An Experimental Study of Parental Castration Phantasies

¹ Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan 48823, U.S.A.

Thirty-two male subjects, with no history of psychiatric disorder, having had both mother and father figures in their childhood, were examined with a modified Blacky technique to discover which parent was the castrator in their phantasies. The striking finding was that typically the classical phantasy of the father as castrator exists, but that it exists as a defensive phantasy, defending against the deeper, more frightening phantasy of the mother as the castrator. This was similar to previous findings with schizophrenic patients, indicating that such a constellation is not specific to schizophrenia, but is, as suggested by Fairbairn and others, characteristic of the general human condition.