ABSTRACT
Much psychoanalytic theory today still minimizes the problem of gender. Of course, the Oedipus complex cannot be the same for girls as for boys, but this distinction has been accounted for in traditional psychoanalysis by the somewhat deviant depiction of the feminine path to selfhood. The full-blown self is that of the male adult—if the path to that self is different, even more difficult, for women, masculine identity is still the norm to which both the sexes are compared. 1 Thus, there is often no systematic effort to account for gender differences. The tendency since Freud has been to posit woman as a sort of negative reflection or complement to man. Psychoanalytic theory, rather than providing a positive account of the category "woman," made that category the repository of everything that is not "man."
