is, girls are born with the feeling that they have a penis, and only later do they learn to renounce both this and the mother and to accept vaginal and uterine femininity.

Ferenczi critically summarizes Freud’s castration theory of femininity as resting on an androphile assumption that makes clitoral experience a pseudo-phallic stage to be overcome.

Ferenczi, Sándor, The Clinical Diary of Sándor Ferenczi, 1932thesis

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The clitoris in the girl, moreover, is in every way equivalent during childhood to the penis; it is a region of

Freud asserts the functional equivalence of clitoris and penis in childhood, anchoring the developmental narrative of femininity in a phallic starting-point.

Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917thesis

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By means of the clitoris libido, experienced so intensely in masturbation, the woman is able—often only too able—to identify herself with the penis or the man and so indirectly to approach the return into the womb.

Rank reframes clitoral libido as the vehicle through which the woman unconsciously identifies with the penis and symbolically approaches the prenatal state.

Rank, Otto, The Trauma of Birth, 1924thesis

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if during the phallic phase she attempts to get pleasure like a boy by the manual stimulation of her genitals, it often happens that she fails to obtain sufficient gratification and extends her judgement of inferiority from her stunted penis to her whole self.

Hillman cites Freud’s late formulation to demonstrate how the phallocentric anatomy-as-destiny argument condemns the clitoris as a ‘stunted penis’ and thereby grounds an entire theory of female psychic inferiority.

Hillman, James, The Myth of Analysis: Three Essays in Archetypal Psychology, 1972supporting

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There is a need to link the clitoris-insect drawing with the ancient skull, repaired in silver. We felt this was a self symbol; her core, stripped of outer covering—coverings which had been damaged in some way (? in infancy) and had been repaired (? by analysis).

In a post-Jungian clinical vignette, a patient’s spontaneous clitoris-insect image is interpreted as a self-symbol representing the damaged and analytically repaired psychic core.

Samuels, Andrew, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting

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it remains possible that such responses promote sperm extraction and propulsion up the uterine canal and even into the fallopian tubes. Since the human female’s orgasm appears to be largely independent of simple reproductive issues, it may be related to more complex social ones such as bonding.

From an affective neuroscience perspective, female orgasm — neurophysiologically linked to clitoral stimulation — is recontextualized as potentially serving social bonding rather than strictly reproductive ends.

Panksepp, Jaak, Affective Neuroscience The Foundations of Human and Animal, 1998supporting

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Toke-a-kura (Clitoris-continuously-suffused). The Monster Eel stripped off his soiled loincloth and held it up in the sight of all, when at once a vast billowy surge reared up and roared landward from the sea.

Campbell records a Polynesian mythic personification of the clitoris as a named companion-figure in a cosmogonic sexual contest, illustrating the organ’s presence in archaic symbolic imagination.

Campbell, Joseph, Primitive Mythology (The Masks of God, Volume I), 1959aside

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