Castration
In psychoanalysis, and especially in the teachings of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, castration refers not to an anatomical event but to a symbolic operation that plays a foundational role in the formation of subjectivity, the regulation of desire, and the articulation of sexual difference. While its theoretical articulation varies across Freud and Lacan, castration consistently marks a moment of separation, prohibition, and the loss of an imagined wholeness.
Rather than a threat or trauma imposed from the outside, castration designates a necessary structuring limit: the subject must renounce a fantasy of total satisfaction in order to enter the Symbolic order of language, law, and the Other.
Freud's theory of castration
Castration and sexuality
For Freud, castration is central to the development of sexuality and the resolution of the Oedipus complex. It is not a literal mutilation but a fantasy structured around the perceived absence of the penis in the female and the threat of its loss in the male. Castration marks the point at which the child renounces the incestuous object and enters into the law of kinship and desire.
Freud emphasized that total satisfaction is impossible, and that such impossibility becomes formalized in the castration complex. Through this renunciation, desire is structured and redirected: the subject gives up the primordial object (the mother) and learns to desire along socially sanctioned lines.
Castration complex in the boy and the girl
Freud first uses the term "castration complex" in 1908, describing how the child explains sexual difference by imagining that the mother once had a penis and lost it—a fantasy of prior possession and subsequent loss. The boy, upon seeing the girl's genitals, interprets the absence of a penis as the result of castration and fears the same fate. This fear—castration anxiety—leads to the repression of incestuous desire and identification with the father.
For the girl, the perception of difference engenders penis envy, a sense of loss and injustice, and a subsequent reorientation of desire. Freud maintained that for the girl, the castration complex initiates the Oedipus complex rather than resolving it. Her desire shifts from the mother to the father, whom she takes as the one who possesses the phallus. Eventually, this desire may be displaced toward the baby as a symbolic substitute for the phallus.
Freud proposed three possible outcomes for the girl’s castration complex: repudiation of femininity, masculine identification, or motherhood as compensation. In all cases, castration functions as a structuring limit and a moment of psychic reorganization.
Castration and the law
Castration is the internalization of the Oedipal law—the prohibition of incest and the renunciation of primary satisfaction. The father figure becomes the bearer of this prohibition, installing the super-ego and orienting the subject beyond the familial dyad. Castration thus plays a civilizing role: it introduces loss and mediation as the conditions for subjectivity and culture.
Lacan's rearticulation of castration
From anatomical to symbolic castration
Lacan reinterprets castration as a symbolic operation, moving away from Freud’s anatomical emphasis toward a structural account grounded in language and signification. Castration is no longer about the organ but about the phallus as a signifier of lack and desire. The child’s entry into the Symbolic is mediated by this operation, which separates the subject from the mother and introduces them into the field of the Other.
In Lacan’s famous formula: *“The phallus is the signifier of the lack of the Other.”*[1] Castration is the subject’s submission to this lack.
Frustration, privation, and castration
In Seminar IV (1956–1957), Lacan distinguishes between three modes of lack: frustration, privation, and castration. Each involves a different register (Imaginary, Real, Symbolic), agent, and object:
| Agent | Type of Lack | Object | Register |
|---|---|---|---|
| Symbolic mother | Frustration (Imaginary injury) | Real object (e.g., breast) | Imaginary |
| Imaginary father | Privation (Real hole) | Symbolic object (e.g., phallus) | Real |
| Real father | Castration (Symbolic debt) | Imaginary object (phallus) | Symbolic |
Lacan criticizes analytic traditions that confuse these forms, particularly those that treat castration as merely an emotional reaction or developmental phase. For Lacan, castration is a structural moment tied to the subject’s assumption of the Name-of-the-Father and the symbolic law.
Phallus and symbolic castration
Castration, for Lacan, introduces the phallus as a signifier of desire and lack. It is not the penis but a symbolic function that structures the relation between the subject and the Other. The mother is seen as desiring the phallus, and the child seeks to be or to possess what satisfies this desire.
