Are «phallic women» the trend of our time?

Remember the all-powerful Miranda Priestley in The Devil Wears Prada, on whose opinion the fashion world depends and who destroys others without a shadow of a doubt? Remember the monstrous grandmother in Bury Me Behind the Baseboard who tyrannizes her grandson with her suffocating love?

And Elena from the picture of the same name by Andrei Zvyagintsev, literally “absorbing” her men — her husband and son? And Erica’s selfish mother in The Pianist by Michael Haneke? All these women could be called «phallic» by classical psychoanalysts.

Such women have a «phallus», that is, power, power. Their main way of interacting with others is by comparing and competing with men. Freud believed that the reason for this behavior is penis envy, which a woman can get rid of in only two ways: to prove to everyone that she is no worse than men, or to give birth to a child that symbolically replaces the penis.

How does phallicity manifest itself in modern women? We asked this question to two experts: psychoanalyst Svetlana Fedorova and Jungian analyst Lev Khegai. And got two different opinions.

“They perceive passivity as something humiliating”

Svetlana Fedorova, psychoanalyst

“The phallus symbolizes power, omnipotence. Both sexes are tempted to wield this power. But if a man has a penis by nature, then a woman at some point faces the fact of shortage. She may experience discomfort from this and try to compensate for this lack by competing with men.

A phallic woman seeks not only to take away power from a man, but also to castrate him, to deprive him of strength. One can easily imagine a mother of a family who devalues ​​her husband and makes him useless in the eyes of her children — this type of women is very typical of our Russian reality.

They are not necessarily despotic, no. They can be both cunning and flexible. There are «cats» who behave meekly and gently, conquer a man, and then appropriate his phallicity, leaving him with some function, for example, to earn money.

The narcissistic desire to possess male power is not characteristic of all women. Why does it arise? Probably because of the fear of the uncertainty of female nature. Because of the rejection of passivity, which is perceived as something dirty, humiliating.

Usually, this attitude to femininity is conveyed to the girl by her mother. She can say: “you can’t make love to boys”, “there is no love”, “a man is needed in order to bring money.” She may devalue her daughter’s feminine host and emphasize the importance of having power over a man.

Or she raises a girl as a boy and transmits to her a sense of shame for her inertia. Such a girl does not perceive her femininity as something attractive, and her female genital organ as dignity, a source of pleasure and new life. She wants to capture everything masculine and compensate for this lack.

At school, such a girl will compete with others in everything, strive to become the best, smartest, most beautiful. And it is precisely due to the depreciation of others. Defeat is unbearable for her.

Phallic Women vs Narcissistic Women: What’s the Difference?

Phallic women are close to the narcissistic personality type. Both of them constantly feel an anxiety that needs to be drowned out, a fear of an emptiness that needs to be filled.

However, there is a difference between them, which the psychoanalyst Paul-Claude Racamier formulates as follows: the phallic woman acts secretly and behind the scenes, never openly and honestly. She is always manipulating «deputies» who seem to act on her behalf and whom she perceives as tools. This «substitute», for example, may be a sick child who falls ill in order to fulfill the hidden requirement of the mother.

And the narcissist does not hide or hide his essence. He is in plain sight, «consumed by pride in all his ceremonial splendor.» He does not assert his will through «deputies», but asserts himself.

The basis of the behavior of both of them hides the most powerful fear of castration, the fear of losing potency, strength. But if self-satisfied narcissists demonstrate their «phallus» (money, status, power) wherever possible, then phallic personalities, in addition to this, also castrate others.

Every woman who has given birth to a child is tempted to make him her narcissistic continuation, her «phallus». Many people know stories about mothers who did not realize something in their lives and demand that the child fulfill their dream in order to appropriate the result for themselves later: «You are nothing without me, it’s all thanks to me.»

By the way, modern society in every possible way supports and cultivates these qualities — to absorb, to have power, to assert itself, and it is very difficult to refuse this.

What to do for those around you

A man who chooses such a strong, powerful woman as his partner is often attracted to these qualities. He readily assumes a passive position and allows his strength to be taken away.

Usually this type of relationship repeats some previous history, such as a close relationship with a suppressive mother or grandmother. Only when a man realizes that such unequal relationships do not suit him, psychotherapeutic work is possible.

The boy, in order to break out of the symbiotic relationship with his absorbing mother, needs to look for someone else who will break this connection. Ideally, such an object could be a father, who is called upon to create a distance between the son and the mother.

But if the mother has already taken away his “phallus” from the father, this becomes problematic. In this case, someone else can act as the third person — a coach, a teacher, a grandfather, any authoritative man who believes in him and will help to escape from the power of his mother.

The girl has to do more difficult work. It is important for her to develop her femininity, and for this — to accept her mother, no matter how terrible she may be. Often girls say: «I will never be like her.» Only after they can find something attractive in motherly femininity and accept it, they will no longer feel ashamed of their own femininity.

“An active woman competing with men is the norm”

Lev Khegai, Jungian analyst

“To talk about modern women in terms of Freud, in my opinion, is not politically correct. Gender norms today have changed a lot. By the standards of that time, the masculine was clearly understood as active, and the feminine as passive. And in the desire of women to be active, to compete, to play male roles in life, Freud saw a manifestation of penis envy and considered it a neurosis.

We live in an era of victorious feminism, and the image of a successful business woman, an emancipated woman who realizes herself in society on an equal basis with a man, is perceived today as an absolute norm. Therefore, I would describe such women through the archetypes of the goddesses. First of all — Artemis, Hera and Demeter.

Artemis: socially active woman

She is independent and prefers to live alone. She does not seek to start a family, but is passionate about a career, and in traditionally male areas — Artemis, as you know, loves hunting.

Such a woman can feel quite harmonious and not experience internal conflicts. But if it turns out that she needs intimacy, but is not able to create stable full-fledged relationships, if her desire to compete is associated with self-doubt as a woman, with fear of a man, then we can talk about personality disorders.

Hera: Leading Husband and Family

She turns her husband into a child and solves all economic and financial issues herself. This is a very Russian scenario: a typical example of such Hera is Margarita Pavlovna from Mikhail Kozakov’s film Pokrovsky Gates.

It is connected in part with the war and with gender imbalance, but in many ways it is a feature of the Slavic culture as a whole, which, unlike the patriarchal Germanic culture, has always been matriarchal.

Another thing is that in the old days, the husband and wife still shared functions: the man was the financial head, the woman was in charge of family relationships, the emotional sphere. He was the head, she was the neck.

Today these roles are reversed. The desire of a woman for equal participation in all the affairs of a couple has become the norm today. In such a situation, the rivalry of partners in marriage will be natural.

The clash of different points of view and the search for a compromise develops relationships. However, Hera easily develops a desire to dominate, which makes her jealous and controlling, perceiving her partner as property, as part of herself, or as a function or thing. If the husband is not as strong as Zeus, he is “castrated” in such a relationship, for example, he can become an alcoholic or impotent.

Demeter: An overprotective mother

She is hyper-protective. She believes that she must sacrifice her life for the sake of children, forgets about herself and interferes with the development of the child, making him infantile. She does not want to part with the motherly role, even when the children grow up, and actively interferes in their lives.

We can talk about violations when the parental instinct of the mother harms both the growing up of the child and her personal life. A good Demeter allows the child to separate from her in time and painlessly.

By the way, due to the society’s attitude to the autonomous existence of parents and children, the new norm of good parents is considered to be such parents who are not remembered, they simply know about their love.