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some details in Freud’s theory of female sexual development. I will be suggesting that the mutilating surgeries performed on his mouth had stimulated an unconscious feminine identification that was intolerable to a proud man like Sigmund Freud. These feminine identifications, which are unconscious aspects of every man’s mas- culine identity, are frightening to most men, often inducing a defensive misogynist coloration to their erotic life, imbuing it with a degree of destruc- tive aggression toward the female body. Moreover, as we shall see, some of these defensive reactions are connected with an envy of the power of the female body.

    Between the physical and emotional castrations of 1923 and the writing of “Fetishism,” were four years consumed by a variety of physical assaults on Freud’s mouth. Some were drastic surgical procedures undertaken to control and conquer the cancerous growth. Others were efforts to ameliorate the ghastly physical effects of the surgeries. His physical state, “which varied only from severe discomfort to real torment,” began in 1923 and “persisted more or less constantly for the next 16 years.” 15
    In late September of 1923, a new and distinguished oral surgeon, Professor Hans Pichler, was elected by a colleague of Freud to take over the case from the first surgeon. Pichler examined Freud’s mouth and discovered a malignant ulcer in the hard palate that had already invaded neighboring
    tissues “including the upper part of the lower jaw and even the check.” 16 Pichler, in consultation with the first surgeon, decided that a radical surgery was needed, and he performed this major operation in two stages on October 4 and October 11. In the first stage:

    the external carotid artery was ligatured and the subanillary glands, some of which were already suspiciously enlarged, removed. In the second operation, after slitting the lip and cheek wide open the surgeon removed the whole upper jaw and palate on the affected side, a very extensive operation which of course threw the nasal cavity and mouth into one. These frightful operations were performed under local anesthesia.(!) 17 [The exclamation was inserted by Ernest Jones, who reported the details of the surgery.]

    Much of Freud’s suffering was due to the outcomes of the second surgical procedure, which had joined the mouth with the nasal passages. This drastic surgery required the insertion of a prosthesis, a huge denture-like apparatus, designed to block off the gaping wound in his mouth, separating it from the nasal cavity. Those who saw the device described it as a “horror.” 18
    Since the prosthesis made it impossible for Freud to open his mouth wide, it was difficult to remove it for a few hours of relief from the pressure it caused, or to replace it afterwards. One day, for example, after more than a half hour of the combined efforts of Freud and his daughter Anna had failed to achieve the re-insertion of the monstrous device, they were forced to send for Pichler to do it for them. 19 The tight fit, though necessary to close off the nasal passage from the mouth, “produced constant irritation and sore places until its presence was unbearable.” 20 If the horror were left out for longer than a few hours, the tissues would shrink and the prosthesis would have to be altered.
    Ernest Jones described the effects of the first “horror” (there would be three more replacement prostheses within the next four years and finally a fifth that was constructed by an orthodontic specialist in Germany):

    From now on Freud’s speech was very defective, though it varied a good deal from time to time according to the fit of the denture. It was nasal and thick, rather like that of someone with a cleft palate. Eating was also a trial, and he seldom cared to do so in company. Furthermore the damage done to the Eustachian tube, together with constant infection in the neighborhood, greatly impaired his hearing on the right side until he