Through the operation of castration, the phallus becomes a third term that separates mother and child and opens the space of symbolic mediation. The subject is thus de-centered, caught in a field of signifiers that displace and defer satisfaction.
Castration installs the bar in the subject ($) and institutes the lack in the Other (S(A)), anchoring the subject’s position in the signifying chain.
Castration and the sacrifice of jouissance
Beginning in 1958, Lacan expands the meaning of castration to include the subject’s necessary loss of full jouissance. Language imposes a structure that bars access to the Thing (das Ding) and interrupts the direct experience of satisfaction. Castration, in this expanded sense, refers to the price of becoming a speaking being—a renunciation of total jouissance in exchange for entry into the symbolic order.
The subject's use of the signifier separates them from the immediate body of the Other, rendering some forms of enjoyment structurally impossible. This function of castration is not simply prohibitive but productive: it opens the field of desire.
Sexual difference and the phallic function
Lacan’s formulae of sexuation
In his later teaching, particularly from Seminar XX (1972–1973), Lacan formalizes the relationship between castration and sexual difference through the formulae of sexuation. Here, castration is no longer a phenomenon restricted to development but a structural position with respect to the phallic function.
Men are “fully” subject to the phallic function: they are castrated in the sense that their desire is mediated entirely through the phallic signifier. Women, on the other hand, are “not-all” subject to this function: there is a part of feminine jouissance that escapes the phallic measure.
Thus, Lacan reverses Freud’s equation of woman with castration. For Lacan, it is man who is fully subjected to the law of castration, while woman, as “not-all,” has access to a supplementary jouissance beyond the phallus.
Exception and the primal father
The only subject not subjected to castration is the mythical primal father, who has access to all women and does not obey the law. This figure is an exception that confirms the rule: castration is universal, but the rule requires at least one who stands outside it. This exception founds the law and gives it its authority.
Clinical structures and castration
Neurosis: repression of castration
In neurosis, castration is repressed. The neurotic subject struggles with the renunciation of the phallic object and displaces the conflict into symptoms, fantasies, and repetition. The hysteric disavows being the object of the Other's desire, while the obsessional refuses to be subject to the Other’s demand. Both maintain a defensive relation to symbolic castration.
“What the neurotic does not want, and what he strenuously refuses to do right up until the end of his analysis, is to sacrifice his castration to the Other’s jouissance.”[2]
Castration thus remains the "bedrock" around which analysis struggles.[3]
Perversion: disavowal of castration
In perversion, castration is neither repressed nor accepted but disavowed (Verleugnung). The perverse subject constructs a fetish or scenario that simultaneously affirms and denies the mother's lack. In doing so, the pervert positions himself as the one who gives the phallus to the mother, bypassing the law and re-establishing a dyadic relation with the maternal figure.
Castration is acknowledged and denied at once—producing a defense that shores up the subject’s fantasy at the cost of the symbolic law.
Psychosis: foreclosure of castration
In psychosis, castration is foreclosed (Verwerfung): it is never symbolized in the first place. The Name-of-the-Father is missing from the Symbolic order, and the subject is unable to inscribe the prohibition that would separate them from the mother. As a result, castration returns in the Real—often in the form of hallucination or delusion.
Without castration, the subject cannot establish a stable position in relation to the phallus or the Other, leading to psychotic disruptions in identity and language.
End of analysis and the traversal of fantasy
Lacan links the traversal of the fundamental fantasy to the assumption of castration. At the end of analysis, the analysand separates from object a and encounters themselves as a castrated subject—that is, as a subject of lack, of divided desire, and of symbolic inscription.
This moment is not one of loss but of subjectivation. To assume castration is to recognize that desire is not grounded in any object, that jouissance is never total, and that the unconscious is structured by signifiers beyond one's control.
See also
References
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 287
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p. 323
- ↑ Freud, "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (1937).