On Castration Anxiety

In an attempt to explain the often puzzling phenomenon of male heterosexual impotence, psychologists have at points offered us one especially provocative thesis: a man may be unable to perform with a woman because he is – in his unconscious – afflicted by a powerful subterranean fear of being castrated by her.

Given that real-life incidents of castration are extremely rare, even as rates of impotence remain extremely high, the fear evidently cannot be based on any assessment of reality. However,  cases of impotence (where there is no physiological issue at play) do indeed tend to involve strong feelings of dread, discomfort and shame, which might be creatively expressed in a metaphorical fear that one’s penis may not survive intercourse unharmed.

Psychologists go on to tell us that what generally determines a man’s degree of castration anxiety is the history of his relationships with important female figures in his formative years. The more a man experiences these figures as being – fundamentally – sympathetic to his potency and unfrightened by his masculinity, the more he stands to be able to succeed sexually in time. And the more he experiences a risk of belittlement, suffering or humiliation, the more he is likely to feel that not just his ego, but also, his penis may be unwelcome in an intimate setting. 

A woman on the receiving end of impotence will often touchingly wonder: ‘What might be wrong with me?’ The poignant answer is of course ‘nothing at all’; but she may nevertheless have to pay the price for a problem in the man’s relationship with a woman somewhere down the line, a problem to which he has not given sufficient thought and which he has not been able to master.

The more a woman can trust that the man has failed to be turned on not by her per se, but that he has a history of terror that his masculinity may be under siege in a broad sense, the more occasions of impotence can be interpreted as interesting, comedic, human and, in their way, extremely moving.

‘I am apparently deep down afraid that I may not make it out of you with my penis intact’ is one of the less intuitive phrases that one can ever share with someone in bed. But it can also be an uncommonly brave, funny and maybe true thing to utter as well.

We should concede that both genders can carry aggressions and suspicions of one another that, while not justified by anything in present reality, reflect difficult experiences they have had on their way to adulthood. If sex is going wrong, we may need to look beyond physical interventions – candles, soft music or massages – and take an audit of the mutual suspicions that each side can be unconsciously carrying with them into the bedroom. And then offer mutual reassurance that whatever the aggressions and wounds of the past, there is no reason why safety might not be a possibility in the present.

The concept of castration anxiety reminds us that potency is to a large extent a psychological achievement. It is a critical legacy of early supportiveness and encouragement; it is one of the more surprising and more critical consequences of love.