Female perversion and the denial of the phallus

Abstract

As aggression and violence have been treated until now almost without exception as a male phenomenon, so has sexual perversion for a long time been understood in a clinical context as pathology which affects only men. Welldon’s study provides an insight into particularly female forms of perversion. The most striking difference between female and male perversion concerns the direction of the aggressive impulse: while men tend to turn their aggression outward, women turn it against their own bodies – and its products, children. In concrete terms, women starve themselves to death, injure themselves, or choose violent partners. They allow men to make them pregnant for the sake of aborting the foetus (which they regard as part of their body), or they treat their children as they treat their own bodies: as a lifeless, dehumanised object. Why women do this, Welldon unfortunately cannot convincingly explain.